Show Notes

• 
  Kyle Chayka, author of Filter World: How Algorithms Flattened Culture.


• 
  Ezra Klein’s Podcast: An interview with Kyle Chayka.


• 
  The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron.


• Milk Magazine


• How to Maintain an Effective Pinterest Board


• 
  Bowling Alone, by Robert D. Putnam


• 
  Design Your Wardrobe: Our popular course helps you plan the sewing projects you'll love to wear.


• 
  Style Workshop: This hands-on workshop helps you define your core style. It's FREE for Seamwork members and just $10 if you aren't a member.


• 
  Podcast listeners get half off an unlimited Seamwork membership when you use this link, plus you get to keep that price as long as you’re a member!


• Tell us your idea for the next icebreakers for makers!

Podcast Transcript

Sarai
I'm Sarai.

Haley
And I'm Haley.

Sarai
And this is Seamwork Radio. Welcome back to Seamwork Radio, where we share practical ideas for building a creative process so you can sew with intention and joy. Today, we're talking about how to sew outside the algorithm.

We're going to cover how social media algorithms are creating cultural uniformity and how you can find ways to discover your own unique taste when there is this culture of sameness.

All right, so today we're talking about algorithms, and our icebreaker today, this is a fun one, is there something that you can't escape on the algorithms right now, Haley?
Haley
I feel like there's always something that's plaguing me on social media.

Sarai
Me too.

Haley
Right now, I'm nine months pregnant, so I feel like the only content I see paid or just otherwise is everything having to do with babies and pregnancy, which is—sometimes it's cute and great, and sometimes it feels like, well, I'm also more three-dimensional than procreation.

Sarai
Isn’t it funny how that happens? Even when my sister was having a baby and I was looking at baby stuff a lot, and baby knitting patterns, and just buying baby gifts and things.

I mean, I was just constantly being served baby stuff. Baby, baby, baby. I feel like there's these moments in your life. It's not just when you have a baby, but I think there's moments where you're very susceptible to marketing.

And marketing people know this.

And I think that having a baby is one of them where they're like, oh, they're...

Sarai
Well, you do need to buy a lot of stuff.
Haley
You need to buy a lot of stuff. And it's also this whole new thing that you don't know what you're walking into. And maybe this product will change your life if you just give us $200. It might change your life. Luckily, this is my second kid, so I don't feel like super victim to it.

Sarai
It's the same thing that we were saying when we got a dog, which I'm not comparing a baby to a dog, but I am. But it's an event horizon if you don't have one. Like, what's going to happen? When we adopted our dog, we bought so much stuff, and at that time, I was seeing a lot of dog stuff everywhere.

Haley
And what percentage of it do you use? That's always the question with this stuff.

Sarai
Yeah. Well, most of it we ended up using, but what does she like? As far as toys go, we've discovered that she destroys stuffy toys, and we needed the tougher toys.

Haley
The same thing with baby bottles. Don't go all in on one brand. You don't know. You don't know what they're going to like. That's a whole other human. That's a whole other dog, and you don't know their preferences.

Sarai
I bought my niece Melag, which is a Danish company that makes these really cute little toys, little stuffed mice and things. I bought her a couple stuffed mice. Her birthday is coming up, so I've been shopping for some accessories to go with the mice because they have doll houses and furniture and all kinds of cool stuff. I'm being served a lot of that right now. T

I'm in the Melag big universe right now. So also kid stuff.

The thing that came to mind for me was Spotify and how I get served the same songs over and over again. Mostly songs that I like because Spotify knows I like them. So I just get played the same stuff over and over, and it really prevents me from breaking out of my musical rut sometimes.

Haley
I find that, too. And even a song that I really like will show on a suggested playlist that I'm like, this doesn't even belong here.

Sarai
You just know I like it. That happens to me a lot. Spotify also plays The Doors to me a lot because I listen to a lot of music from the '60s and '70s, and I mean, The Doors are okay, I guess.

I'm not really a big Doors fan, but Spotify is pretty convinced that I should be listening to The Doors.

Haley
That's how Spotify feels about the eagles in me.

Sarai
Oh, that's worse.

Haley
No shade. It's just not my jam.

