paradise wrapped in flames
on tiktok, hinge, and friendship (vicky's version)
Join the Secret Granola Club (quick intro interlude)
"Already the end of the year and yet this place feels like spring, a sunlight brilliance." — Bei Dao
I've written this phrase by hand maybe 20 times now and it’s become a practice of redirecting attention. An assignment revealed as blessing.
Last year was clutching the light for dear life; this year is letting it out.
So then, Secret Granola Club members (paid supporters), you've got mail! 🧧 (If you're US-based and haven't gotten anything, lmk. Or if you've yet to submit your address, just reply to this email.)
This year's annual supporter cards feature my riff on Agnes Martin's Friendship (1963), now on view at Brooklyn Museum's Solid Gold exhibit. 4 layers - burnt red base coat, adhesive, fussy gold leaf, sealant, on textured Fabriano paper. The standard edition contains 7x14 grids I etched onto each, with larger ones for founding supporters ($100/yr group). Equal parts raw and precise, thanks to hasty hand and steady ruler. many parts labor
Agnes painted the invisible but absolute nature of beauty.
maybe I’ll find my one liner this year & in the meantime
I'm looking for 10 more people to join the Secret Granola Club at $5/mon or $50/yr or $100/yr. There's 20ish of us now. Enough to cover web & software costs, an upskilling workshop, and materials for small batch pieces that I send you. My imagination is growing and I'd love to go back to Mexico this year for printmaking, which means I need more money for collaborators and production, which means richer pieces for you.
Club members get 2 exclusive art pieces a year from Skin Contact Press (that's me), a print in spring and a zine in fall (ish). Plus deeper newsletters on how I figure out this life-work-art-love-loss thing. Join below and send me your address for your first physical perk, the Agnes print from above / a pocketful of sunshine.
Paradise wrapped in flames
You walk through Chinatown these days and feel the burning red all around, get shoved down the narrow streets except for the man who gives you the beginning of a tender embrace as he moves your shoulders out of his way — strange man with energy neither New Yorker nor tourist — but no time to dwell because time to get flowers for Lunar New Year. The street vendor wraps your bird of paradise in newspaper and you see a headline about forest fires though it is not LA it is 贵州 Guizhou.
Of course more US-China parallels.
I only participate in pop culture way before or way after it's cool, not sure if this makes me more cool or more geek, case in point being my RedNote experience. (Or 小红书, which literally translates to Little Red Book.) I downloaded it years before the TikTok refugees got to it — for research purposes when I worked in consumer marketing, and to practice Chinese.
Neither count worked, as social gives me acid reflux (ahem, I worked in consumer marketing) and the entirely-in-Chinese app took too much brain energy for me to use. It was my pride and my shame — I wanted to read and comprehend everything I saw. As such it became less fun, more homework.
Of course it's more approachable if you don't know a lick of Chinese. No ego to pull from, all pure play, clickedy click clicks.
Even if the TikTok to RedNote migration was/is short lived, I'm just happy to see people awake again, see mainstream behavior that's unscripted, uninhibited. (though, lol: "In addition, [users] wanted to demonstrate they would rather join another Chinese app than return to Instagram to use Reels.")
To see people connecting from two of the world’s geopolitical hegemonies—dying or thriving, depending on who you ask—you realize that is how deep the ache is.
The ache, you know what I mean.
We don't really care if the algo breaks or goes away; the algo was never real to begin with (c/o comedian Youngmi Mayer).
What has the illusion of permanence been costing us?
“Vibes” only presents a believable illusion of wealth during high tide. It's why it's so hard to see interesting social media strategy. It’s a tricky space to challenge when job stability and budget often correlates to the extent of an exec’s belief in your function, not measurable financial return.
But first party data will surely save us, so the companies double down on hyper-personalization like the trends people say to, and lose $52 billion because they forget a lot of us actually like to touch the shoe first. (See: Paul Worthington's "Nike: From Brand Moat to Vicious Cycle")
Then the nation's doctor Dr. Vivek Murthy says put the warning label on the phones, we're lonely. (See: 19th & 21st Surgeon General's "My Parting Prescription for America")
So now we have more digital-to-physical movements like Project Gather, led by a collective of hospitality agencies like Care of Chan. But otherwise I haven't seen many orgs use non-digital priorities — or, deeply researched public advisories — to inform corporate strategy. Maybe Hinge's One More Hour initiative and their $1M fund for 40 social groups to facilitate IRL connection.
It sounds wonderful, and yet I've never seen such a gap in brand experience/perception between product and service.
It's the one app where I set up a DIY captcha. I don't use-use Hinge but I keep a profile on it like a directory listing. It ends in an invitation to find me online and just email/dm me. In the absence of working filters or a neurospicy filter, this at least filters for men who a) read, b) can invest an iota of effort, c) are awake enough to exit the trance. Or in marketing speak this filters for the high intent leads.
Every so often I log on to move the mouse, maybe change a word on the profile. Otherwise I live my life, meet people the old fashioned ways. touch the shoe first, it’s never not worked
After some months someone emailed me with a thoughtful note. I nearly spit my water out. Unfortunately civility shocks me as I’m used to men who try to figure out my age and sexual history in the first conversation - at least it's illegal in certain spaces - I hate to call it the fetishization, let's say mystery, of the Asian woman - so let's say we're conditioned to keep our cleavers close.
When did maintaining standards become a violent act of hope?
But after some months or years there will come one seed of a tree, one data point in a flood of disconfirming evidence, that proves when you lead with principles you will attract the ones who get it.
When you stop posting 3-5x a week because it's industry standard, when you focus on building sender reputation rather than apologizing for missing last week's newsletter — thank you, no one noticed, they have other video obsessions.
When you focus on building a brand that is beloved — when money's down that shows where love and loyalty truly lie — now at the risk of me getting too conceptual and vibey, we cut to Paul Worthington on the brand moat:
"Here’s the thing, though. Brands aren’t a matter of faith; they’re far from ephemeral and are often about far more than just the marketing department. The empirical evidence is crystal clear: Built successfully, brands represent economic moats that mimic monopoly advantages without the downside of monopoly frustrations (meaning people buy because they want to, not because they have to). In other words, brand strength creates volume effects (attracts more demand at lower overall cost) and pricing effects (can charge a premium), which means strongly branded corporations become akin to the Holy Grail for investors - higher returns at lower overall risk.
The impact of these combined effects means the job that a brand does for the corporation is to accelerate the performance of the underlying business - accelerating, increasing, and sustaining cashflows."
Back to the ache. The ache protects against workplace fear and anxiety, the pressure to perform, because the ache recognizes when logic and reason come to its benefit. You can only believe what you already know.
So maybe start looking at data and research outside product analytics or social engagement metrics or trend reports. Maybe use yourself as a test case if you're a weirdo cowboy like me.
Just break it, it's already broken!