068: On Mimesis
on the putative demise of Twitter, self-representation, Aristotle, Oscar Wilde, and why we all need to be seen + Doodle Dispatches does work emoji and a podcast about plaid
I realized this week that the reason why some of us are in a state of near-panic about the (remote) possibility of losing Twitter is that we secretly believe it’s the last place where we can feel seen.
This is not a small thing. Being seen is a matter of survival. It’s how you get access to your tribe, whether it’s with the Swifties, or crypto bros, or K-hive, or #geospatial people, etc.
As is so often the case with the revelation of a root cause, there is tremendous freedom and possibility here. But, to get to the freedom part we got to talk about a lil something called mimesis.
I learned about mimesis in college, but had completely forgotten about it until a couple of weeks ago when I read this tweet by Brandon Taylor, of Real Life and sweater weather:
