A trend of creepy men hitting on women for social media content has earned Meta’s AI glasses the moniker “perv glasses.” But they are only one in a long line of tech products used to dehumanize marginalized communities, from deepfake porn to predictive algorithms.
Greetings amigos! Some of you may have caught this live, but I interviewed Giovanni Aloi, a writer and art historian who wrote an excellent book on the philosophies & histories of the lawn.
Early in our country’s history, the lawn was the ultimate symbol of luxury and opulence. It was a practice inherited from our British aristocratic forefathers, who maintained massive fields of perfectly manicured, symmetrical, and sterile lawns which could be used to signal their high status. In a time where land was carefully cultivated to maximize agricultural productivity, feudal lords would flex over their peers by owning an extremely expensive and unproductive patch of grass. The bigger one’s lawn, the more money they had to waste on maintaining it, and presumably, the higher their status.
Aloi's book traces the lawn's history from these early colonial days to modern times, where turf grass now takes up more surface area in the US than any other irrigated crop, including corn & wheat. He shows that the colonial roots of the lawn express themselves in the ways we destroy & dominate nature, transforming thriving ecosystems into sterile green deserts.
I spoke with Giovanni about all of this and more, and I hope you'll enjoy our conversation, which I've cleaned up and polished from the original livestream. www.patreon.com/posts/lawns-art-as-w-157674236?utm…
Uploaded a clip from yesterday's livestream in which I go to town on the creepiest technology of all time. A lil sneak preview of the video essay coming down the pipe. Enjoy (PS this is my second channel, go subscribe!)
2 years ago, I uploaded my first video to this channel. Fun fact: my original channel name was "Ryan's Remarkable Book & Film Reviews." Bit of a mouthful, no? But that's how it started, just a video outlet for what had been a book & film review blog. I cranked out 25 videos that first year of the channel, and I experimented a LOT. Some of them were informal vlog type shit, and most of the essays were under 30 minutes.
In year two of the channel, I pulled back from quantity and focused on research in service of larger, more ambitious theses about technology, art, politics, and culture. The results have been consistently high performance and complete pieces that I'm much more proud of than anything I made in year 1.
Some stats at a glance (last 365 days) 1,027,425 views (up 60% year-over-year) 324 hours watch time (up 341%) +22.5k subscribers (up 32%)
The past two years of running this channel through what has turned out to be a tumultuous period of my life have forced me to reevaluate my career and hone in on more specificity in my politics. It has made me a better, more thoughtful and compassionate person, and led me to be a more active participant in my community.
I can't begin to express how grateful I am to you all for watching, liking, sharing, and providing your thoughtful comments (yes, I do read them). It kind of blows my mind that over a million people have seen my face over the internet. It creeps me out a little, but mostly I think it's cool.
So, more than anything else, thank you.
I thought it would be fun to do a recap of the first two years of the channel, and look ahead to what's coming down the pipe!
You can see the detailed year-by-year breakdown, complete with analytics, lessons learned, and context on where I have been at in my personal life, as well as a lookahead to year 3, on Patreon, available to all subscribers (including FREE subscribers). www.patreon.com/posts/2-years-in-state-156355137?u…
It's quite difficult to grow a Patreon when I'm only uploading every other month, and right now I only have 43 paid subscribers, which is about 0.1% of people who subscribe on YouTube. If I can get this even just to 1% it would be massive for being able to commit more time to the channel and even bring on someone to help research or edit.
I also want to make the Patreon valuable to those of you who are kind enough to support the channel monetarily. So please, let me know what you would like to see out of that community. Here are some things you can expect: - Companion music playlists for each video - ad-free and early video essays - podcast, book & movie recommendations - full video interviews with guests from videos - behind the scenes updates on the documentary I am starting - written versions of scripts for video essays, often weeks before video is out
Anyways, I appreciate all of you and I can't wait to bring you as much as I possibly can in the coming years.
