My Internet: Grimes

Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.

Every other week (or so) we quiz a “very online” person for their essential guide to what’s good on the internet.

Today we welcome Grimes, a singer, songwriter, and producer. Two of her albums, Art Angels and Visions, were chosen for Pitchfork’s list of the 200 Best Albums of the 2010s. She has a new song and music video, “Miku-Maxxing,” with the virtual artist Hatsune Miku and producer さたぱんP (SatapanP).

Grimes finds deals on Victorian- and Edwardian-era clothes on Etsy, has been hacking her health with Claude, and recently learned the hard way that ice cream is not a superfood. —Nick

EMBEDDED: What’s a recent meme or post that made you laugh?

GRIMES: I have been mostly off social media for the last year and a half but I like the Chinese ads with strange women selling industrial products. Or the Chinese grape leaves ads.

EMBEDDED: What do you use Instagram for?

GRIMES: I’ve only been back on Instagram for a few days, but I am intrigued by eye enlargement surgery.

EMBEDDED: What do you like about TikTok? What do you dislike?

GRIMES: I enjoy psy-ops and political intrigue, so TikTok being a bizarre ground zero for that makes it intriguing. I am against the infinite scroll. I think it’s a crime against humanity and should be illegal (the same goes for all social media; I’m not singling out TikTok). In general, we should have war crime tribunals for the people responsible for this. Needs to be regulated out of civil society. Actively causes brain damage and is a legitimate addiction. Every platform is guilty tho.

EMBEDDED: Are you concerned by the claims of censorship that some users have made since TikTok was taken over by investors led by Larry Ellison, an ally of President Trump?

GRIMES: I am not a citizen of this country, so I will decline to comment, but the state of media is the PsyOpera.

EMBEDDED: Do you watch Twitch, Kick, or any other livestreaming services? If so, which streamers?

GRIMES: I am sorry I don’t use social media haha, I may be failing this interview. But I feel like I have seen videos of Kai Cenat that were good. Woah Vicky seems cool, if she is a streamer. I enjoy her poetry.

EMBEDDED: Where do you tend to get your news?

GRIMES: Breaking Points is the best for news.

Outside of that, podcasts, thinkers, friends, Ground News. I subscribe to things like the Bismarck Brief by Samo Burja, and my friends update me. My current favorite podcast for news is Hidden Forces with Demetri Kofinas and the Patrick Boyle podcast.

EMBEDDED: How do you keep up with the online discourse? How important is it to you to do this?

GRIMES: I’ve been fairly clocked out for a year and a half besides a few AI or war things. I’m learning about it again now. Trying to use Instagram. Social media is the opiate of the masses, and I consider myself an addict, so yeah

EMBEDDED: What’s the last strong opinion you had about a story, topic, or controversy online?

GRIMES: I think Addison Rae is a good live performer and Chinese social media seems good at comedy

EMBEDDED: What’s a popular misconception that you see repeated online?

GRIMES: Recently learned the hard way that ice cream is not a superfood.

EMBEDDED: What words, phrases, and/or people do you have muted?

GRIMES: None

EMBEDDED: What are your favorite newsletters?

GRIMES: Newsletters? I don’t think I get newsletters, maybe the Bismarck Brief? What is a newsletter?

EMBEDDED: How do you think Substack has changed media, if at all?

GRIMES: I love Substack! I like longreads. I’m not online enough to have a sense of how Substack has changed things. I do think it needs to become less boring if complex ideas are going to get in front of more people. But there should be some boring things actually. Substack is important.

EMBEDDED: How would you describe the culture of Substack, in terms of the types of writing and thinking that it has encouraged?

GRIMES: I mostly just follow my friends and some writers I love on there. Aella is really smart. I think she should be taken more seriously.

EMBEDDED: What’s one positive media trend? What’s one negative trend?

GRIMES: Positive: furries

Negative: face filters

EMBEDDED: What, if anything, is there to learn from the popularity of the looksmaxxing trend and influencers like Clavicular?

