it really is that damn phone.

on digital anarchy, the aesthetic of revolution, and how we are becoming strangers.

it is 66 degrees this morning, much colder than usual for an island in the pacific. the smell of dust, wet dog, and cotton-candy lingers in the chill. a particular hell continues to ping my phone, revealing an orange man yapping at a podium. to distract from the jabber, i look toward rustling ti leaves in my yard. i sift my fingers through the palm tree my mother planted, decades before i ever thought to sit down to write to you. there is peace in this small patch of grass.

now– stay with me. i do not live five feet from a subway station, nor am i able to light a cigarette on a New York City fire escape. i cannot barter with you tales of smoke, but i can tell you about the glittering beach down the street from my house. i can report how it feels to have ghost crabs fly across my toes. i can explain the way blubber looks on a monk seal when she is sleepy. and, i am sure that you can relate to what i can tell you about the prison to which i am beholden– the endless doom-scroll.

can you feel my brain rushing at this digital noise? can you smell the salt in my pocket that i will use to purify myself later? i am thinking about revolution. so are you, i’m sure.

a few months ago, Sarah Cucchiara’s essay oh so you're a thought daughter now? made the substack rounds. with a gentle criticism, she provides analysis on the rampant “thought-daughter” aesthetic, opposing intellectualism as a consumer good. she says:

suddenly, reading Joan Didion or Albert Camus means you must be a thought daughter, you have to spend time wallowing in your room, writing in your journal as performance art as if someone will read it someday. Joan Didion would hate this, she would be laughing her way to a new essay, some harsh critique of imitation and the lack of identity…

whether it’s beauty, intelligence, or creativity, there’s an unnamed pressure to maintain some element of desirability. ¹

i’ve never read Joan, but i think we might be very good friends. we do, indeed, have a lack-of-identity epidemic— one that i am learning to call the Aesthetic Problem. and, it is this problem that builds a foundation for modern personal and political failures.

aesthetic perception wields immense power in both ourselves and in the broader culture. it influences white teens to uproot their lives to budget-backpack through Europe– it makes war crimes kawaii. from where i write to you, now, it is the aesthetic demands of paradise that keep tourists funneling, full-bellied and sunburnt, to Hawaiʻi’s sacred sites. this aesthetic drive– the one that also keeps us handcuffed to our phones– aids in the subjugation and exploitation of the world around us. the Aesthetic Problem is profitable. the Aesthetic Problem is personal. the Aesthetic Problem is political.³

created by artist Adam Harvey as his master’s thesis, CV dazzle makeup draws from royal navy camouflage used during World War I. although military forces retired its services for their ships, the makeup has provided significant opportunities for artistic protest. in 2020, three women formed the dazzle club, performing silent walks to protest rampant and unrestricted facial recognition technologies.

what performs well in an art space context, however, the internet is sure to bastardize in reproduction. as the US population becomes more aware of our historical parallels to a certain 1930s Germany, tiktok users are feeling dystopian chic. i know this because my black mirror told me, a day after the inauguration:

we are, indeed, at the turning point of an acutely dangerous situation. the white houses’ constitution is missing. idaho created a legislative petition to threaten marriage rights, likely heading to the supreme court. ICE raids are taking place from New York to California. i am not here to shame young people’s best intentions. however, i am haunted by the gen Z revolution-aesthetic within this video– the non functionality of this makeup in a real life protest– the tutorial format– the Rudyard Kipling poem– the carefully placed glitter tear– the performative algo-speak in the comments section…²

what do we think we are doing here?

it is brazenly clear to me that our Aesthetic Problem– our severe maintenance of desirability– lays a foundation for communal harm.

algorithms rob us of our self-understanding, urging us to trade self expression for self exploitation. no one is safe from this cannibalistic, self-feeding beast who marries our interests to capital gain. we have been thoroughly indoctrinated to value the appearance of engaging with something rather than developing an intimate relationship with it and, within this structure, our internal worlds become the “other”– a secret to ourselves. when the self becomes secret, so do our moral compasses, rendering us unable to connect to our communities in material ways. no matter our good intentions, we feed our own isolation and weaken our ability to take political action.