Oh, and btw, I started a second channel, go check it out and subscribe! youtube.com/@hodes4me
Hey folks! I started a second channel. You can see my first video, which is the full interview from my AI companion video. I thought the conversation was fascinating and I already had the video done for Patreon, so why not, right?
Please go subscribe! I will be posting other content over there, like livestream clips, shorter videos about news and tech and such, and interviews.
PS. If you have any suggestions of what to call this thing, I am all ears. I went with "The Story Continues" but I'm not totally in love with that name.
"The lawn is the quintessential manifestation of our anthropocentric selfishness—its monotonous, exclusionary flatness is a testament to the human egoism that is relentlessly impoverishing our world. Let’s reeducate ourselves. Let’s rethink the boundaries and borders, the ins and outs, the now and forever. Let’s free the land. Let’s give every green space the chance to engage in continuous and unpredictable polyamorous encounters and exchanges, shared growth, endless enrichment, and earthly coevolution grounded in compromise, collaboration, and reciprocity. Let’s build good soil, together, so that the earth can begin to think again"
Great (and very skinny) book about the ideologies & histories of the lawn, from our front yards to highway medians to parks and golf courses. Also touches on the original grasslands that covered much of the US, the methods indigenous peoples would use to steward these lands. I will be interviewing the author in the coming weeks.
My next video will be about the rise of Meta AI glasses (aka pervert glasses), and the broader context of wearable tech, mass surveillance, and genAI that they roll into one device. I will be interviewing Chris Gilliard, who coined the term "luxury surveillance," in a few weeks for the video, but for now, enjoy part 1 in written form. open.substack.com/pub/windblowncuriosities/p/how-s…
doing some research for a potential documentary film. This talk is incredible; it's just an hour long rant shitting on modern landscaping and horticulture and the deranged, phony way we go about shaping nature. Love it. This is the guy from @CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt fyi (also a great channel).
The NSFW AI girlfriend platform now wants me to do a dedicated review of their product. Ok!
I think your product is a disgusting, misogynistic piece of garbage designed to prey on lonely men and cater to their desire to feel power. You are everything wrong with the world and a depressing symbol of the time we live in, where insecure men are feeling threatened by the declining patriarchal power structure and lashing out with new and creative methods of dehumanizing women. It's pathetic, and you should reevaluate your life choices that brought you to work for this company.
That'll be $1500, thanks!!
EDIT: This has certainly sparked some discussion! Allow me to elaborate.
This post was first and foremost directed towards the company who created this product, not the men who use them, although I did have some choice words for these users which may have come across as harsh and deriding.
The men who use these products may not be misogynists. They ARE engaging in misogynistic behavior, and that shouldn't be sugar coated. How else do you explain that you can literally make "her" do whatever you want without the ability to say no. That is misogynistic design and the company and the people using it are engaging in misogynistic behavior. But doing a certain thing doesn't define who you are as a person. I've done misogynistic things in the past because I didn't know any better, and more than likely that's what's happening for most users.
However, I think there is a subconscious desire for power that is being very nefariously spoken to here, and that's something deeply engrained in men by our culture. So, I'm not trying to ridicule the users of these products as much as call out how patriarchy expresses itself without our knowing. There is room for empathy, but we also have to acknowledge what these products are really about, which IMO is POWER.
But yes, the company is the 1000% the true predator here.
The Stories We Tell w/ Ryan Hodes
A trend of creepy men hitting on women for social media content has earned Meta’s AI glasses the moniker “perv glasses.” But they are only one in a long line of tech products used to dehumanize marginalized communities, from deepfake porn to predictive algorithms.
Check out part 2 of my 4-part essay on smart glasses over on Substack: windblowncuriosities.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-th…
1 hour ago | [YT] | 25
View 0 replies
The Stories We Tell w/ Ryan Hodes
Greetings amigos! Some of you may have caught this live, but I interviewed Giovanni Aloi, a writer and art historian who wrote an excellent book on the philosophies & histories of the lawn.
