Rob Horning
@robhorning.bsky.social
📤 4697
📥 266
📝 593
robhorning.substack.com
these sorts of fakes also shape expectations of what events should look like, and reinforce the expectation that all events should be reducible to images
add a skeleton here at some point
about 3 hours ago
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"vibe-living" is good Orwellian term for when people have been made too anxious to make any decisions for themselves about anything
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/o...
about 5 hours ago
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seems that "AI" makes "you can just do things" and "you can't do anything" into the same thing, as if they are supposed to be the same goal
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/02/m...
1 day ago
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memes are like fashion trends that people "wear" in media by posting; decoding "what they mean" beyond that verges on folly, like asking what different skirt lengths "really mean"
5 days ago
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this conclusion likens social media meme-making with AI paper-clip maximizing; social media is an engine that turns everything into memes the way AI would catastrophically overoptimize on a pointless goal
5 days ago
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the problem with "brain rot" as a term is that using memes makes people feel smart (in on a fast-moving joke) but using language often makes us feel stupid (it can be hard to be articulate and never assured that you will be understood)
5 days ago
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reminds me of Flusser's claim that communication in images meant that "writing has no future" — this is possibly an intermediate stage in the "death of writing," when language use becomes a matter of mimicking ever more ephemeral coinages
5 days ago
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extremely random that the image in a story about "reality distortion fields" shows a guy wearing a Travis Konecny shirt
news.artnet.com/art-world/re...
14 days ago
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think "monitoring the situation" is about aestheticizing information so that you can let yourself give up on being informed
19 days ago
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the casino sportsbook as an "informational sublime" where information becomes so perfectly actionable that it becomes useless, like an arbitrage always already played out
kneelingbus.substack.com/p/situationg...
19 days ago
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pdf of Simulacra and Simulation
dn720006.ca.archive.org/0/items/baud...
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https://dn720006.ca.archive.org/0/items/baudrillard.-1970.-the-consumer-society/Baudrillard.1981.Simulacra-and-Simulation.pdf
28 days ago
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the message in all content becomes "engage with content" — which means that "content" is abolished and replaced with pure form: ceaseless engagement with engagement
disjunctionsmag.com/articles/end...
28 days ago
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reposted by
Rob Horning
Jeremy Antley
30 days ago
Nice visual/written essay by Terry Godier on how material goods of capitalism (phone, appliances, apps) shifted from being products to becoming relationships. This shift is a mirror of neoliberal subjectivity that demands ‘work on the self’ via moral imperatives.
www.terrygodier.com/the-last-qui...
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The Last Quiet Thing
Your possessions came alive. Now they won't stop talking.
https://www.terrygodier.com/the-last-quiet-thing
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When prediction markets are sufficiently entrenched, facts will be revealed as niche content of interest only to gamblers
add a skeleton here at some point
about 1 month ago
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AI writing is optimized to seem "good" to people who could care less about the context or the larger point the writing is supposed to serve
maxread.substack.com/p/what-do-wh...
about 1 month ago
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this claims that there is no theoretical limit to the demand for hyper-personalized content; but the actual demand for actual content is dictated by social relations (desiring the desire of the other, etc.)
arxiv.org/pdf/2601.06060
about 1 month ago
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What I feel when this gets denied as a word
about 1 month ago
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reposted by
Rob Horning
Not (A.) I.
about 1 month ago
AI slop is a potent strategy of warfare in spreading disinfo and sowing doubt. Quickly produced at scale, AI slop drowns out human-made content and goes viral as spammers detect and exploit weaknesses in algorithms.
add a skeleton here at some point
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at some point athletes throwing games will be fully rehabilitated as offering a form of insider knowledge to help the world predict who's not cheating
www.tank.tv/magazine/iss...
about 1 month ago
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"personalization" is manipulation
1234kyle5678.substack.com/p/enter-the-...
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/t...
about 2 months ago
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being unable to conceive of any other goals than maximizing one's "personal productivity" must be a terrible way to go through life
about 2 months ago
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“And yet” should be changed to “because”—people can see that they will use these tools to the detriment of their own relationships
about 2 months ago
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evergreen lesson of automation: it's not a way of eliminating bottlenecks but of inventing new and more resistant ones
backofmind.substack.com/p/finally-we...
about 2 months ago
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reposted by
Rob Horning
Brian Phillips
9 months ago
The most depressing AI pieces are always going to be the thoughtful, nuanced, open-minded considerations by respected writers who are transparently responding to the publicity incentive created by editors whose owners want this kind of content
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a.k.a. truth and falsity in their ultramoral sense
carrier-bag.net/vectofascism...
about 2 months ago
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reposted by
Rob Horning
Not (A.) I.
