Kyle Chayka
Staff writer at The New Yorker, where he writes the Infinite Scroll column, and author of Filterworld and The Longing for Less.
Kyle Chayka did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Their wordsThe atmosphere might make the act of writing easier but I'm not sure it ever makes the writing itself better.
↗Writer’s desk blockkylechayka.substack.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Our reading
The only cure for being unable to write is to put words down, even if it is only a hundred in a day.
Their wordsThere's no other cure: you have to put words down, even if it's only a hundred in a day.
↗Writer’s desk blockkylechayka.substack.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 3 months earlier
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Their wordsIf the user doesn't actively push back against the AI model, then they get the generic output, the lowest common acceptable denominator of aesthetics and taste.
↗The generic style of AI web designkylechayka.substack.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Our reading
Getting genuinely original output from AI requires working hard against the grain of its defaults.
Their wordsYou have to work very hard, against a lot of friction, to get anything remotely original out of AI.
↗The generic style of AI web designkylechayka.substack.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsthis kind of instantly ubiquitous homogeneity is going to happen across every field of human endeavor in the era of AI, until AI gets so powerful that it actually becomes original (doubtful) or until we shut it down.
↗The generic style of AI web designkylechayka.substack.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 2 weeks earlier
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Their wordsThis is the "show": everyone is trying to build parasocial multimedia franchises that gather audiences, and then sell ads, or subscriptions, or spon con on them.
↗Everything on the internet is a "show"kylechayka.substack.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Our reading
Social media no longer works for writers to reach an audience; newsletters are a better channel.
Their wordsAs discussed, social media doesn't work for writers anymore. Newsletters are way better.
↗Everything on the internet is a "show"kylechayka.substack.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 2 weeks earlier
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Their words"Slop" is fast becoming the central metaphor for the cultural output of the late twenty-twenties.
↗RIP Millennial lifestyle brandskylechayka.substack.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsSo it's no wonder that the artists and designers whose livelihoods are threatened by it have begun moving aggressively in the opposite direction, toward the scrawled, the sloppy, the seemingly mistake-riddled.
↗RIP Millennial lifestyle brandskylechayka.substack.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsThe globalization of generative AI models and tools has caused a kind of leveling, as any aspiring creator anywhere can work in the same visual idioms.
↗RIP Millennial lifestyle brandskylechayka.substack.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 2 months earlier
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Their wordsA.I. companies need to associate themselves with taste precisely because their tools are not very palatable, much less cool, to anyone outside of Silicon Valley.
↗Why tech bros are obsessed with "taste"kylechayka.substack.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Our reading
Tech's embrace of 'taste' is an attempt to dress anti-humanist technology in humanist branding.
Their wordsWe might call what's going on now "taste-washing," an attempt to give anti-humanist technologies a veneer of liberal humanism.
↗Why tech bros are obsessed with "taste"kylechayka.substack.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Our reading
The online ecosystem has become so degraded that it has impaired people's ability to exercise taste.
Their wordsAnother conclusion might be that the online ecosystem has become so polluted-so fragmented, deceptive, overstimulating, ersatz-that it has warped our ability to exercise taste at all.
↗Why tech bros are obsessed with "taste"kylechayka.substack.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 7 months earlier
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Their wordsThe band told me about the pressure of creating content in order to promote their music and the ways in which the audience now has power over how songs sound.
↗How to survive a TikTok hit songkylechayka.substack.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsIt's very relatable; the internet is so toxic but we kind of have no choice but to interact with it if we want to be heard as musicians / writers / artists / citizens.
↗How to survive a TikTok hit songkylechayka.substack.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 7 days earlier
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Their wordsI think this slop-adjacent realm of dupe products and Instagrammable potions points to our increasingly desperate need to manipulate our own images, and an acceptance of the fact that we're kind of hybridized monsters ourselves in this post-A.I. human-machine moment
↗Labubus and the brainrot aesthetickylechayka.substack.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsAny pretense of the pure or organic is undercut by a kind of willful alchemy; everything is an admixture.
↗Labubus and the brainrot aesthetickylechayka.substack.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 6 months earlier
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Their wordsBut the underlying ideology is familiar from Silicon Valley, Mark Zuckerberg's dictum to "move fast and break things" and replace the messily human with frictionless technology, built by elite engineers who are supposed to know better than anyone else.
- 13 months earlier
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Their wordstaste gets a bad rap sometimes as something that can be pretentious or elitist, but I think we all have taste.
↗'Filterworld' explores how social media algorithms 'flatten' our culture (Fresh Air, NPR)npr.org 1st of 3 in this piece
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Our reading
Fashion is for saying something about yourself, not for conforming to a data-driven standard.
Their wordsdistorting the purpose of fashion, which is actually to communicate something about yourself, not to conform to some data-driven standard.
↗'Filterworld' explores how social media algorithms 'flatten' our culture (Fresh Air, NPR)npr.org 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsMy feeling is that algorithmic feeds and recommendations have kind of guided us into conforming to each other and kind of having this homogenization of culture where we all accept the average of what everyone's doing.
↗'Filterworld' explores how social media algorithms 'flatten' our culture (Fresh Air, NPR)npr.org 3rd of 3 in this piece