It's not wackaging, it's a 'proto-Corynthian homage'.
In which I decide which things from the internet I'm gonna print out and read by the fireside over Christmas, like how Charles Dickens would've been online or something
🙌 Hello hello! Welcome new subscribers and [insert apology here] it’s been a few weeks since I posted. If you’re after access to the archives of all the tone of voice deep dives, check out the footnote at the bottom of this post. 👇
There’s more tone of voice stuff to come in 2025 (for starters, I was a judge at this year’s Brand Impact Awards. Lots to say about that.) Until then, here’s a fourteen:
‘Marescence.’ No, I didn’t know it meant ‘the dead leaves that stay attached to a tree after all the other leaves have fallen’ either. Also, ‘an old, dead thing, yet lingering with purpose’ is most definitely a #lifegoal.
Copywriters! Do you secretly love writing ‘wackaging’? Do you get sad when clients sniffily say they don’t like your ‘hello I’m your packet of crisps!’ approach to livening up on-pack copy? Simply remind them the ancient Greeks did it first. Learn more in ‘I am an article about the speaking objects of ancient Greece’. Typical perfume jug inscription: ‘I am the lekythos of Tataie, whosoever steals me will go blind’.) Next time anyone complains, simply drop into your tracked: ‘it’s not wackaging, it’s a proto-Corynthian homage’.
Knots, eh? They’re one of the purest expressions of human ingenuity. But alas, knot names are technical and often put people off: all sheets and bends and hitches. Indeed, it’s possible to know how to tie a knot, but not realise what one could use it for. So, big love for this Insta reel, where all the knots are named after their contemporary uses. (‘rope damage repair knot’; ‘hanging pot knot’ etc. )
Love this New Creative Era zine. It’s out of the NYC music scene and is therefore waaaaay too cool for me. The gist is that the status quo ‘has made us lonely content machines’ (great phrase) and they have good thoughts on what next.
‘Frank Sinatra has a cold’ is a 1965 profile of the singer written for Esquire by Gary Talese. Because of said cold, Sinatra didn’t want to do the interview. Talese wrote the profile anyway, and it became ‘one of the most celebrated magazine articles ever published’. I have a short list of articles from the internet that I’m gonna print out and read by the fire at Christmas, and this is most definitely on it.
‘You’ve art directed the arse out of that’. Never mind Farrow & Ball, Hastings-based paint shop Colorville has the best paint colour names.
‘I am not here to argue. I am here to tell you, if possible to convince you, and hopefully, to stop you, from pretentiously imposing yourselves on the rest of humanity.’ That’s what priest Ivan Illich told a 1968 conference of American do-gooders as they prepared to go and do ‘good works’ in Mexico. L.M.Sacasas retells what must have been a gloriously uncomfortable encounter, then makes the same challenge to the AI evangelists of Silicon Valley, who are so convinced the technology is about to usher in a Halcyon age of abundance. This clarified a number of my own misgivings about the current AI-with-everything hype. Also one for the ‘print out and read’ pile.
EMBARRASSMENT IS JUST A LAYER YOU CAN CHIP THROUGH. Ahh, this Sophie Truax thing is glorious! No other creative pep talks required. Do whatever your little heart desires. Now, if there was just some way I could send this back in time to my 20-year-old self…
‘Being an annoying sentence construction, appositive phrases are Bad Things and should not be used’. Ahh man. I’ve always hated opening sentences that feel all inside out like that. But I’m bad at grammar, so I’ve never been able to explain precisely why they bug me so much. (I think of them as ‘American sentences’ because I first became aware of them in US news reports.) Thankfully, David Owen shares my irritation and knows his grammar. His brutal takedown of appositive sentences in the New Yorker had me cheering from the margins.
This piece by Rosie Spinks on ‘becoming collapse aware’ is, I think, my blog of 2024. It captures eloquently that sense of living in a time that’s run its course but isn’t yet over. It’s thoughtful, hopeful and strangely uplifting. It’d totally be one for the ‘print and read by the fireside’ pile, but it’s just too rich with links I wanna click. (h/t Dense Discovery.)
My word of the year, as my family and long-suffering colleagues will attest – is most definitely ‘vibes’. I use it liberally, joyfully, and – I am sure – irritatingly. Nancy Friedman has been collecting words of the year since 2009. Her 2024 picks are splendid (including ‘sanewashing’, ‘instamom’, ‘Slop’, ‘Snoafer’.) Reading the archives of previous years is both sobering and uplifting. You realise a) online culture has been enshittifiying life for basically forever b) we’re never not funny about it.
Can we read like fishes? We tend to think of text information in ‘layers’. (‘zoomed in’, ‘helecopter view’). But photography offers other possibilities. Amelia Wattenberger asks what if we could view information like a fish eye lens? – close up in the centre, curving away to a surrounding contextual background. Good thought experiment. And the little fishes that follow your cursor around while you’re reading are sweet.
Allow yourself the uncomfortable luxury of changing your mind. I’m more than a little discombobulated to realise Maria Popova has been writing The Marginalian (previously Brain Pickings) for 18 years. But it’s resulted in this life-affriming list of 18 Life-Learnings, so that’s alright. Print this one out, too. Oh, and choose joy.
That’s all for now. Merry Christmas! See you in the New year.
Strangelove + Liquid Death + CIA + Rochambeau Club + loads more
In-depth analysis of the world’s best tones of voice
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