Selected Journalism

This section is outdated; for most of my recent writing, see my author archive at The New Yorker.

 

FEATURES

— The Pandemic Countryside Boom, on the demand for quarantine real estate (New Yorker, 2020)

— Architecture & Pandemic, on COVID-19’s impact on our spaces (New Yorker, 2020)

— Did the Internet Kill Monoculture?, on algorithmic culture and social experience (Vox, 2019)

— My Own Private Iceland, on overtourism and the search for authenticity (Vox, 2019)

— Group Therapy for the End of the World, on a climate-change retreat in rural Sweden (Garage Magazine, 2018)

— The World Is Your Office, on digital nomads and the startup Roam (NYT Magazine, 2018)

— The Rise of Left Media, on Current Affairs magazine and leftist publications (The Ringer, 2017)

— Future Agency, on design studios that imagine and create futuristic experiences (The Verge, 2017)

— Living on a Prayer, on defunct churches being converted into hipster condos (Curbed, 2016)

— The Library of Last Resort, on the Library of Congress’s failure to adapt to the internet (n+1, 2016)

— Utopia, on a reality TV show that tried to create a perfect society (Matter, 2014)

— Wow This Is Doge, on finding the birth of an internet meme (The Verge, 2013)

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ESSAYS

— Notes on Vibe, on TikTok and the capturing of mundane poetic moments (New Yorker, 2021)

— Culture of Negation, on our pandemic-era pursuit of feeling nothing (NYT Magazine, 2021)

— The Rise of Ambient TV, on ignorable but interesting streaming shows (New Yorker, 2020)

— How Do You Describe TikTok?, on the platform’s automated feed of culture (newsletter, 2020)

— The Art World’s Travel Addiction, on cosmopolitanism and climate change (Frieze, 2019)

— Being in Nothingness, on Ikebana and Existentialism in 1950s Japan (Harper’s, 2019)

— In the Shadow of the CMS, on media companies selling their own software (The Nation, 2019)

— Style Is an Algorithm, on taste and technology (Vox, 2018)

— Crypto-Luxury, on digital currencies as the latest high-end consumer good (Garage, 2018)

— A Japanese Philosopher in Pre-War Paris, on Kuki Shuzo (Affidavit, 2017)

— The Grays of Our Lives, on the aesthetics of gray clothing (Racked, 2017)

— Reign, Supreme, on the streetwear brand and cultural meme (Racked, 2017)

— Playing House, on Airbnb and fantasy lives (Curbed, 2016)

— Welcome to AirSpace, on the generic spaces and places created by digital technology (The Verge, 2016)

— The Oppressive Gospel of Minimalism, on the trendy misuse of the word (NYT Magazine, 2016)

— The Design of Fake News, on the ways Google and Facebook disguise shoddy websites (The Verge, 2016)

— Right Now, Forever, on the eternal presentness of 21st-century art (Hazlitt, 2015)

— Babes at the Museum, on my life in figure drawing (Adult, 2014)

— The Afterlife of Memes, on Doge and the strange persistence of virtual fame (Matter, 2014)

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AUDIO INTERVIEWS

— Longform

— David Zwirner Podcast

— The Digital Human (BBC)

— North Star

— On Point

PROFILES

— Beeple Broke the Art World, on Mike Winkelmann and the NFT market (New Yorker, 2021)

— The Decisive Moment, on Artforum and David Velasco (Columbia Journalism Review, 2019)

— All-Day Cafes, on restaurant designers The MP Shift (T magazine, 2018)

— Be Happy with Less, on The Minimalists bloggers and podcasters (The Cut, 2017)

— Startup Investing for Sport & Profit, on the VC investor Jeff Jordan (The Ringer, 2017)

— New York’s Renaissance Man, on Julian Schnabel (Port magazine, 2017)

— The Last Lifestyle Magazine, on Kinfolk and Nathan Williams (Racked, 2016)

— Tomi Lahren Has Some Thoughts, on the far-right pundit and social media personality (The Ringer, 2016)

— Joshua Cohen Is Not Online, on the novelist’s exploration of tech (Rolling Stone, 2015)

— Uber for Janitors, on Managed by Q, whose contract cleaners have employee rights (Bloomberg, 2015)

— The Apartment-Sharing Economy, on the coliving startup Common (Bloomberg, 2015)

— Coworking & Rock Climbing, on Brooklyn Boulder’s definition of work-life balance (Bloomberg, 2015)

* * *

REVIEWS

— The Home Edit, Netflix’s reality show about plastic boxes (New Yorker, 2020)

— Donald Judd, on the Museum of Modern Art’s Judd retrospective (New Republic, 2020)

— Condé Nast, on the man who provided a model for the magazine industry, for better or worse (The New Republic, 2019)

— Air Mail, on Graydon Carter’s email newsletter venture (The Nation, 2019)

— George Trow & Social Media, on how the writer’s criticism relates to the internet (The Nation, 2019)

— The Tale of Genji, on an exhibition of art inspired by the novel at the Metropolitan (The New Republic, 2019)

— Tidying Up, on Marie’s Kondo’s Netflix reality show about cleaning house (The New Republic, 2019)

— The Brand Builder, on the architect Bjarke Ingels (The New Republic, 2018)

— Nowhere Mag, on Monocle (The New Republic, 2017)

— Dronestagrams, on a book of photography taken using drones (The New Republic, 2017)

* * *

MISC. COMMENTARY

— New American Maximalism, on Drake and Gigi Hadid’s elaborate interiors (New Yorker, 2020)

— Mimetic Protest Murals, on D.C.’s Black Lives Matter public art piece (New Yorker, 2020)

— The Designification of Healthcare, on the aesthetics of medical start-up branding (Metropolis, 2019)

— Engineering the End of Fashion, on LOT2046 and fashion without choice (Ssense, 2018)

— Conversation Pits Make a Comeback, on furniture and socializing (Curbed, 2017)

— Deconstructing Selfies, on the painter Matthew Miller (Hazlitt, 2014)

* * *

CONVERSATIONS

— Patrick Li (Ssense, 2019)

— Geoff Dyer (Hazlitt, 2016)

— Edmund de Waal (Hazlitt, 2015)