antisocial media
Manila, 13 September—This week has been frantic with a capital F. On Friday night, as I was closing my work week, I reviewed my to-do lists for Monday to Friday and noticed an extraordinary number of tasks. Hello Q4, indeed.
Anyway, September has always been a busy month. Preps usually started around Ninoy’s assassination commemoration in mid-August, and continued on to National Heroes Day before heading into the requisite Martial Law reminiscing.
The Old Paper made such a Big Deal out of it—and rightly so, I think. I usually got hyperacidity attacks around this time due to stress haha. Admittedly, I have missed poring over really old photos from Mr and Ms, brittle front-pages from Dec 1985 to February 1986 and the vast selection of Martial Law books from the library.
Incidentally, today is also LJM’s birthday. She would have been… 79? I think. She’d probably be mad at all this historical revisionism and brouhaha about Marcos being a hero (spoiler alert: he is NOT), and all these attempts at whitewashing what he did to thousands of activists during his dictatorship.
But she’s no longer here (and perhaps for the better)—so I think it’s now up to us to be mad in her behalf.
Digital gardens
Anyway, something slower and lighter—I’m obsessed with the idea of “Digital Gardens”. It’s not quite the same as the current “plantito/plantita” craze that’s currently sweeping through most of my friends on social media, but perhaps it could offer just the same therapeutic effect.
The MIT Technology Review defines “digital gardens” as “creative reimaginings of blogs” (READ: Digital gardens let you cultivate your own little bit of the internet via MIT Technology Review) through which “people are creating an internet that is less about connections and feedback, and more about quiet spaces they can call their own.”
A few days ago, I was talking with my best friend J about the impossibility of social media. We both longed for a time when social media was an option and not a necessity, especially for work. These days, everything is tied to social media, and if like me you are also part of an organization that has to do a good deal of stakeholder comms on social media platforms, then perhaps you also get the occasional, if it weren’t for work I’d be out of here feelings every now and then (perhaps more common amid the hellscape of these recent days than in previous years)
As naive as it sounds, I wanted to take back the internet—or at least for myself. That’s why I keep this space, actually. I wanted to write somewhere that isn’t on social media, to put content up somewhere that isn’t owned by Facebook or Google. In these times of extreme connectedness, when every move generates data for some corporation, it does seem harder than expected, to cultivate an online space that one can truly call their own.
That’s what attracts me to the idea of digital gardens—which are by far the only gardens I can tend to, given that the small unit we’re currently living in does not have a sunny enough space to sustain an indoor plant.
While the MIT article already has a selection of digital gardens you can check out, I’d also like to share a few interesting ones I’ve seen.
Andy Matuschak’s working notes page—which is so fascinating, as it includes his multi-linking, bi-directional evergreen notes, which just sort of stack-up or pop-up as you go along, and it’s so intricately built that no note is actually orphaned. It’s amazing.
Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s digital garden Mental Nodes, which is similar in structure to Andy’s. “This is what a gardening guide for your mind would look like,” she says.
Antistatic gardens by Anna and Kelly Pendergast — “Less than a blog, more than a tweet” kinda works as a description—these are slides hosted on google and are every bit as chaotic as the thinking process is, but yes, very interesting if you’re collaborating with someone.
As someone who has lived on the internet for a long time—a huge part of my becoming years disappeared by way of Geocities, which I think is part-blessing—I think this whole obsession at digital gardening some twenty years after I upped my first few webpages is rather… fitting.
Some more obsessive links, if you’re inclined:
You and your mind garden via Ness Labs
My blog is a digital garden, not a blog by Joel Hooks
Building a digital garden by Tom Critchlow (“create a space for collecting the dots”)
Google this: Zettelkasten.
Sorry for the nerd-out, but I think it’s a worthwhile thought. I’ve been thinking about writing that is evergreen and timeless (vs liminal, which is neither here nor there, but mostly tethered to current events).
I’ve been mostly writing content that belongs to the latter category—a direct consequence of writing for a living in media and media-adjacent spaces, I think. Lately, life has been a battle between being overwhelmed by information yet having so little well-made thoughts. It’s always just about the what’s and the who’s, and not as much as the how’s and the why’s and the so-what’s.
Anyway, I’ll leave you with this breathtaking piece by Sue Hyon Bae:
Thanks for making it this far.
Happy weekend!
Xo,
K