GRIMES: Mouthtaping seems genuinely useful.

EMBEDDED: Do you have any advice for people who use sports betting apps or prediction markets?

GRIMES: Well, you are betting against quant bots, so you probably won’t win. It seems like it favors insider trading and bots. I guess perhaps the point seems to be insider trading. So therein lies the quandary. This is not financial advice

EMBEDDED: Have you found Claude, ChatGPT, or any other AI tools useful? How so?

GRIMES: Yes, I use Claude a lot. I’ve been hacking my health.

EMBEDDED: Are smartphones bad for us? Where do you fall on the Jonathan Haidt-Taylor Lorenz divide?

GRIMES: I don’t know what this divide is, but Jon Haidt is great. The phones are bad. Could have had weird glasses or something.

EMBEDDED: Do you try to limit your phone use? If so, what methods have been helpful for this?

GRIMES: Yes, I would probably be considered sort of extreme about this. I have my main phone; I keep Opal on it. It can only do basic things. Social media etc. is on another phone. I often don’t have this phone.

EMBEDDED: What’s something that you have observed about the online behavior of Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and/or Boomers?

GRIMES: Boomers cannot detect AI. Despite being against it, they are the main consumers of it.

EMBEDDED: Who’s the coolest person who follows you?

GRIMES: Ian McKellen

EMBEDDED: Are you into any podcasts right now? How and when do you usually listen?

GRIMES: I hate silence, so I have them on most of the time. Obsessed with Patrick Boyle. The rest is history. Hidden Forces, Breaking Points

EMBEDDED: Are you in any groups on Reddit, Discord, or Facebook? What’s the most useful or entertaining one?

GRIMES: No.

EMBEDDED: What is your Wordle starting word?

GRIMES: I don’t know what this is.

EMBEDDED: What’s your go-to emoji, and what does it mean to you?

GRIMES: The wing 🪽

EMBEDDED: What’s the most basic internet thing that you love?

GRIMES: Any messaging is glorious. Signal is preferred. Group chat.

EMBEDDED: Is there any content you want but can’t seem to find anywhere online?

GRIMES: Good audio content about the late 1800s-1930s. Suffragettes, flappers, Art deco, art nouveau, etc. Belle Époque/Romantic era into WW1 is woefully underrepresented.

EMBEDDED: Do you regularly use eBay, Depop, or other shopping platforms? What’s a recent thing you’ve bought or sold?

GRIMES: I recently sold most of my clothes.

I love Etsy because u can get real Victorian/Edwardian-era clothes for fairly cheap if you dig. It’s insane.

EMBEDDED: Do you consume any content about fitness, diet, or other types of “wellness”? What creators or sites do you find most useful?

GRIMES: Yeah, I’m very into Kate Tolo and Bryan Johnson. I started biohacking intensely this year and ended up screwing myself over a few times in quite profound ways because women’s health is actually not well understood. Lots of clinical trials have only included men or a majority of men due to the difficulty of factoring in cyclical hormonal changes.

So Kate’s focus on women’s health is huge; I can’t endorse this project enough.

EMBEDDED: Is there a site you like for product recommendations? How do you decide, for example, which air filter to buy?

GRIMES: YouTube/friends/Claude/if there are awards and things. Need at least two sources tho. Can’t trust anything rn. Don’t love this. Try to speak to experts tbh.

EMBEDDED: Have you recently read an article, book, or social media post about the internet that you’ve found particularly insightful?

GRIMES: Cute Accelerationism by Amy Ireland and Maya B. Kronic. Real futurism in every sense.

EMBEDDED: What’s the last thing that brought you joy online?

GRIMES: The Pope’s encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas.

Thanks Grimes! Listen to her new song. 🪽

More My Internet Shaad D’Souza ∙ Noelle Perdue ∙ Charlie Sosnick ∙ Grace Byron ∙ Sean Fennessey ∙ Mitchell Jackson ∙ Samuel Hine ∙ Julia Vitale ∙ Sam Kriss ∙ Scaachi Koul ∙ All