Early in our country’s history, the lawn was the ultimate symbol of luxury and opulence. It was a practice inherited from our British aristocratic forefathers, who maintained massive fields of perfectly manicured, symmetrical, and sterile lawns which could be used to signal their high status. In a time where land was carefully cultivated to maximize agricultural productivity, feudal lords would flex over their peers by owning an extremely expensive and unproductive patch of grass. The bigger one’s lawn, the more money they had to waste on maintaining it, and presumably, the higher their status.
Aloi's book traces the lawn's history from these early colonial days to modern times, where turf grass now takes up more surface area in the US than any other irrigated crop, including corn & wheat. He shows that the colonial roots of the lawn express themselves in the ways we destroy & dominate nature, transforming thriving ecosystems into sterile green deserts.
I spoke with Giovanni about all of this and more, and I hope you'll enjoy our conversation, which I've cleaned up and polished from the original livestream.
www.patreon.com/posts/lawns-art-as-w-157674236?utm…
3 days ago | [YT] | 61
View 1 reply
The Stories We Tell w/ Ryan Hodes
How my comments be whenever I mention Patreon
1 week ago | [YT] | 143
View 11 replies
The Stories We Tell w/ Ryan Hodes
Uploaded a clip from yesterday's livestream in which I go to town on the creepiest technology of all time. A lil sneak preview of the video essay coming down the pipe. Enjoy (PS this is my second channel, go subscribe!)
1 week ago | [YT] | 14
View 2 replies
The Stories We Tell w/ Ryan Hodes
State of the channel, 2 years in:
2 years ago, I uploaded my first video to this channel. Fun fact: my original channel name was "Ryan's Remarkable Book & Film Reviews." Bit of a mouthful, no? But that's how it started, just a video outlet for what had been a book & film review blog. I cranked out 25 videos that first year of the channel, and I experimented a LOT. Some of them were informal vlog type shit, and most of the essays were under 30 minutes.
In year two of the channel, I pulled back from quantity and focused on research in service of larger, more ambitious theses about technology, art, politics, and culture. The results have been consistently high performance and complete pieces that I'm much more proud of than anything I made in year 1.
Some stats at a glance (last 365 days)
1,027,425 views (up 60% year-over-year)
324 hours watch time (up 341%)
+22.5k subscribers (up 32%)
The past two years of running this channel through what has turned out to be a tumultuous period of my life have forced me to reevaluate my career and hone in on more specificity in my politics. It has made me a better, more thoughtful and compassionate person, and led me to be a more active participant in my community.
I can't begin to express how grateful I am to you all for watching, liking, sharing, and providing your thoughtful comments (yes, I do read them). It kind of blows my mind that over a million people have seen my face over the internet. It creeps me out a little, but mostly I think it's cool.
So, more than anything else, thank you.
I thought it would be fun to do a recap of the first two years of the channel, and look ahead to what's coming down the pipe!
You can see the detailed year-by-year breakdown, complete with analytics, lessons learned, and context on where I have been at in my personal life, as well as a lookahead to year 3, on Patreon, available to all subscribers (including FREE subscribers).
www.patreon.com/posts/2-years-in-state-156355137?u…
It's quite difficult to grow a Patreon when I'm only uploading every other month, and right now I only have 43 paid subscribers, which is about 0.1% of people who subscribe on YouTube. If I can get this even just to 1% it would be massive for being able to commit more time to the channel and even bring on someone to help research or edit.
I also want to make the Patreon valuable to those of you who are kind enough to support the channel monetarily. So please, let me know what you would like to see out of that community. Here are some things you can expect:
- Companion music playlists for each video
- ad-free and early video essays
- podcast, book & movie recommendations
- full video interviews with guests from videos
- behind the scenes updates on the documentary I am starting
- written versions of scripts for video essays, often weeks before video is out
Anyways, I appreciate all of you and I can't wait to bring you as much as I possibly can in the coming years.
