Link List #135: Big tech, digital avatars, and insta novels - Friends of Friends / Freunde von Freunden (FvF)

Link List #135: Big tech, digital avatars, and insta novels

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Link List #135: Big tech, digital avatars, and insta novels

This week we’ve been reading about Silicon Valley’s duplicity in our current climate crisis, why musician Frank Ocean is no fan of authority, and the ingenious way the New York Public Library is encouraging more people to read.

Image courtesy of Calvin Klein
    • Fresh from winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes—the first Korean ever to do so—director Bong Joon-ho opens up to Vulture’s E. Alex Jung about the Oscars, his activist background, and what it was like to work with Harvey Weinstein.
    • Are “Insta novels” the future of reading? The New York Public Library seems to think so. Last year, as part of their mission to “reach beyond its walls and convince more people to read books,” the institution put the full text of novels like Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper and Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven onto their Instagram stories. Read more about the experiment on Fast Company.
    • “The climate crimes of big tech are legion,” declares Rebecca Solnit in a scorching new opinion piece for The Guardian that looks at the myriad ways Silicon Valley is contributing to the climate crisis.
    • After digital avatar Lil Miquela “kissed” Bella Hadid as part of an ad campaign for Calvin Klein, feminist magazine Salty asks the question: who actually benefits when digital queerness gets trendy?
    • “I didn’t have a deep affection for authority. I was expelled and suspended it felt like every five minutes, every school year until I became obsessed with figuring out how to make a career in music,” admits musician Frank Ocean in a rare interview with W Magazine.

Hopefully you enjoyed the reads from this week’s Link List, but if you’ve still got an internet itch to scratch, you can find more here.

Also, be sure to check out FvF Mixtapes for some tracks selected by our friends and favorite artists, and subscribe to our newsletter to stay up-to-date with FvF stories.

Text: FvF Team

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