But I always have to go in and actively dislike it or hide this song or something because I'm like, please don't.

Sarai
Yeah. The thing about The Eagles is a lot of their songs are such earworms, too.

Haley
I'm sure I've talked about this before because it's like my bugaboo. But the eagles, it's everywhere. It's like grocery store everywhere. Sometimes I'll be at the grocery store and I'm like, What is grating on me right now?

And I'll realize, why am I I'm so angry? I'm just clenching the handle bar of the grocery cart, and I'm like, oh, The Eagles are on.

I don't know why it's so grating to my spirit. But I think we all have things like that.

Sarai
I hear a lot of the same music on Spotify, and I think that gets to what we're talking about today, which is that the algorithms know your taste or what you already like, and will just serve you more and more of that.

It can be hard to discover what is really true to you in that environment.

We're going to be talking about that today. But before we get to that, if you have an icebreaker for a future episode, if you're a Seamwork member, you can leave it at Seamwork.com/go/icebreaker. If you have a question, you can put it there, and we'll probably use it on a future episode.
All right, so let's talk about the inspiration behind today's episode. We both listened to this episode of the Ezra Klein podcast that came out, I think it came out in January or February. We'll link to it in the show notes.

But in this episode, he interviewed Kyle Chakya, who is the author of Filter World: How Algorithms Flattened Culture, which I haven't read the book, but it sounds super interesting.

The interview was terrific. I highly recommend listening to that episode if you haven't heard it on the Ezra Klein podcast already. Again, we'll link to that.

But there were a lot of really interesting discussions that came out of this interview, and so we wanted to touch on some of the issues today and how they might affect your own style, your own taste, and the way that you approach sewing.

I know a lot of us really use social media and Pinterest just as a form of entertainment, and it's a mindless form of entertainment. It can be really easy just to go down a scroll hole and just spend a lot of time scrolling and being exposed to these images that are really being fed to you by algorithms.

If that's the only input that your brain is really receiving for inspiration, you can get stuck in this very algorithm-mediated loop. Really, what it boils down to is finding ways to really actively cultivate your own taste by seeking out what makes you an individual rather than only letting this stuff find you.

That can be hard to do. How do you do that when you're being spoon-fed this sameness via algorithms all day long?

We're going to talk about that today and how you can maybe break out of scroll culture a little bit and really use that to discover your own taste, which is the title of that, Ezra Klein podcast interview, How to Discover Your Own Taste.

I think that's really what it boils down to, is finding what you personally resonate with.

That's something we talk a lot about here at Seamwork, so I'm really excited to dig into this. What's your favorite fashion-related thing to mindlessly scroll, Haley?

Haley
I like to look at runway shows a lot. It's very seasonal, though. I mean, it feels like they're pretty much constantly happening, and there's so many, so there's a lot of content to scroll through. But I love going on the Vogue website and scrolling through those.

Also, it's a scrolling habit that I don't feel super bad about. I'm like, It's my job. It's my job to know. So that's one of my favorite things to mindlessly scroll right now.

I do, on occasion, go down a forum, a Reddit rabbit hole. I'm not an active participant, but I do love reading a thread, just a really intense thread. Why? That gives me so much joy, I don't I know.

It's not even joy. It's just titillating in a weird way.

Sarai
Yeah, I had to uninstall Reddit from my phone and my iPad, actually. I only look at it on the internet browser because it's a terrible experience. If it's a bad experience, I won't look at it. No, because I really like Reddit, but I was just scrolling and looking at dog forums. I don't really need to spend that much time looking at pictures of dogs.

I think it's interesting that you said runway shows because I feel like that's something that's not algorithm-mediated. So that's interesting.

Haley
No, but they make it easy enough that I could. That it gives me the same experience as scrolling, or I can just go down the list of designers alphabetically. Click, slideshow. Click, slide show…

Sarai
But I think that's cool because it's... And we'll get into this more, but an alternative to just looking at what you're being fed is actually going to the source like that of the inspiration.

I think for me, Pinterest is definitely my rabbit hole. One thing I had to do is stop using it while I'm working out because when I work out in between sets, I have some time to just relax for a minute. I would pull up Pinterest, and start looking at recipes or then looking at clothes. Then I would find 5, 10 minutes would go by. My workouts were taking so long because I would get sucked into these little rabbit holes. I had to stop using Pinterest while in my home gym.

