vol #4: saying no more, jack corbett's twitter & project gutenberg
sent from brad's iphone with love
brad:
"I believe in taking care of myself and a balanced diet and rigorous exercise routine. In the morning if my face is a little puffy I'll put on an ice pack….”
Just kidding.
I am Brad. I am a writer and editor who currently heads up VICE in Australia and New Zealand. I have a newsletter called Very Fine Day where I publish things that are equal parts depressing and cynical about the state of the internet and the world we are building for ourselves.
I have a degree in nihilism, inherited, not earned. I work with Joss, and mostly take photos of myself in elevators.
brad perfecting the art of the elevator selfie
this is the internet bit:
Free books online, dickhead.
The Future of the Culture War is Here, and it’s GamerGate, deadspin
In 2014, Kyle Wagner wrote what I believe is one of the defining pieces of cultural analysis of the internet age. At the tail end of Obama’s America, well before Trump and the active alt-right and “PC-culture-gone-mad”, Wagner highlighted a particular controversy in the gaming community and how it was representative of a dangerous way of communicating, organising, and harassing that was set to be the future of everything. He was right.
If the 21st century had a library of Alexandria, this would sit in the centre of it.
Jack Corbett’s Twitter account
Most people know Jack as the Planet Money TikTok guy. And he is. But he is also a rare thing on the internet: someone who naturally understands the way to communicate online, the way to make things entertaining, and the way to understand formats.
jack corbett’s twitter account
this is the irl bit
Meditation
Sorry for being the guy to tell you to calm down and meditate. I’m not going to spend too much time spurting out the benefits of taking 20 minutes out of your day to focus your brain – for that you can go to google; culture; century-old religions.
For me, it’s transcendental meditation. I try to do it twice a day. It has, I think, created a noticeable and obvious difference in the way I approach life, am in life, and handle life.
That’s about as far as I’ll go into the whole Eat Pray Love thing.
The main point I liked to press into people about meditation is that it is really fucking hard to do every day, and it is equally hard to do every week, month, and year. There is an understandable approach to meditation that – because it is all about calming down and focusing and taking a moment – the act of it should be simple and freeing and relaxing. Sometimes it is. But, for the most part, it’s hard to sit down and do nothing. To think of a mantra. To push yourself away from distraction. To rationalise with yourself that it's actually valuable.
This is something that is hard, but it is not difficult. The steps are in front of you and are quite simple. The reason you are not doing it is because you are not prioritising your time to suit this exercise as valuable. And that is OK – but that is your choice. Wouldn’t you like to know what it feels like? There are 24 hours in a day – I know – and you can’t spare 20 minutes?
The influx of self-love bullshit the social internet has platformed in a vaguely capitalist attempt to make money has us all riding high on the idea that painting your nails and putting yourself first is important (which it is), but the hard acts that prioritise your emotional and mental wellbeing are usually right there in front of you. You just have to commit. It’s not easy. Who told you it would be? Grow up.
The impacts of having a meditative practice are not felt immediately, and are usually felt by those around you first. It’s the kind of thing you only realise did something when you stop doing it.
God, this whole section has made me hate myself.
Reading
I am aware that telling you to read is about three degrees short of asking you if you’ve ever heard of this dude called David Foster Wallace and his Life Changing Book, Infinite Jest. So please, just sit with me for a moment and help me get through this with a certain amount of self awareness. I mean, fuck me gently with a chainsaw: I am trying my best here.
If, in your life, you have found yourself contemplating your own maturity with a longing for the time before the internet – or at least before you were as aware of it – wondering slowly and painfully about whether or not your attention span has suffered as a result of the assault on your senses that is the modern Internet Experience, then I have news for you, kid: it’s not that complicated; your attention span is not broken; you are not beyond saving.
To me, the Truth is that concentration is a muscle that takes training. The good news is that progress in this particular area of development, unlike going to the gym for three months and wondering why you don’t look like any of the Marvel celebrities pumped to the gills with human growth hormone and methandrostenolone, is quite quick. In fact, by sitting down and committing yourself to the idea of reading – really reading – something challenging or long or thought provoking, you will find over a series of weeks that your concentration recovers and your ability to commit to things that are harder to digest than Netflix and Instagram and ketamine increases, too. This is a good thing.
There are more books in this world than you will ever read and, yes, Will Hunting was right when he berated the Ivy League dickhead for wasting money on a college education he could’ve gotten for $3.00 in late fees at the local library. But you knew that already, didn’t you? All the information in the world, right there in front of us, and we don’t think it’s worth the time. Maybe your priorities need sorting, maybe they don’t. But I’d say forcing myself to read every day makes a noticeable difference to the way I feel. And this whole newsletter is about me, so…
Say “No” to more things (with one exception).
Look at me, a regular Oprah: here’s some advice, you need to take control of your life and your time and start saying NO with reckless abandon. Think of it as the opposite of that Jim Carrey movie Yes Man except instead of learning guitar and going down on an 80 yr old pensioner, you’re telling the mate who always asks you to go out to that terrible pub no thanks.
This is not new advice, and taking control of your destiny is about as True and Modern as the Kardashians and Ice Cream and never-ending World War.
But there is a caveat, and that is to say yes to new things. Really, actually, new things. That could be meeting up with someone who you have only known online, it could be eating a dinner cooked from roadkill, it could be finally agreeing to go see the ballet. I don’t care. But expose yourself to new experiences, and only new experiences, and see what happens. Maybe skip the harder drugs, though.
brad everyday for 20 minutes
that’s all! kisses xxx x