Strangerpedia

Talking to actual humans about what they know

My least favorite new commercial features Chris Pratt and Chris Hemsworth, two of my least favorite Chrises, showing how cool their Meta AI Ray-Bans are by asking them silly questions, on a weirdly-lit set that is sometimes a gallery and sometimes Kris Jenner’s house. “Hey Meta,” the first Chris asks as they stand in front of a small fossilized skeleton and a hammer (joke set-up!) “What kind of dinosaur is this?” In the gallery that doesn’t look like a gallery, the second Chris stops in front of a sculpture and says “Hey Meta, tell me about this artist.”

There are so many things to dislike about this commercial! The Meta of it all, the lack of respect for real spaces that real people spend time in, the tired jokes about how many Chrises there are (god give me the confidence of a mediocre Chris-man!).

But what really gets me is the desperate claim, central to the ad’s premise, that we as humans have an actual need that is being fulfilled here. Literally every museum or gallery ever has an explanation of its exhibits (though these could be more accessible for disabled patrons!), people who have devoted their lives to learning about this shit, other patrons who have all sorts of fun information that even the internet lacks. In an age where everyone is freaked the fuck out about the lack of human connection, how much battery power does it take to ask your dumbass glasses a question a human could easily tell you?

One of the many embarrassing things I subject my children to is something I call “Strangerpedia.” The rules are simple. If you want to know something, ask someone. On a hike where we wondered how tall the highest mountain was, the next dude we passed happened to have visited Everest. At the counter of a local diner, the people on the nearest stools had no clue what the population of India was, but we did get an opportunity to rope the waiter into a fun conversation about western imperialism.

When a stranger isn’t available, you can phone a friend! The connections this creates, between the friend and my kids, or me and the friend, are delightful. My friend Brent, who I otherwise only text with, gets the call whenever our questions are sea-creature related (he has many preserved in jars around his apartment, despite being a well-adjusted and well-liked person). When my son Max asked how many Japanese Yen can be exchanged for a dollar, his Uncle Alex, who had just returned from a trip there, added some for the recent weakening of the currency and guessed 150 (the answer was 148). What satisfaction! I’m pretty sure it made Alex’s morning.

My friends and I had a good debate about kids and Youtube yesterday, inspired by their son getting into what his mom believes are AI-generated videos about opening toys, and this recent thought-provoking episode my podcast.

Does YouTube Deserve Our Kids Attention? With Amil Niazi

We talked about what is lost with Youtube, but since I’ve been thinking about, what do my kids gain when we do something else? It's not really helpful for me, though, to think about what we lose when we don't attend to certain things. Rather, I'm interested in what it is that I think I get out of asking people to tell me what they know, and what I want my children to get from that.

What does Strangerpedia do? It is a balm to my ADHD of course. There is nothing more boring to me then immediately stamping out curiosity with information obtained through my phone. An information adventure! I do it myself too. Sure, I could Google “what’s the deal with gen z-ers and lip fillers” but I’d rather have my 21-year-old niece explain it to me, and also see how her classes are going and what she’s thinking about grad school.

i think i understand sabrina and am pro but i dont get the face stuff!

I’m really digging

Katherine Goldstein

’s @Find Your People Club, where she walks us through how to build the community late-stage capitalism and patriarchal white supremacy have stripped us of. One thing she writes about, and told me when we interviewed her about the Summer Camp Shitshow, is that finding your people is not about luck. It takes work. It starts with talking to strangers.

I’ve learned from playing and hosting trivia for years is that everyone is an expert on something. Discovering that thing brings you closer to people, lets them shine. The older I get, the more delight I feel listening to people nerd out on their nerd topic. In my Feminists of the World book club at the great @Bather’s Library, the young person there who majored in feminism and seems to have regular lips explained the international feminist rift of the 80s and 90s to us, pausing to ask “sorry, am I rambling?” “No!” we all yelled, inching our chairs closer to them like children during story hour, so grateful to have this one divine moment of human intelligence just to ourselves.

I am not living under a fantasy that my children will avoid technology, AI, the shortening of their attention spans, etc, or that all of that will necessarily be only evil. But it feels radical, and fun, even, to try and stretch their muscles around these variables. And what of my brain and its infinite sludge? We often try to make our kids perfect and forget how shitty we are.

Let me be clear. I am not implying that if you let your kid Google things, you are a bad parent. There are so many things to call kids attention to, and and our own. Maybe it's being a curmudgeony 41-year-old who stops 20-year olds on the street to tell them they are beautiful just the way they are, maybe it's being a lifelong educator. I don’t know why, but this is my parenting thing. My thing is not a bilingual school or organic meals or hiking. Those are great things to value in your parenting, though. There is only so much time. The next time I see you, please tell me about them. I want to know everything!

Here is, hands down, the only Chris for me:

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Also, this:

This sci-fi novella by @Sofia Samatar was the best thing I’ve read to far this year. Riveting and thought-provoking and accessible but written in a very interesting voice.

I’m now reading Patrick Hoffman’s newest book Friends Helping Friends and loving it. He writes down-and-out so well, and it’s gripping without being too scary to read before bedtime. If I was in NYC tomorrow night I would definitely be attending this talk between him and

Taffy Brodesser-Akner

at Greenlight Books!

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What I’ve been up to:

Getting personal in The Cut:

Having COVID conversations:

Where Were You in March 2020?

Pandemic Parents, 5 Years Later: The mom who had just moved to Norway