It was too addictive. I think that's really sad that it had to come to that. Same thing with uninstalling Reddit from my phone. It's just so addictive to keep scrolling and keep looking at this stuff.

Haley
And the thing with Pinterest and Instagram and TikTok, it's a collection of all the many things that they have identified you as being interested in.

So it's dogs, it's recipes, it's clothing, it's all of that stuff.

And I feel like it's this open range to let your mind grab on to whatever it's really into that day and then go down that scroll hole.

Sarai
Yeah, I They have us figured out, and I think that's a big part of the problem.

Haley
How did you used to collect inspiration before the days of social media?

Sarai
That's interesting. I think there were a wider variety of ways before, although I'm really trying to go back to that, and we're going to talk about this more, but incorporate more of those things.

But magazines, I used to love to pull things from magazines. Blogs were a big source of inspiration. I've always been very into vintage fashion, still really am inspired by vintage fashion. So that was always a big influence.

Even looking at my own collection of sewing patterns, looking at garments from the past, like historical photos, museum websites, all that stuff I would collect together. And even physical things, color palettes, pieces of fabric, just collecting all of that stuff together to create a mood or vision or an idea.

Whereas now I think it's just so much easier, and I mean that in a bad way, not necessarily a good way, to create a mood based on... You can just go to Pinterest, and you can click on something and it'll show you a bunch of other similar stuff.

That can be helpful sometimes. But I think when you're in the early stages of a project and when you're in that more creative, free-flowing stage of a project before you're really narrowing in the details, it can really just narrow your mind too much, in my opinion.

What about you? What did you do before?

Haley
I was definitely very into magazines, niche magazines. I love going to a store or stand that had a bunch of international magazines and things like that.

I always really liked reference books, not just fashion, but various art history or things like that. I really liked.

I think the other thing was was the way we socialized was different, and I felt like I was socializing offline. It was also the period in my life that I was in at that time, in my early 20s. That's a time that naturally, I think you just are out in the world more. But I felt like I was seeking out first-hand experiences and meeting different people and learning about them and their influences and their perspectives.

That was a huge source of inspiration, especially when you're first out on your own in the world and suddenly exposed to all of these new things.

So part of that was just the time period in my life that I was in, but I do think it's really different now, because of social media. And that was, I mean, really just first-hand experiences was It's probably the most influential thing for me. Going to shows and talking to people and galleries and all of that stuff.

Sarai
Yeah. And vintage stores and seeing things in person, I think, is a very different experience. I used to keep a little sketchbook with me, and if I saw an interesting detail on a dress, I would jot it down and sketch it.

That's something that I really feel like going back to these days and have been trying actively to back to. I was really incorporating more of that real-life experience into all of my creative processes for everything I do.

Haley
Yeah. I love that. Tell me about how your original process has evolved for you in recent years, and what does it look like now?

Sarai
I think there was a period where, like I said, it just became so easy to find stuff online and be served stuff that I feel like that did take over for a while.

But nowadays, I'm really trying to think a lot more about creativity in general.

I think what's important about it is a couple of things. I think collecting inspiration all the time is really important to me. That means when I go for a walk, taking pictures when I go for a walk, noticing things more, even setting up little challenges for myself. Collecting all of that stuff, doing something with it, and then processing it in some way. I feel like that's something that I'm really trying to be very mindful of.

It is stuff like just going for a walk and taking pictures, but also actively looking for inspiration in places that I normally wouldn't look. I think Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way, she talks about artist dates, this concept of the artist date, where I think it's a week, if I remember correctly, she advises you to just take yourself on a date and do something that's inspiring to you. I think having a process like that or a ritual like that is really important to me now.

I think the other part of it, in addition to collecting stuff, is just doing interesting things and making sure that my life is interesting so that I have things to think about and things to share, versus sitting in front of your phone all day all evening and not really engaging with the world.

I think it's very easy, and I don't mean that to sound judgmental because I think we all are susceptible to that. I think there's really big forces making us susceptible to that.

I'm really trying to break out of that these days. What about you?

