6. Have no choice but to use my Wii
wish me luck. luv u #mii
Apologies for the quiet week last week, I had to skip the email as I was sick! If it makes you feel better, I also had to skip, like, work and stuff. But I’m here now and I’ll never ever get sick again or skip the email for any other reason, I promise you.
You ever hear about ‘desire lines’, or ‘desire paths’? You’ve definitely seen them: It’s that thing where an urban planning department creates a lovely park, with a nice path for pedestrians that sends them in a nice route through the grounds. But then after a few weeks there’s a muddy line through the middle, where people have made a route that actually works better. I’ve been getting obsessed with how this phenomenon plays out online. A company builds a tool or network they believe will be used in one way, then people arrive and it turns out it’s more fun a different way.
So think of Twitter, with the @mention and the retweet arising from users, whether by adding a ‘@‘ to user names or copy+pasting another person’s tweet and pre-pending ‘RT’. Clumsy, but the need was there and it stuck, until Twitter added them as proper features. You know how that played out (great for engagement, badly for society).
But you see this all the time. When I see photos of pages from books, shared on social media (rather than through the Kindle app sharing function).
These platforms may be walled gardens (especially Instagram, which is maybe why those are the examples I notice) but I find it comforting that you can still decide to make your own path.
(Last Instagram thing, I enjoy this a lot: comedian Joe Mande, noticing most of LeBron James’ Insta Stories are him nodding along to new bangers, does the logical thing.)
This Guy is the Whole Package
Introducing your new best friends
Thanks as always to those who have got in touch to say hey and offer a slice of your life. Please keep doing this!
Here’s one! Jess emailed to say:
The most exciting thing I have ever built is Mailian. He’s a mail alien and was a funky mailbox project for my partner and my side project, Flavius. He’s now the mascot to our lives and goes on plenty of trips with us to the bush. We’ve just launched our first real (at a venue) party that is all about bringing storytelling and characters into the party space.
Mailian’s the best. Enjoy some photos. Learn more about the mission here.
About me? I will leave Mailian as the star of the show for now :D
Thanks Jess, and Mailian.
Luck of the Draw
Check Out This Thing
Animated drawing effects, using SVG and CSS, not JS.
A Likely Story
Try This Thing
Build a real-time multiplayer VR game. Quite a few words in that title. All of them quite intense. Slightly ambitious, maybe? You can do it!
Learn how to manage state in React with Immer.
Then build cool interactive fiction with the scripting language Ink.
Moving On Up
Some Silly Things
This week in life imitating art, some genius did the thing from XKXD, with a “funny” license plate that gave him $12,000 in parking tickets.
An Archive of Our Own just won a Hugo Award! Here’s a good explanation for why. And the best episode of the Good Place (Janet(s)) also got one! And I still somehow haven’t seen Into the Spider Verse, but that also won one.
A Twitter bot that generates plots to episodes of Midsomer Murders:
Teens tweet using fridges now. A solid argument against Twitter, fridges and teens.
Watch an excerpt from Hours Played: a 24-hour supercut of clocks in games, inspired by The Clock.
An (extremely) quick shout out to Twista’s sign language interpreter, who deserves all the money.
Finally, I guess a game where you unpack belongings makes sense in sort of a late-stage capitalism way.
Call to Action
Send this to someone you think may enjoy it, as long as they’re cool. I would love to have more of y’all on the team. No haters.
And then also send me an email telling me more about yourself and your deal! More bios, please. More Mailians, preferably.