A journal entry is worth a thousand pics

should we start using AI to index our riffs?

hello harry,

i was recently cleaning out the stuff under my bed at my parents’ house where i found a bunch of old photos and travel logs and birthday cards and love letters.

it’s easy to focus on the photos. i had funny haircuts and a surprisingly coherent aesthetic.

they do say a picture is worth a thousand words, but honestly? i’d take words over pictures any day.

i found all kinds of writings. a story i wrote in middle school about throwing crumpled up paper into peoples’ hoods. reflections on my eighth grade field trip to malaysia where i describe a meltdown i had over a bunch of leeches and swear i would never go “trekking” again. lots of journal entries, some of which tracked pivotal moments in my life:

my journaling was super sporadic until 2014 when my new friend aaron introduced me to this app called day one. it’s funny to observe what i thought was worth writing down:

i have also kept letters and cards from other people. i think it’s important to observe our friends and let them know our impressions. there are a few writings i actually review from time to time because they make me feel validated and understood.

i really like this testimonies channel on are.na by

Yatú

. he collects screenshots of texts where people say nice things about him. it’s sweet!

i have been trying to figure out how to archive my text messages because they’re rife with jokes and memories. i started a channel with my friends’ jokes as a little experiment.

i wonder what you think of all this? do you keep old writing? i know you save your text messages too.

This makes me think of a few things.

I’d say I share PART of your affinity for Word Nostalgia, not all of it though. I am not super interested in my old journals. I keep them all, but I almost NEVER re-read them. And when I do, my handwriting is so bad I can barely read it. I also am struck by how basic and obvious I sound. I’m out here in 2012 being like “I’m sad and confused about what to do” its like…show don’t tell my man! 

I will say I am right there with you when it comes to archiving my friends' words, and my conversations with them. It makes me think of this Dean Kissick Bar:

“Now our identities reside in our communities, and in the conversations we have with our friends, where we can express ourselves more candidly to an audience that sort of understands.”

This project, of expressing myself to a group of people that sort of understand, is like my number one export to the world. If I could pay someone to index every riff I’ve ever been a part of and like sort them by group chat and year and shit….I would pay millions for that. 

Friend of the psyop Ciara told me that they keep a monthly list of good quotes from their friends, I love this idea.

I’ve got a question though. Most of the time when I think about what i don’t like about the internet, it boils down to Too Much of a Good Thing. Though when it comes to being able to effortlessly find memories…I see no problem…yet….

Is there one I’m not thinking of? Like are we gonna stop remembering things or something? Or like only the wealthy elites will have access to data centers where their memories are stored? idk

I think we could probably use AI to sift through all your texts and emails and index them. Then we could charge other people thousands to do it for them. I could see NMJC becoming a generally pro-riff entity spinning out Riff-Positive Projects (RPPs), the newsletter being one of them. I think if there is anything you and I stand for (though sometimes I falter) it’s riffing.

Regarding our ability to find memories and relive the past ad infinitum - I wonder if that’s why we tend towards nostalgia. Perhaps our generation experiences more nostalgia than generations past simply because our access to memories is unprecedented. 

I recently learned about new research around how looking at old pics of happy times can make you less depressed. But then supposedly the act of taking the photo makes you remember the moment less? I guess that could be the dark side. We record way too much shit, our recall of events is worse, and it’s hard to parse through everything we’ve saved.

Idk though. I think it’s cool and good to record a lot of stuff. And I just learned (from a pretty cool Substack* about note-taking) that Gandhi was a big journal guy. Here’s his take:

Thinking about a diary I feel that it is of priceless value to me. For a person who has dedicated himself to the pursuit of truth, it serves as a means of keeping watch over himself, for such a person is determined to write in it nothing but the truth.

So there u have it. Journaling is how we push back on this new post-truth society.

*This newsletter writer is an English prof that has been researching note-taking for two decades?! So sick… I want to read her book.

If an LLM got a hold of the boys chat it would end up in JAIL!!

That’s actually kind of a funny thing to think about…would you turn your most sacred group chat over to science? I almost certainly wouldn’t. But then if we’re building AI off of the sort of performance we do as people in the world, it’s going to end up very Mid. (Which maybe is good??)

I struggle with note-taking and journaling in general, I always find myself bored by the process. My brain moves faster than my hand, and rather than slow down my brain to match the page, what happens for me is I get a hand cramp. 

It’s funny I have a general aversion to taking lots of pictures. I found the entire “food eats first” vibe of instagrams middle age to be totally perverted. I also always get a little depressed when I see 200 people at a basketball game all with their phones out. 

But when it comes to the logging and safekeeping of moments that happen online, I can’t get enough. And I don’t think I’m alone. Half my photo library is screenshots of texts, old tweets, memes, hinge profiles of girls who I might have met at a party once. If it’s even mildly interesting I’m screenshotting it. I also go to therapy once a week. So maybe those two things combined equals journaling? 

I do think what you are saying about it being some kind of antidote to the whole post-truth of it all is something.

It seems obvious to me that the way we all interact with each other and the internet has made everything seem totally incoherent. Algorithms and National tragedies and social contracts and weird impulses to be loved all mush together and what gets squeezed out is a sense of reality and groundedness. It’s gnarly. but I will say at least technology has made it easier to access personal private nostalgia, because looking back at an especially prescient riff in the boys chat really has a way of making the world stop spinning for a second. 

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Idle Chatter