Haley
Yeah, I relate to a lot of the things that you're saying. I think that in the earlier days, when we began transitioning, maybe of blogs into social media as a primary, I guess I would say, a primary source of inspiration for a lot of people, that at first it was really exciting. I loved how democratic it felt. And in the early days, it felt like a way that I could curate the things that I was exposing myself to in this really cool way. And also while widening the net a little bit beyond my sphere in LA, which admittedly is already a pretty nice pool to draw from.

I feel like the changes happen so slowly over time that for a lot of us, me included, it just felt like waking up one day and you're like, wow, this is really different, and starting to examine the implications of that.

Now you're not just getting shown the people that you're actively following and have chosen to engage with. A lot of that stuff is being hidden from you, and they're showing you things that they think that you like or they think you might want to buy.

Sarai
Yeah, I was going to say, or might buy.

Haley
I spent a small amount of time feeling really just bitter about that and recently have Try to pull away from it and then engage with those sources in more active ways.

We live and we exist in the day of the internet. It's not like I'm trying to get offline. I think that there's a lot of really awesome things about the internet, but I think we have to engage in that content really actively in order to get the good out of it.

Sarai
Yeah, I think the death of blogs—I say death, there's still blogs out there, so they're still around. I think social media has just done a lot to make them more difficult to have and less feasible, but they are still out there.

I think that change really influenced the entire culture of the internet. I'm really happy to see that newsletters are the new blogs and making a comeback, because I think that's an opportunity where you can really get an individual's perspective, whether that's a design perspective or style perspective or their perspective on the world. I think that is a really cool phenomenon that's happening right now, and hopefully we'll see more of that.

I think it's really interesting to think about algorithms versus individuals because you're right, when something is more algorithm-mediated, it can open up the possibilities, and you do break out of your bubble. But then you're not really getting a really deep perspective collective from one person. It's more shallow.

Haley
I think that it's a matter of taking this active mindset and adding that and exploring the depth that that maybe has to offer outside of what maybe the surface level that you're getting, served by the algorithm.

But that gets into the tips that we have. We have three tips and a mindset bonus tip to start us off with.

I'll kick us off with the first two.

The first tip, like I was saying, is more like mindset. I think before trying any of these tips, you have to switch your mindset. In the podcast that we're referencing in today's episode, Ezra calls it the push internet versus the pull internet.

There's the internet that we exist in now, which things are being pushed on you. That's the very passive form of engaging in it. Then there's the pull internet, where you're actively discovering and pulling new things out of it.

And that's the switch that I want to encourage you to take—that active seeking rather than the passive scrolling when it comes to gathering your inspiration.

So when you're relying on the algorithm to serve you content based on your demographic, you're getting this really flattened perspective.

They're looking at like, oh, according to this person's demographics, this is probably... And the other things that we've observed, they like, is probably what they like. In lots of cases, it's not like that's totally inaccurate. It's just a little bit one-dimensional.

Instead, if you seek out things that inspire you as an individual outside of those things, your world can become much more three-dimensional. So it's the first step, this mindset shift.

Bouncing off of that, I think from there, learning to go down these rabbit holes.

I always feel like a really beautiful place to start is the things that you've always drawn inspiration from, the things that you've always loved across your lifetime, and go down rabbit holes about them.

So, when you were in high school, you loved punk music and the whole movement. Maybe that's a rabbit hole that you should explore. Something that I like to ask myself is, it's more of an internal question of what about this am I inspired by? What draws me to this? That's something you can in your sketchbook, in your journal, write about. You can find some pictures of things that you were really inspired visually by and pick apart those outfits and those looks and the things that really make them special to you.

In addition to what you're inspired by, it's also looking at where all of that comes from and looking at the origin of that particular movement, looking at the things that then were later movements that were inspired by that, and really getting an overall greater understanding of them is really helpful.
Just looking at movies and style icons and all of those things that relate. If you like punk, then you probably love Vivienne Westwood, and that's a whole other rabbit hole to go down.

Sarai
Yeah. I think it's interesting to think this is almost like if you took something that you were really interested in, let's say punk, and you almost did a mind map of it. What are all the different little offshoots of that?

