Real Life Magazine: 2016-2022

This publication was started by Nathan Jurgenson, an American sociologist who was hired by Snapchat out of grad school as a sort of resident theorist. (He was a student of George Ritzer, of "McDonaldization" fame, and applied a similar conceptual framework to digital media, "playbor" etc. Jurgenson also cofounded a conference called Theorizing the Web that in its later years received funding from Snapchat.)

Snapchat provided the funding for Real Life, which has now been discontinued, probably in this context: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/31/technology/snap-layoffs-r...

As a result, the publication is winding down. (Note the past tense on the about page.)

Real Life was one of the few sources of interesting technological critiques and commentary besides Logic, sucks to lose it. Anybody have favorite essays to share? I quite like all of Lauren Collee's pieces, in particular:

https://reallifemag.com/is-it-my-body/

https://reallifemag.com/the-great-offline/

As soon as I saw the announcement about Snapchat I knew Real Life was on borrowed time. What a shame, definitely one of the most interesting tech publications on the internet.

Such a good magazine.

A reminder to avoid as much as possible to depend on tech startups to provide most of your funding. It’s not sustainable and they will cut you off at the first roadblock.