I am tired of this digital landscape that has captured my art, and social life, and more recently my workplace. Trapped behind this glass is the semblance of something real, but doesn’t quite scratch my need for something tangible. When I’m creating art, it feels real. When I post my art it feels distant, almost trapped in an uncanny gallery.

Years of travelling the copper through my screen and keyboard have warped my sense of reality. What is a friend? What is success? What is a real opportunity? Is this an add, or is it genuine? Who am I here? On the internet you are anonymous, or at least you were? Gradually we’ve been tricked into giving out our data, to the point where it seems hypocritical (for me at least) to keep my data to myself.

I am tired of being advertised at. You can’t even escape them with ad block anymore. The ad’s have become the people and the content I used to adore. I still engage in the content, but there’s always this queasy greasy feeling that follows. It’s like a capitalist earworm echoing in the chambers of my neurons.

Algorithms have become the middle men that control what art I get to see. Even if I scream at them “I am interested in hearing this voice” they dictate the likely hood of that voice rising to the surface of the ocean of content I am drowning in. They create rules about what is “Good” content and what is “Bad” content in the same way that the old white men in the Newspapers and on the TV used to, except now instead of a person it’s a computer. After all these years of intruding my brain, it still doesn’t know what I want to engage with, and still refuses to properly give me the choice.

Everytime there’s an update my workflow breaks. These tools I rely on to function break routinely - once a year, because they need to sell a new product to keep up with the other they’s who are selling new products because they sold a new product.

I used to love the excitement and grandeur of the infinite loop. Now I understand why my parents were so hesitant to get involved. I don’t want the shiny new thing, I just want my tools to work, and when that tool is digital, it’s literally beyond my control.

I feel powerless to leave. Everything in my industry has a gigantic online component, and if you refuse to participate it blocks off so many opportunities. I’ll continue to live here while I have to, but should a time come where we’re allowed to solely exist in the real world, I’ll 100% take it.

About the look: One of my favourite “me made” pieces from a few years ago, paired with a shirt and scarf I thrifted, and some doc’s. I found out this year the internet has dubbed this style “cottage core”. Of course, it already had a name long before that - “mori kei” but that doesn’t matter. It’s weird to have a sub style placed upon the personal style you’ve been cultivating for years. I still don’t know how I feel about it.

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