What could I think about in terms of the aesthetics, the fashion, the politics, the history, the individuals who made up this movement? You could go down all of these different rabbit holes and think about and learn about these different things, and you're bound to find more inspiration and other things.

It's stuff that's going to be connected to you because it's something that you're personally interested in and that has some place in your own history.

Haley
Yeah. I think that most people would be surprised to find the connections. They’ll start uncovering reasons why they're drawn to it. Oh, wow, that makes so much sense that I'm drawn to it when the political history behind it is X, Y, Z. And that's something that I feel I identify with. It just has so much richer meaning to you.

Sarai
Yeah. There's a narrative that is part of your own being in your own life that I think makes it feel a lot more meaningful than if it's just something that you like because it's pretty or it looks cool or it's trendy or whatever, which there's nothing wrong with that. But sometimes I think exploring those hidden depths is where you really get to know yourself through your sense of aesthetics.

I think that's something we talk about a lot, especially in the Style Workshop. It's really about uncovering all those different layers and how they influence your style. The whole point of that, I think, is just to bring more meaning and more intention into what you create and what you wear and what you surround yourself with.

I think that was another thing that I really took away from this, Ezra Klein interview was aesthetics matter. I think a lot of people like to pretend that they don't or that they're not important to them or that it's trivial. But it really is something that is around you all the time, no matter what, and you either have a choice about it, you can either really be intentional about it, or you can just be fed what's out there, which is fine. That's okay, too.

But if you are somebody who's really interested in these things, I think it is worth the time to think about how you can really bring more meaning into your life through the aesthetic mix around you.

Haley
It makes me think of that monologue in The Devil Wears Prada about this Julian sweater that you think you're exempt from these kinds of choices. But unless you're making an active choice, the choice is basically just being made for you.

Sarai
Yeah. I've always felt that way about fashion, generally, because I've always been interested in it and put a lot of effort into it and into personal style for whatever reason. But I've always felt like, well, you have to get dressed in morning. So you got to make a choice. So why not make it fun?

Haley
Right.

Sarai
I don't know. I've always felt that way.

Haley
And why not make the choice for yourself? Yeah.

Sarai
Well, I think that's a really great place to start is just thinking about rabbit holes.

I think another thing I would add to that in terms of rabbit holes is we were talking earlier about following individual people versus an algorithm. And that's another area of inspiration for me that's still online is I still follow certain blogs. I just have them bookmarked and I go to them.

I subscribe to newsletters. I really try to get the perspective of individual people who I think are very artistic or really interesting or have a fun sense of style or just a fun perspective on the world. It could be something that I identify with or it could just be something that I think provides a new dimension that is not normally in my wheelhouse.

I think that's another really cool way that you can bring a little bit more humanity into your sense of inspiration.

Haley
Yeah, and specifically online.

Sarai
There are still blogs out there. I think, again, there's a lot of newsletters and things like that out there. That's just awesome.

It's fun to be a part of a real human's journey, whether that is a more personal blog or if that's just looking at their own sense of style or the links they curate or whatever. I think you get a very different perspective that way.

I think another thing is when it comes to exploring rabbit holes online is just clicking sources and actually going to the sources and looking at where these images came from.

There's just so much incredible stuff online. There's just a wealth of beauty and inspiration and things you've never thought of before. It can take some digging to actually find them.

If you're on Pinterest, for example, and you see a cool wallpaper. I get served a lot of wallpaper on Pinterest. I like wallpaper, but I don't get a lot of it. You could just pin it and keep looking at more wallpaper and more wallpaper, or you can click on it and see what the source is and learn about the designer.

I’ve discovered really cool museum archives of old wallpaper. That brought me into looking at different textiles and just learning about that. You can dig in to what you find a lot more deeply instead of just continuing to be fed images. I think that's another thing that you can still do online.

Haley
It's the difference between hiking off of a trail versus on a trail.

Sarai
Well, another tip is to get offline and explore some different inputs outside of the stuff that you're already seeing, the stuff that you already love.

There's innumerable ways to do this offline, and they might be things that we don't do as often as we used to. I think that's all the more reason to inject them into our lives again.

