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Got this cheap copy a month ago and it has kicked off an Orwell obsession. there is something so phantasmic reading this in London 70 ish years later he was writing these essays.
Have used this in every essay I can since reading like…. he was so true idk…
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strangely, 1984 by george orwell saved my life in middle school by introducing me to the concept of doublethink… but also it is just a great dystopian book if you’re into that
Feb 8, 2025
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i read this recently lol it is a little unnerving given where the world is at rn but worth a read!
Mar 16, 2025
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Firs tthing- walter Ben-ya-meen. If u bring him up in conversation and say ben ja min ur gonna look like an idiot apparently. But its funny bc its not like people say Valter Benyameen. They say walter. Go figure.
Anyways this text is So Great. im definitely late to the game to this contexts of frankfurt dialectics, post war philosophy manifestos, yada yada but this one is so powerful and formative esp if ur an artist or visual creator that is Woke. Its one of his more accessible writings, and he is also a very important person to kno if u r even remotely into literature/philosophie/art/design/criticism etc.
Benyameen talks about this loss/absence of human experience post war/industrual revolution whcih i think is rlly the root of all this floptok based retard gang xiaohongshu on the extreme side, but even at its most tame (yet this is more insidious/barbaric in the bad way as Benyameen puts it) all of these miu miu shoe unboxing, day in the life of a big city transplant, clean consumerism we are witness to online. It is rlly this central idea of experience that hit home for me, and the resulting idea of barbarism which fr opened my third eye and put words to the feelings of trying to contextualize our days of Today. Im also totally going to start using the word barbarian to describe creatives and intellectuals and world leaders haha. Be the Good Barbarian.
dm me if u want my annotated copy i culd keep going but arent these meant to be kept short idk<3
Jan 20, 2024
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Mar 26, 2025
Bought this for cheap in Berlin and read this on the plane + train back to London. had to fight tears. Such a quick and beautiful read.
Mar 9, 2025
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like many of the other responses to this post, I think that having physical copies of media ensures that there is some enduring access. It’s archival.
I would also add that having the physical copies enhances engagement with the media. This is of course a privilege bc physical media is usually more expensive than digital, but I do think that consuming Digital media is often more passive. Idk. I love my phone too (and Spotify and the internet archive and Gutenberg project). But after I started collecting CDs and physical books I became very interested in getting as much as possible out of them. listening to the same album in its entirety for weeks at a time. rereading a book (Seriously, I would rarely reread a book before).
Also lending the copies to friends is the best thing in the world. Like being able to share and then discus- or even just the sharing. Whether or not you get it back it just becomes a gift. Which is nice.
Anyways to blabber on this last point: I don’t think that you always have to personally own and keep forever all of the physical media you accrue. just going to a library does a lot of the same good (supporting local archiving + engaging with stuff my tangibly + media becoming communal). learning that many libraries still have VHS, CDs, and DVDs available to check out changed my life. ya.
Mar 9, 2025