2 months ago
GenAI is a key activator in the Anti-Vice Popular Front: its output & industry also tell you the rules are over. The increasing volume of synthetic content contributes to the broken windows theory of the information landscape: "the more your environment is vandalised, the less care you take of it."
add a skeleton here at some point
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Rob Horning
an essay I wrote last year about AI "companions"
www.emptysetmag.com/articles/lon...
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Loneliness Generators
The lonelier you are, the further you can run.
https://www.emptysetmag.com/articles/loneliness-generators
3 months ago
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reposted by
Rob Horning
Eryk Salvaggio
2 months ago
It’s a category mistake nobody really talks about: most AI companies are not trying to sell creative tools, they are trying to sell content streams.
add a skeleton here at some point
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reposted by
Rob Horning
Benjamin Dreyer
2 months ago
👇🏻
add a skeleton here at some point
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Why would anyone buy an AI-written romance novel when you can just prompt the chatbots yourself and "write" your own?
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/b...
2 months ago
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useful chart for "deanthropomorphizing" discussions of "AI"
firstmonday.org/ojs/index.ph...
2 months ago
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"desocialization" (like "social deskilling") is a good term for what was once talked about in terms of "social graph" vs. "interest graph," or of "algorithmic recommendation"
nymag.com/intelligence...
2 months ago
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reposted by
Rob Horning
Nick Seaver
3 months ago
nice concretizing of the core idea in the history of information overload: overload isn’t a matter of quantity alone, it requires a certain kind of subject to feel overwhelmed. (the early modern scholar who wants to have read every book in the library, the RSS reader who wants inbox zero)
add a skeleton here at some point
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an essay I wrote last year about AI "companions"
www.emptysetmag.com/articles/lon...
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Loneliness Generators
The lonelier you are, the further you can run.
https://www.emptysetmag.com/articles/loneliness-generators
3 months ago
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reposted by
Rob Horning
Defector
3 months ago
Here's a thread of some Dan McQuade blogs that we really loved 🦅 The Garden State Parkway’s Jon Bon Jovi rest stop is playing fast and loose with famous quotes:
defector.com/the-garden-s...
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The Garden State Parkway's Jon Bon Jovi Rest Stop Is Playing Fast And Loose With Famous Quotes | Defector
CHEESEQUAKE, N.J. — Have you ever scored a touchdown? I never played real football, so my own experiences have been pretty low-key, but man, did they feel great. I think I remember almost all of them—...
https://defector.com/the-garden-state-parkways-jon-bon-jovi-rest-stop-is-playing-fast-and-loose-with-famous-quotes?giftLink=d2124d243a353835acb323a46afc7a03
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think "being online" is a cause of boredom that is presented as its cure; platforms and feeds are engineered to make users consistently feel more bored and less creative, to structure their lives in terms of addiction rather than meaning
nautil.us/why-the-do-n...
3 months ago
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reposted by
Rob Horning
Hypervisible
3 months ago
Worth your time. “fundamentally you are in love with a business product”
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Rob Horning
3 months ago
I wrote about prediction markets, where we’re at and how we got here for Defector
add a skeleton here at some point
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wonder if part of this is that using chatbots leads some users to lose whatever "theory of other minds" they used to have; the chatbots' fluency "proves" that other people are no different from and no better than machines
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/26/u...
3 months ago
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3 months ago
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this means that for most people, AI simply is a tool for coercion; its use case is to allow others to make them experience powerlessness
theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/you-have-t...
3 months ago
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at a glance
www.wired.com/story/china-...
3 months ago
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a cause for optimism
newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...
3 months ago
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reposted by
Rob Horning
John Herrman
3 months ago
Now that AI-generated fake news video is everywhere, I think it's notable that its main function didn't turn out to be sophisticated and unpredictable deception but rather just more soothing, hermetic propaganda for willing rubes and ideologues
nymag.com/intelligence...
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data-collection and programming are not sufficient to run an economy because economies should not be focused on optimizing for one particular goal
newleftreview.org/issues/ii153...
3 months ago
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“slop” as the new “nonplace”
maxread.substack.com/p/what-is-sl...
4 months ago
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the curse of streaming media: "the ability to cheaply deliver content is matched by its inability to produce anything new"
www.unemployednegativity.com/2025/12/livi...
4 months ago
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pursuing the dream of a life lived as pure "data creation," with the ultimate goal of being completely manipulatable by the data processors who have a plan for your life
add a skeleton here at some point
4 months ago
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one of the dumbest things I've ever read
www.wired.com/story/people...
4 months ago
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these findings suggest that people should always understand that interacting with chatbots is like talking to an advertisement, not talking to some supergenius
4 months ago
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