EP 476: Cult Value

If a chatbot writes your novel, did you really complete NaNoWriMo?

Two niche internet panics caught my eye over the last couple of weeks: a bungled AI policy by the organization that promotes National Novel Writing Month and a viral story about people hiring Strava surrogates to run for them so they can claim the kudos. And those two stories got me thinking about the ways that we delegate away the intrinsic value of other activities.

So with the help of a 1935 essay by Walter Benjamin, let's unpack the cult value of novel writing, running, and social media.

Footnotes:

• "NaNoWriMo Says Condemning AI is 'Classist and Ableist'" via 404 Media
• "Some Thoughts on NaNoWriMo" by Sarah Gailey
• Channel News Asia on the Indonesian Strava jockey trend
• "People are paying 'Strava mules' to do their runs for them, but why?" via Women's Health
• Velljko's Strava mule confession on TikTok
• Leigh Stein on the internet's difficult with satire on TikTok
• "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" by Walter Benjamin
• "Unpacking the Attention Fetish" on What Works
• "In Defense of Inefficiency" on What Works
• "Why AI Isn't Going to Make Art" by Ted Chiang via The New Yorker

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What is What Works?

"Work" is broken. We're overcommitted, underutilized, and out of whack. But it doesn't have to be this way. What Works is a podcast about rethinking work, business, and leadership as we navigate the 21st-century economy. When you're an entrepreneur, independent worker, or employee who doesn't want to lose yourself to the whims of late-stage capitalism, this show is for you. Host Tara McMullin covers money, management, culture, media, philosophy, and more to figure out what's working (and what's not) today. Tara offers a distinctly interdisciplinary approach to deep-dive analysis of how we work and how work shapes us.