One of my favorites is to go to the library. I love the library. It is such an incredible resource. If you have a local library, I highly recommend you take advantage of it. You can look at magazines, either archived or new magazines. Don't forget international magazines, magazines from all around the world that you can find.

A while back, there was this renaissance of independent magazines. I think there's not as many now. It's a hard business to be in. There's not as many now as there were during that period, but still some really awesome magazines from all over the world and all different subjects, too. It might be things that... I know in Portland, we have a few independent magazine stands, news stands, and you might find things that you wouldn't even be considering outside of that context.

I really like Milk magazine, which is a French magazine for kids. Well, not for kids. It's about families and kids. It's for parents, I guess. I'm not a parent, but I think their art direction, their styling is just so cool. Their photos are so beautiful. It's really inspiring. Their interiors they show are really cool.

There might be things that you wouldn't have thought of that you might discover. I think visiting art galleries or museums, there's nothing like seeing art in person. I still remember certain exhibitions that I saw decades ago that still have an impact on me.

Movies, you go to the movies, watch some movies. I'm definitely very inspired by film. I love watching movies. I think because film really is all about creating a world, I think it can offer so much inspiration for a whole host of creative endeavors.

Listening to music, going to live shows, sketching or painting, doing watercolor, taking a creative class, maybe learning a new skill.

There are just so many ways that you can get inspiration. I mentioned before, just going for a walk, just going for a walk and taking pictures. You can take some pictures on a walk or even scroll through pictures you've already taken on your phone and look for color inspiration.

What are the things that you're drawn to naturally that you're already taking pictures of because you think they're beautiful out in the world? That can just be a really interesting exercise to do.

Haley
Something I like about this section of tips about getting offline and experiencing things firsthand is that, I think that a lot of times we really separate the way that we think about our feelings versus the way we experience our feelings in our body. I think that our bodies are often very smart.

And experiencing something firsthand in the physical feelings that that brings up can also give us a lot of information about something. Just as much information about our taste when we experience something we don't like as when we experience something that we do like.

Exploring those sensations, I think, is very powerful, and it's something that you can't get. It's not as easy to access, I think, when you're experiencing things online.

Sarai
That's so interesting. I think that's a really cool thing to think. I agree with you. I think when you're just scrolling online and seeing images, you get that dopamine hit, and you see something that's pretty, and it might be attractive to you, and it might get you to keep looking.

But I agree with you that it's not as emotionally intense as seeing something in person or even seeing a photograph in person. There's something very different about that. Paying attention to those feelings gives that sense of taste that I don't know if you can develop in the same way just through scrolling. So that's really interesting.

Haley
Yeah, I think it takes away maybe a little bit of the intuition. We can hyper intellectualize things when we're removed from it in that online sense. And in person, I feel like you can use your sense of feeling and your intuition a little bit more. Maybe that's a little bit woo, but…

Sarai
No, I don’t think so. Well, I think also there's just so much online that I think the sheer quantity of it prevents you from feeling too deeply about anything. Whereas in person, I think there's a lot more focus and awareness—or there can be a lot more focus and awareness of what's going on around you. I think that can allow you to tune into how you feel a lot more. I'm glad you brought that up. I think that's really interesting.

Haley
All right. Our final tip is, I know we've thumbs-downed on the internet a little bit. But also the internet is a beautiful place. Like I mentioned before, it's very democratic, and there's something that's really beautiful about the wealth of information that you can find online offline. We don't want you to... I mean, you do you, but you don't have to go live your whole life offline.

I think what's important is feeding back into that loop more actively. You're gathering your inputs from all of these other places. You're gathering your inputs from your own history and your own personal taste, from your life that is offline that is also beautiful and rich. And then you're actively seeking them and content related to them when you go back online.

So using Google searches, Pinterest, finding forums online that are all related to these things that are bringing you creative joy in your life and a direct reflection of your personal taste and not just what Instagram thinks that you like.

I'm always really big on training your algorithm. You need to make sure that you're making this exaggerated effort to engage with the kinds of content that you want to see, so that the algorithm shows you more of it so that it can also be maybe a little bit smarter, a little bit more on your side, but trying your best not to fall into a passive mindset with it. Constantly be seeking.

