Friday links! Pushing the medium edition

The cast of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark relishes the thrill of simply being alive.

The cast of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark relishes the simple thrill of being alive.

Certain media are suited to certain stories. When he was torturing future generations with the Poetics, for example, Aristotle realized that plays work best for narratives that are unified in place, time and action. Movies based on plays invariably feel cramped and stultified, using our most agile temporal medium to tell the story of four people walking in and out of a room to argue. Movies are about bus explosions and journeys to Mordor. Movies about interiority, on the other hand, rarely work, whereas novels of consciousness comprise our must vibrant era of literary production. So what kind of story is the internet good at telling? Today is Friday, and we’re still figuring out the form. Won’t you prod at the constraints with me?

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