NiceGuyAndy

When strangers can desire you and despise you without ever knowing you, how much of your image still belongs to you? Since moving to Austin, I have received offers of marriage, unsolicited dick pics, and detailed descriptions of my murder. People can develop remarkably intimate feelings toward someone whose presence in their lives consists almost entirely of photographs and recordings. Somewhere between those digital files and the viewer’s imagination, another version of you takes shape, and you may have very little say in what it becomes. My new article, Becoming a Human Sigil, explores how a person’s name and face become charged with other people’s desires, fears, and expectations. Following my recent conversation with Duncan Trussell on The Duncan Trussell Family Hour, I trace the connections between celebrity worship, occult practice, and the business of keeping us emotionally invested in strangers. ADÉLA’s “Nicole Kidman” song and its Eyes Wide Shut imagery offer one way into the question. Aleister Crowley’s deliberate construction of his own myth offers another. Grant Morrison finds a sigil in Walt Disney’s signature, while an ancient Greek account describes a statue put on trial for killing the man who whipped it. Apparently, hate-watching once required considerably more physical effort. In this in-depth piece, I also examine Kurt Metzger’s changing costumes, why humor can interrupt our certainty about someone, and what happens when AI gives our public doubles voices we never authorized. The practical question is how to make your work recognizable while keeping the freedom to become someone your audience did not expect. A human sigil becomes a binding spell when its subject starts obeying it. Read Becoming a Human Sigil: How people become objects of worship, hatred, and desire in the digital age, and how to break the spell. Link to attached.

Big thanks to the wildly creative, hilarious, and sweet, @duncantrussell for having me on the pod. By far one of my favorite conversations to-date! youtube.com/watch?v=zDy5SPA6…