Sarai
Yeah, think about it as an entrance point for learning more instead of thinking about it as the source of inspiration, but instead it's a way to discover new sources of inspiration. That's a cool way of thinking about it.

Haley
This makes me think a lot of our episode we did on how to use Pinterest more effectively. It has a lot of... I think we got a little bit bigger concept ideas in our discussion today, but it's really the same thing as just being really active participant in your own inspiration.

Sarai
And really thinking about what it means to you. And also, taking an active hand in discovery, I think, is a big part of it and not relying on somebody else to discover things for you, even if that somebody else is actually a robot.

Haley
Robot overlords.

Sarai
Yeah. All right, well, I'm going to recap our tips for you today.

We covered a lot of ideas, but the three main tips that we had for you today were to, one, go down rabbit holes. I think that's a huge one. Again, like I was just saying, use the algorithms as a place of discovery, but go down those rabbit holes and go to the source and learn more. I liked that idea of mind mapping a concept you're interested in and looking at all the little trails you can go down around it.

The next tip is to get offline and explore different inputs. I think Haley brought up a really great point about that being a way to tune into your emotions in a way that's a little bit different from online.

Then number three is to take these creative inputs and put them back online. Use the online world strategically to help inform your taste.

Those are our three big tips. What's your big takeaway from today's episode, Haley?

Haley
I think I think that my big takeaway is probably, I'm going to continue to ponder the ways that our offline experiences add more richness than maybe our online ones have the potential or the capacity to do. I think I touched on it early in the episode with the community aspect, which community can be sought online, too. That's not to discount that. But then also in the emotional aspect later on in the episode, I think that those are two big keys to this equation that I've thought about a little bit deeper today.

Sarai
One thing that this brought up for me is that you mentioned community and you mentioned spending more time offline years ago. I think these trends toward, in this case, sameness, conformity, blandness predates the algorithms. I think it's something that started before then, but that social media has really sped up and made even bigger.
I think it's the same thing with online versus offline socialization, and that if you've read the book Bowling Alone or if you know about it, he talks about since the '90s and before. I mean, for generations, this has been slowly building, and that people are becoming more and more isolated and more and more independent from their communities. But I think social media and the internet has really made that much worse.

Obviously, the pandemic had a big effect as well. I'm really interested in ways that we can break free from those forces, not just the internet, not just social media, but the human forces that are just making it much more convenient to not investigate other people, to not bond with other people, to not investigate yourself.

There's a lot of that right now, and it's a little bit scary. But I think as individuals, there's so much we can do to combat that, and if we're aware of it, to make our lives much more rich and much more meaningful, just by asking questions and investigating and going outside and talking to other people, I am encouraged by that. It's a good kick in the pants for me as well.

All right. Well, I first talked about this podcast in Snippets, which is our weekly newsletter. I send out links, I send out little short essays. It's just this little five-minute creativity booster that you can get every Monday and Wednesday.

We have over 200,000 subscribers. We're actually approaching 300,000 subscribers at this point. You can get it for free at getsnippets.com if you're interested in that. Again, it's totally free.

We also mentioned the Style Workshop earlier today. If that's something you're interested in, we'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. It's a really fun little one-hour workshop that takes you through 10 different exercises to help you uncover your personal style. It's really, really fun. It comes with worksheets. Again, something you can do in about an hour. You can take longer with it if you want to, but it's really, really fun. So we'll put a link to that as well.

If you like this episode, please consider leaving us a review on whatever podcast platform you're listening to us on right now. We have a review we wanted to read today from Quizme17 who says, “What a delightful podcast. I learned so much from Sarai and Haley about sewing, but also about being purposeful and mindful while pursuing your sewing hobby. Great advice on sewing with a plan and taking your time. Great topics and wonderful insights.”

Oh, thank you so much. That's a really sweet review. I think it's so amazing all the wonderful reviews you guys have left, and it's just incredible to see people taking the time to leave a review. If you have a moment and you'd like to leave us a review on Apple podcast or wherever you're listening to this, or if you don't have time, you just want to leave us five stars, that would be awesome, too, and it really helps other people to find the podcast as well.

All right, that does it for us this week. I'm Sarai.

Haley
I'm Haley.

Sarai
And this is Seamwork Radio.