Welcome to IRL
An interview series on the real life of the internet
There was a time when the internet wasn’t real life, a time when we had to “log on” to somewhere that wasn’t where we already were. And to a certain extent, we were right. Our virtual identities had “screen names,” we created our own digital spaces and obsessed over truly deranged customizations. There were things that were true online and things that were true IRL (in real life) and these were not the same things.
Now you’re reading this and you are yourself, at minimum, 36% internet. You love it! Actually, you hate it. You hate how much you think about the stuff on it, but also everything is just potential stuff to put on it (except for smells…for now). Mostly, you don’t think about it at all, because with the way that it makes you feel, makes you buy, makes you do, the internet is now unquestionably real life.
IRL is an interview series about the real life behind, in, and transformed by our favorite online creations. I’ll be talking to the artists, producers, meme machines, archivists, and supervolunteers that fuel the (good) internet about what it’s like to be a real person creating for other real people and what they think about [gestures wildly] all that. We’ll touch on how their craft shapes their interior life, how their creative practice affects their social and communal life, and how their work meets some kind of craving in our real world.
Up first, coming in June: the mystery choreographer known as Eggs Tyrone.
A collective subscription model:
I think everyone should get to read. I also think I should get paid. Everyone can expect 1 interview per month for a minimum of 12 (twelve) months — made possible by those who can pay. Everyone will get June for free — starting in July, paid subscriptions will add up to a collective funding of the interview for that month, using a rate of $500 per interview (this is set as slightly above market for a freelance piece in this market). Once some combination of subscriptions reaches at least $500, that month’s interview will be published for everyone. Paid subscribers get to experience the virtuous satisfaction of being a patron of the arts, the moral alignment of compensating labor, and the warmth of providing a communal good. We all get to write and read about something good.