Tag Archives: YouTube

Best TV (and YT) I Streamed in 2023

1. How to with John Wilson (Season 3)

This continues to be one of the most uniquely brilliant shows on television. It blows my mind how John Wilson is even able to create this show, what his process must be, constantly filming his daily life and somehow editing it all into something cohesive and interesting. There is nothing else like it on TV. It’s almost like an entire show built around synchronicity. He follows serendipity wherever it takes him, around New York City and the entire country. He finds the weirdest people, and like Nathan Fielder, isn’t afraid to get super awkward. But the show is also quite heartfelt at times. Sadly, this is the final season, but I will eagerly watch whatever John Wilson does next.

2. Succession

I wrote about all four seasons of Succession here (and a fictional fifth season here).

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E Nihilus Infinitum: Social Media and U.S. Fiction

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In “E Unibus Pluram: Television and US Fiction,” David Foster Wallace’s brilliant 1990 essay¹, he hypothesized that fiction writers (like himself and myself) are natural oglers or people-watchers. Writers used to have to observe people in the real world, in public, to get the material for their fiction. But fiction writers (like him and me) are often self-conscious types with social anxiety, which was why television was such a godsend for people like him. With TV, self-conscious writers could ogle and people-watch from the comfort of their own homes without the other people seeing them. In this sense, DFW argued, television is a form of voyeurism.

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Recommendation Algorithms Rule Your Life

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Cultural critics used to be essential curators of music, movies, books, and art. When there were only a couple of newspapers or radio stations or TV stations, the select few professional critics had enormous power in telling the public which art they should pay attention to. Then came the internet and everything changed. With blogs, message boards, and podcasts, anybody could become a critic. Both the creation and critique of art became more democratic. Traditional critics became less important. People preferred to take recommendations from like-minded people in their specific cultural niche. This gave real cultural power to bloggers and amateur critics on the internet who developed a following. Continue reading →