I sometimes use Wikipedia to fill in gaps in my historical understanding of genres or the interrelationships between bands/producers/studios/genres/etc. Because so much of the value of Wikipedia is in the links and lists of links (almost moreso than the actual content in the page), I find my exploration is less predetermined by simple popularity/centrality of a particular page or cluster of pages. And yet... you're still stuck in someone else's garden, and you won't find many local/rare materials. For the rarer stuff, I have used similar methods on discogs.
May 2, 2024
Related Recs
It's far too easy for me to burn a few hours digging through Wikipedia hyperlinks and trawling through yards of text. It's a very fun way to gain cursory knowledge about possibly obscure topics, and you can find some pretty bizarre stuff if you know where to look.
Nov 29, 2024
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required reading for listening time
Sep 24, 2024
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hear me out
the wikipedia app has a home screen where you can see what the top articles are in a given day. unlike “trending” algorithms on social media the wikipedia top articles are just straightforwardly about “how many people are pulling up this article” today.
i love this because actually pulling up a wikipedia article to read something is in many ways more significant than just sending a tweet or watching a video or whatever, and as such stats on what wikipedia articles are trending gives a more authentic view of what “the culture” is actually thinking.
sometimes the top articles are straightforward (today it’s rfk jr and kamala harris etc lol), but sometimes it’s a huge curveball, and piecing together the reasons why articles are trending (and sometimes why trending articles that seem unrelated actually are) is always very fun and a much more stimulating way to engage with information than just a straightforward feed. highly recommend
Aug 25, 2024
Top Recs from @fetadata
I know slavoj zizek is a fucking loser now, but his movie A Pervert's Guide to Ideology was the first piece of media that began to rub away the sheen/shellac of pretense that the world operates smoothly. It was my first time really engaging with a Marxian analysis and sitting with it. I was in high school, and it set me up to care about critical theory. From this movie, I'd read Mark Fisher's really quick book "Capitalist Realism: is there no alternative?" Fisher grounds a lot of his theory in culture/media in a very similar way to Zizek.
After that, I'd follow recommendations made by others in the thread!
Jun 18, 2024
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1. Scroll the "everyone" feed (almost completely ignore that home/friends page)
2. Like gratuitously
3. Follow people who post things you like
4. I try to be brave and comment when feeling moved
I don't search or look for anything in particular, personally, unless I'm about to post something and curious if others have done so already. Just let the river float by and enjoy the ride
Feb 8, 2025
Mar 27, 2025