Checkpoints

Metadata

• Author: Robin Sloan
• Full Title: Checkpoints
• Category:#articles
• URL: https://www.robinsloan.com/lab/checkpoints/

Highlights

• I was chatting about these videos with a few internet acquaintances, and someone proposed (I’m paraphrasing) that it is precisely the inconvenience of the system that makes the activity appealing. You can’t “subscribe” to anyone’s check­points; you can’t search through them; you can hardly even sort them! So, the baseline expe­ri­ence is to see a check­point once, and never again. There is, perhaps, safety in that; an invitation. (View Highlight)
• Without any of the tradi­tional publicity mechanisms, every­thing depends on “foot traffic”. You could post an unsearchable, unsortable check­point on a custom website … and no one would ever read it. Attaching it to a YouTube video — even an obscure one — feels, perhaps, like writing a message on a wall in a crowded city. You are basically assured that, eventually, someone will pass by and read it; you are likewise assured that you won’t know who they are, nor they you. (View Highlight)
• So! If I had to summarize, I’d say we are looking at an arch­i­pelago of social spaces where some “missing” features have created pleasant lacunae — their very absence supporting something new and interesting. Tell that to the product managers. (View Highlight)
• Checkpoints taken one at a time are nothing special: artless reports of 21st-century life. For me, it’s the mutual agreement that’s interesting, and the very palpable “places”, the magic circles, these commenters have created together. (View Highlight)
• A while back, in an email to a friend, I wrote:

  Honestly, about once a month, I feel it rising again: the cold certainty that I am, eventually, going to have to program my own mini micro social platform, because every­thing that already exists bums me out. But it’s interesting: the appeal of these checkpoint videos is precisely the fact that they are NOT designed. This subcul­ture has repur­posed a plot of unloved YouTube real estate and totally turned it around, charged it up with emotional energy, all without changing a single line of JavaScript or CSS. So, maybe the deep lesson of the check­point isn’t “make it like this!” but “don’t MAKE it at all”. (View Highlight)

• Sometimes when I want to listen to a song that really hits home, I’ll go to YouTube instead of Spotify, just to scroll through the comments and expe­ri­ence some sort of communion with everyone else who resonated with the song. It feels like entering a room where we are all listening together. Videos like these feel like a refuge, but I sometimes wonder if they would work quite the same way in an envi­ron­ment where there isn’t a torrent of stuff to seek refuge from. The algorithm that makes the white water rapids is the same one that serves up these eddies. If YouTube as a platform is a river, what would a pond be? (View Highlight)

• There’s something really beautiful not just in the check­point itself but in the ponder­ings it prompts: “Where am I at now? Where do I want to be? Is this the beginning of something new and I don’t even know it yet?” And so there is also something beautiful in that cama­raderie of thought. The thought that prompts the thought, and so on. (View Highlight)

New highlights added July 29, 2023 at 9:38 PM

• So! If I had to summarize, I’d say we are looking at an archipelago of social spaces where some “missing” features have created pleasant lacunae — their very absence supporting something new and interesting. Tell that to the product managers. (View Highlight)
• Whenever I think about social infrastructure related to the Society of the Double Dagger, I think about tapping into the experience, erudition, and sensitivity of the group of people who receive these emails. Like: I am able to ask questions of this group, and it’s an enormous asset; a privelege. It might be cool if the group could do the same! (View Highlight)

---

title: “Checkpoints” author: “Robin Sloan” url: ”https://www.robinsloan.com/lab/checkpoints/” date: 2023-12-19 source: reader tags: media/articles

Checkpoints

Metadata

• Author: Robin Sloan
• Full Title: Checkpoints
• Category:#articles
• URL: https://www.robinsloan.com/lab/checkpoints/

Highlights

• I was chatting about these videos with a few internet acquaintances, and someone proposed (I’m paraphrasing) that it is precisely the inconvenience of the system that makes the activity appealing. You can’t “subscribe” to anyone’s check­points; you can’t search through them; you can hardly even sort them! So, the baseline expe­ri­ence is to see a check­point once, and never again. There is, perhaps, safety in that; an invitation. (View Highlight)
• Without any of the tradi­tional publicity mechanisms, every­thing depends on “foot traffic”. You could post an unsearchable, unsortable check­point on a custom website … and no one would ever read it. Attaching it to a YouTube video — even an obscure one — feels, perhaps, like writing a message on a wall in a crowded city. You are basically assured that, eventually, someone will pass by and read it; you are likewise assured that you won’t know who they are, nor they you. (View Highlight)
• So! If I had to summarize, I’d say we are looking at an arch­i­pelago of social spaces where some “missing” features have created pleasant lacunae — their very absence supporting something new and interesting. Tell that to the product managers. (View Highlight)
• Checkpoints taken one at a time are nothing special: artless reports of 21st-century life. For me, it’s the mutual agreement that’s interesting, and the very palpable “places”, the magic circles, these commenters have created together. (View Highlight)
• So! If I had to summarize, I’d say we are looking at an archipelago of social spaces where some “missing” features have created pleasant lacunae — their very absence supporting something new and interesting. Tell that to the product managers. (View Highlight)
• A while back, in an email to a friend, I wrote:

  Honestly, about once a month, I feel it rising again: the cold certainty that I am, eventually, going to have to program my own mini micro social platform, because every­thing that already exists bums me out. But it’s interesting: the appeal of these checkpoint videos is precisely the fact that they are NOT designed. This subcul­ture has repur­posed a plot of unloved YouTube real estate and totally turned it around, charged it up with emotional energy, all without changing a single line of JavaScript or CSS. So, maybe the deep lesson of the check­point isn’t “make it like this!” but “don’t MAKE it at all”. (View Highlight)

• Whenever I think about social infrastructure related to the Society of the Double Dagger, I think about tapping into the experience, erudition, and sensitivity of the group of people who receive these emails. Like: I am able to ask questions of this group, and it’s an enormous asset; a privelege. It might be cool if the group could do the same! (View Highlight)

• Sometimes when I want to listen to a song that really hits home, I’ll go to YouTube instead of Spotify, just to scroll through the comments and expe­ri­ence some sort of communion with everyone else who resonated with the song. It feels like entering a room where we are all listening together. Videos like these feel like a refuge, but I sometimes wonder if they would work quite the same way in an envi­ron­ment where there isn’t a torrent of stuff to seek refuge from. The algorithm that makes the white water rapids is the same one that serves up these eddies. If YouTube as a platform is a river, what would a pond be? (View Highlight)

• There’s something really beautiful not just in the check­point itself but in the ponder­ings it prompts: “Where am I at now? Where do I want to be? Is this the beginning of something new and I don’t even know it yet?” And so there is also something beautiful in that cama­raderie of thought. The thought that prompts the thought, and so on. (View Highlight)