Moodboard

Calling Graphic Design attendance.

I’ve been trying to figure out how best to distill how exactly I feel about everything that’s happened here — it’s a bittersweet feeling to be leaving, but I know too that the time has come. Verizon Media (formerly Oath — parent company of this sinking ship) just layed off 7% of it’s workforce (about 800 employees). Gross. This is following their hamfisted unleashing of the AI I lovingly refer to as “Shitty HAL 9000,″ that destroyed years of work and blogging across the platform. This was a lazy and destructive decision that could have been rectified by bolstering the moderation team and improving community reporting/moderation tools — one, too, that obviously wasn’t worth it as the culture of this place (and the goodwill between the staff team and the community) has been irreparably damaged. It’s unclear if the changes have anything to do with the layoffs — but I’d be surprised if they didn’t. I’ve been running this blog since High School. It followed me through art school, a bunch of angsty bullshit, some arguments i didn’t need to get into, blowing an internship with that one studio that rhymes with gretaraven, a super shitty breakup I didn’t handle well, figuring out who I am, and where I fit in the capital-g Graphicdesignindustry. It’s been a wild/stupid/cringy/coming-of-age/i’msorryigotinargumentswithyouontwitterifidid/iwasinabadplacementallyinmyearlytwenties ride.  I’ll be on are.na going forward. They’ve got a pretty good thing going on over there — no ads, likes, or fucking algorithms to do battle with.  Thanks for the good and weird times friends. Feel free to write me smi(dot)th(at)icloud(dot)com.