our interest in liberation as inspired by the Aesthetic Problem is useless. we aren’t ready to punch n*zis or organize– but we sure are ready to make a tiktoks about it. we are becoming a liability, sneering and complacent.

fascism resists the three-dimensional and prizes the homogenous– the aryan– the christian nationalist. those who embolden fascism strengthen aesthetic subcultures that make the world beige– think tradwifery or pepe-the-frog. they close themselves off to anything outside of their comfort and label modern art degeneracy. at this stage in our resistance, the artist and writer will be integral.

but, what help can the artist be if deeply disconnected from the self? it is imperative, then, to resist the urge to serve our algorithm. we must put the phone down and, upon our inevitable return, ingest slow media with perspectives that diversify our worldview. we must also be slow to respond, creating work that displays honesty. we must embrace our three-dimensionality and reject desirability.

i must ask you, dear artist: in the quest of becoming three-dimensional, what kind of stories are you willing to write? are you tortured by the trend cycle? are you unwilling to delve into the nuances of your experience in hopes to appeal to a specific brand? this is a natural inclination in a world– an algorithm– that demands exploitation.

and what of your reading? are you bored by the story about the coffee shop in the midwest? do you avoid reading about the south? what do you know of cornfields? what do you know of beaches? are you ready to read about Hawaiʻi beyond its ocean? do you want to hear about ghost crabs or the blubber of a monk seal? do you want to know about our colonization and— if you do— is that all you want to know about this place? do these things feel trivial to you? what else feels trivial? i must ask these harsh questions– to you– to myself– because, sometimes it feels as if you and i only want to read and write about that girl who cites joan didion and lives in a brownstone.

our politics rely on these answers– so do our futures.

my favorite part of my yard is the dirt beneath our palm tree under two, distinct rocks and a piece of coral. if i wanted to dig, i would land among a love spell planted after a stint with suicidality. i think about that girl– 20 years old and doe eyed– scrambling in the harsh, red mud to bury her sorrow.

i think about how different life was, back then, and so similar too. military aircrafts still boom through my westward sky. lū'au's still begin at sundown. a dozen eggs is still $10. only now, i am inundated with so much information that it makes me a ghost to myself. i wonder if people are interested in stories like that– the ones about black mold growing behind my toilet– the ones about my indigenous grandfather getting too old– the ones about ugly, horrid things.

today, i think i will climb onto the strong branches of our palm tree. i will let her hold me as i look toward the mountain range concealing the north of my island. i will think about the winter waves and the boy whose remains were found thrashing in the water last week. i will pray for him at dusk, and then the dusk tomorrow. i will promise to use my days to become familiar with myself and this paradise. but right now, i am only certain of one thing: paradise it is not.

---

1. sarah’s essay is good, you should definitely read it.

2. i am not disillusioned with the reality that many creating content of this format– that is, the hunger games hopefuls– are white. it’s an important distinction and i wrote a little bit about a similar phenomenon in white women post-election. i could say something righteous in this regard, but, that would be the same essay i’ve already written– a chastisement that deters from a larger, more personal problem.

3. there’s a really cool essay by Ayan Artan that i read after posting called in defense of pretension. Artan makes STELLAR commentary on algorithm and anti-intellectualism that you should check out. its so in-depth and i love what they say about AI, especially.

   ** also! I was made aware that my piece uses the same title as sincerely, morgan. while it was unintentional (i took inspo from a meme and hadn’t read their essay,) i want to make sure i do my part in sharing their work now that i have! their piece is about accessibility and the overconsumption of media. read it!

   *** pps. joan didion actually has a piece about the royal hawaiian hotel/her observations abt hawaii that i have veryyyy mixed feelings about. gotta read it more in depth but idk if we’d be close friends