The Internet Favours Light Mode

The Metalabel magazine led me to Anu’s Working Theorys and her call to ‘Make Something Heavy’. Notice the difference, she says, between when you’re creating in ‘light mode’ and ‘heavy mode’. Notice how the internet favours ‘light mode’. And then she names something which hits home: ‘You feel like an imposter when you only make light things.’

Dougald Hine once again bringing the haunting thought.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been notebooking about the “light things” that can actually build over very extended periods of time into the “heavy” things. Or at least heavier.

Linking through the quote in question:

The modern makers’ machine does not want you to create heavy things. It runs on the internet—powered by social media, fueled by mass appeal, and addicted to speed. It thrives on spikes, scrolls, and screenshots. It resists weight and avoids friction. It does not care for patience, deliberation, or anything but production.

It doesn’t care what you create, only that you keep creating. Make more. Make faster. Make lighter. (Make slop if you have too.) Make something that can be consumed in a breath and discarded just as quickly. Heavy things take time. And here, time is a tax. And so, we oblige—everyone does. We create more than ever, but it weighs nothing.

And also:

No matter how many you stack, Tweets and TikToks don’t add up to something heavy. They don’t solidify. At best, they’re a pile of snowflakes, intricate yet ephemeral. 

While true, fragmentary writing can in fact assemble into something weightier. I’ve written about several objects like that in the recent past – Kathleen Jamie’s CAIRN comes immediately to mind. It’s about intent.