This Luddite Puppet Hopes You’re Not Reading This on Your Smartphone
Gowanus the media puppet probably shouldn’t even be talking to me. Made of literal garbage—his origin story is that he was born in a dumpster
Gowanus the media puppet probably shouldn’t even be talking to me. Made of literal garbage—his origin story is that he was born in a dumpster in his namesake neighborhood in Brooklyn—he’s the media representative for the Summer of Ludd, a Luddite festival that took place in New York earlier this month. The festival, which WIRED attended, included everything from workshops on how to flirt IRL to an evidence box, where people could submit testimonies on how Big Tech has negatively impacted their lives. Its rules were simple: Be present. No phones, recordings, or photographs allowed. So, philosophically speaking, it is somewhat contrary to Gowanus’ beliefs to be in a podcast recording studio at Condé Nast’s Manhattan offices. But he’s pragmatic, telling us he wants to reach people, so he’s willing to meet them where they’re at. Still, he has some conditions—presented to me on a handwritten contract. Namely, that we not clip short-form video of the show, in an effort to encourage people to engage with the full interview.
In a compromise, we agree to only clip Gowanus explaining the contract. You might be wondering why Summer of Ludd and its movement are represented by a puppet. It’s a nod to the original Luddites, British textile workers who anonymously organized against being replaced by technology during the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century. While the term “Luddite” has since become a derogatory way to refer to someone who opposes technology, there’s a renaissance happening—and it’s surprisingly being heavily embraced by Gen Z. Gowanus offers anonymity to the people behind the growing trend. I was curious about how being a modern-day Luddite works in practical terms—even organizing this interview was a challenge, because the Summer of Ludd folks weren’t necessarily quick to reply to emails. And I wanted to know why the first generation to ever grow up totally online seems to be leading the charge on having less screen time. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
MANISHA KRISHNAN: Gowanus, thank you for joining me. GOWANUS: Hi. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure. So I'm gonna jump right in and ask, why are you a puppet? Oh, that is a phenomenal question. Well, you know, we live in a hyper-digitized age. And the original Luddites were completely anonymous. When they were going around in the 1800s organizing people, fighting automation, they sought anonymity because they were facing the oppression of the Crown, of local militias, things like that. So in the spirit of retaining anonymity and not creating movement figureheads and things like that, we made a puppet, a media puppet. And that's me. Hi, I’m Gowanus. So you brought a handwritten contract for me today. Can you tell me what it says? It's essentially an ask for you and WIRED to not make any short-form content of this interview. We believe in short-form content, right? We want people to pay attention and actually commit time to watching the whole interview.
The BriefWire