Five Things Friday: Feb. 7, 2025 (Vol. 15)

Hey friends and other human beings! This week, I am back with another edition of Five Things Friday. This is a list of five things that have been buzzing around in my head this week — be they podcasts, books, news articles, hobbies, games, whatever.

This week, I talk about kissing Twitter goodbye, chasing a platform and the quickly shifting media landscape. Thanks, as always, for reading and joining me on the journey!

Without further ado, here are five things for this Friday:

1. I (finally) kissed Twitter goodbye.

And I will always call it Twitter. The land of social media is an ever evolving one and platforms come and go. But this one was hard to give up because I found it so fun for a good while. It was past time to move on however, so I wrote this on the blog as kind of a postmortem on the blue bird app, with some reflections on what it's like to start over on social media.

2. "A reductionist existence"

Speaking of social media, one of my favorite artists, David Wimbish (of David Wimbish & The Collection, formerly The Collection) had some brilliant and devastating things to say about what it was like trying to make beautiful music in the age of social media, and why the band ended.

David Wimbish & The Collection performing at Zanzabar in Louisville. (Chris Hughes)

"You aren't just a brand, you're a tagline, you're a logo, you're a share button," he said of the constantly moving targets on different platforms. He continued, "Why did this break me? Because each change over the past 12 years has worked towards a reductionist existence (emphasis mine). In order to break through, you must find shorter, more direct, more viral-able ways to share who you are. The primary discussion around songwriting becomes, 'will these lyrics make for a good Tiktok trend?', not, 'does this song move people?' I am exhausted of the game."

I think that gets to the heart of the matter pretty well. I'm no artist like David, but I've done my fair bit of chasing a "platform." Heck, this whole blog is on some level a vain attempt to get people to pay attention to what I have to say. I've had that same constant battle of chasing popularity, virality and the like versus creating something I think is beautiful and pleasing to me and true to who I am. Here's to always focusing on "Does this move people?" and "Is it true to me?" rather than all the rest.

By the way, I first saw The Collection over 10 years ago at a festival in North Carolina and loved their music ever since. I was going to write a whole tribute to the band when David announced they were ending/becoming something different, but it just made me sad. I photographed them at that festival for fun, and them playing together instantly became some of my favorite shots. I got to see them one last time in 2023 in Louisville and, again, took photos of them. They are some of my favorites I've ever taken.

3. The quickly shifting media landscape

In another example of how quickly big media outlets are changing their strategy to fit the new Trump administration, I was surprised to see even the New York Times making some changes. If you haven't been keeping score, the LA Times and then the Washington Post broke with tradition and refused to endorse in the presidential race, what some saw as attempts to win over a potential new administration. Now, as reported by Public Notice, ABC News and possibly CBS may go even further to appease the president.

Which brings me back to the Times, where longtime columnist and sometimes lone voice liberal stalwart Paul Krugman decided to leave after 25 years. In his reasons for leaving, he noted the decision to end a newsletter he was running under the umbrella of the Times, and what he described as a change in those editing his column from "very, very lightly edited," to "extremely intrusive."

As a sometimes journalist and regular news consumer, I find the trend very disturbing. As a writer, I also resonate with what he shared with the Columbia Journalism Review about his disdain for the new editing process:

"I approached Mondays and Thursdays with dread and often spent the afternoon in a rage. Patrick (his editor) often — not always — rewrote crucial passages; I would then do a rewrite of his rewrite to restore the original sense, and felt that I was putting more work — certainly more emotional energy — into repairing the damage from his editing than I put into writing the original draft ... the back-and-forth, to my eye, both made my life hell and left the columns flat and colorless."

I don't think I've had the worst experience with editors, but I certainly know the feeling of having someone fiddle with my work so much that I think it's lost its original meaning entirely. So I can empathize.

I also thought he hit the mark in his own retelling of his departure with this prescient remark on the media push toward conflict avoidance:

"Yet what I felt during my final year at the Times was a push toward blandness, toward avoiding saying anything too directly in a way that might get some people (particularly on the right) riled up. I guess my question is, if those are the ground rules, why even bother having an opinion section?"

4. Song of the week: Northern Attitude by Noah Kahan

5. Words of the week:

"There were days of starting all over. We did not give up. We lived. Days of celebration and mourning. Times of quiet and fire, of low storm clouds and skies so blue they stirred up that ached of melancholy that comes with witnessing beauty. Days of simply surviving. But always, there were days of wonder." -Silas House, "Lark Ascending"