An ad for YLighting, from the January 2010 issue of Zink Magazine
There’s no doubt about it. A significant-objects meme has emerged in US culture, recently. I’m not just talking about Orhan Pamuk’s museum. Over at Fast Company, William Bostwick writes: “Maybe it’s the recession (it’s always the recession), but we seem to be going through a phase of self-analysis-through-stuff.” Here’s an ad for YLighting, from the current issue of the magazine Zink. Readers, let us know whenever you spot something like this!
Joshua Glenn is an editor, publisher, and a freelance writer and semiologist. He does business as KING MIXER, LLC.
He's cofounder of the websites
HiLobrow,
Significant Objects, and
Semionaut; and cofounder of
HiLoBooks, which will reissue six Radium Age sci fi novels in 2012. In 2011, he produced and co-designed the
iPhone app KER-PUNCH. He's coauthored and co-edited
Taking Things Seriously,
The Idler's Glossary,
The Wage Slave's Glossary, the story collection
Significant Objects (forthcoming from Fantagraphics), and Unbored, a kids' field guide to life forthcoming from Bloomsbury.
In the '00s, Glenn was an associate editor and columnist at the
Boston Globe's IDEAS section; he also started the IDEAS blog
Brainiac. He has written for
Slate,
n+1,
Cabinet,
io9,
The Baffler,
Feed, and
The Idler.
In the '90s, Glenn published the seminal intellectual zine
Hermenaut; served as editorial director and co-producer of the pioneering DIY and online social networking website Tripod.com; and was an editor at the magazine
Utne Reader.
Glenn manages the
Hermenautic Circle, a secretive online community. He was born and raised in Boston, where he lives with his wife and sons.
Click here for more info.
Yeah, those ads are perfect examples! Another couple I’ve been thinking of lately are the “What’s in my Bag”/”What’s in my Drawer” Flickr photogroups or, kind of, the popularity of a site like The Selby.
Yes, the What’s in My Bag flickr groups are fascinating. I spent an entire day, not long ago, just searching that group for different brands of hand sanitizer — comparing and contrasting. A pseudo-anthropologist’s dream come true, really. I don’t know The Selby — will have to check it out now. And then there’s Leanne Shapton’s “Important Artifacts,” a book in which SO contributor Sheila Heti features prominently… What else, readers?
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