Oh, and btw, I started a second channel, go check it out and subscribe! youtube.com/@hodes4me
2 weeks ago | [YT] | 89
View 2 replies
The Stories We Tell w/ Ryan Hodes
Hey folks! I started a second channel. You can see my first video, which is the full interview from my AI companion video. I thought the conversation was fascinating and I already had the video done for Patreon, so why not, right?
Please go subscribe! I will be posting other content over there, like livestream clips, shorter videos about news and tech and such, and interviews.
PS. If you have any suggestions of what to call this thing, I am all ears. I went with "The Story Continues" but I'm not totally in love with that name.
2 weeks ago | [YT] | 11
View 2 replies
The Stories We Tell w/ Ryan Hodes
"The lawn is the quintessential manifestation of our anthropocentric selfishness—its monotonous, exclusionary flatness is a testament to the human egoism that is relentlessly impoverishing our world. Let’s reeducate ourselves. Let’s rethink the boundaries and borders, the ins and outs, the now and forever. Let’s free the land. Let’s give every green space the chance to engage in continuous and unpredictable polyamorous encounters and exchanges, shared growth, endless enrichment, and earthly coevolution grounded in compromise, collaboration, and reciprocity. Let’s build good soil, together, so that the earth can begin to think again"
Great (and very skinny) book about the ideologies & histories of the lawn, from our front yards to highway medians to parks and golf courses. Also touches on the original grasslands that covered much of the US, the methods indigenous peoples would use to steward these lands. I will be interviewing the author in the coming weeks.
2 weeks ago | [YT] | 172
View 15 replies
The Stories We Tell w/ Ryan Hodes
My next video will be about the rise of Meta AI glasses (aka pervert glasses), and the broader context of wearable tech, mass surveillance, and genAI that they roll into one device. I will be interviewing Chris Gilliard, who coined the term "luxury surveillance," in a few weeks for the video, but for now, enjoy part 1 in written form.
open.substack.com/pub/windblowncuriosities/p/how-s…
3 weeks ago | [YT] | 233
View 9 replies
The Stories We Tell w/ Ryan Hodes
doing some research for a potential documentary film. This talk is incredible; it's just an hour long rant shitting on modern landscaping and horticulture and the deranged, phony way we go about shaping nature. Love it. This is the guy from @CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt fyi (also a great channel).
1 month ago | [YT] | 31
View 10 replies
The Stories We Tell w/ Ryan Hodes
The NSFW AI girlfriend platform now wants me to do a dedicated review of their product. Ok!
I think your product is a disgusting, misogynistic piece of garbage designed to prey on lonely men and cater to their desire to feel power. You are everything wrong with the world and a depressing symbol of the time we live in, where insecure men are feeling threatened by the declining patriarchal power structure and lashing out with new and creative methods of dehumanizing women. It's pathetic, and you should reevaluate your life choices that brought you to work for this company.
That'll be $1500, thanks!!
EDIT: This has certainly sparked some discussion! Allow me to elaborate.
This post was first and foremost directed towards the company who created this product, not the men who use them, although I did have some choice words for these users which may have come across as harsh and deriding.
The men who use these products may not be misogynists. They ARE engaging in misogynistic behavior, and that shouldn't be sugar coated. How else do you explain that you can literally make "her" do whatever you want without the ability to say no. That is misogynistic design and the company and the people using it are engaging in misogynistic behavior. But doing a certain thing doesn't define who you are as a person. I've done misogynistic things in the past because I didn't know any better, and more than likely that's what's happening for most users.
However, I think there is a subconscious desire for power that is being very nefariously spoken to here, and that's something deeply engrained in men by our culture. So, I'm not trying to ridicule the users of these products as much as call out how patriarchy expresses itself without our knowing. There is room for empathy, but we also have to acknowledge what these products are really about, which IMO is POWER.
But yes, the company is the 1000% the true predator here.
1 month ago (edited) | [YT] | 271
View 71 replies
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