october 14 tmu
I have been rewatching Community lately. For the most part, the show still hits. If I ever get around to writing that book of essays about television I must remember to write one about the insane series of storylines that closed Season 3 and gave way to the gas leak season (which still had its moments).
Related: I am still slowly making my way through Jessica Helfand's Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media, and Visual Culture which I first mentioned last month. It's a bit of a slog, but not because it's bad. Rather, because it's good. Every time I read a paragraph, I start relating an idea therein to the larger ideas I want to write about.
When you think about it, any mass medium that came of age after the advent and proliferation of the television —— as an object and a product —— is an extension of the idea that television establisheda nd enabled: media made at scale for mass audiences consumed privately, by individuals, at home.
Third places, in this reading, are not growing fewer and farther between as much as first and second places are becoming the same thing. Third places are essential because they are places we occupy without needing to be there. They exist because of volition, not need. Thing is, our devices —— which extend what our televisions once did —— let us take our living rooms with us everywhere we go, and the ubiquity and never-ending quality of the media we consume on those devices ensure we'll never feel the need to put them down. The context collapse was sudden and final.
When people mourn the loss of third places, they're mourning what happened to them: first and second places became the same thing —— the laptop in the coffee shop, the phone in the bar or in the gym —— and then ate the third for good measure.
🌲 gonna
🌼 go
🌱 touch sleep
🌳 grass hard
🌷 now
Be good to yourself.
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