Mark O’Connell
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mrkocnnll.bsky.social
Mark O’Connell
@mrkocnnll.bsky.social
3.3K followers 400 following 65 posts
Writer and so forth
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Mark O’Connell
seamas.bsky.social
By far the funniest part of this insane post is that even the maniacs who believe this stuff are so media-pilled they refer to it as a 'leaked photo'. As if God, CEO of Heaven Studios, had included it in a press kit for awards season, but embargoed it til January 27th.
Tweet by Nandi showing a bizarre snowy(?!) fantasy city under a dark, cosmic sky, along with the text; "Leaked photo of heaven is going viral on social media. No wonder Christians are so determined to get there.
January 14, 2025 at 1:59 PM
Reposted by Mark O’Connell
rickoshea.bsky.social
We'll be doing a live Arena show at @dublinbookfest.bsky.social celebrating 100 issues of @thedublinreview.bsky.social.

We'll have editor Brendan Barrington, contributors Sara Baume, @patrickfreyne.bsky.social, Doireann Ní Ghríofa, and @mrkocnnll.bsky.social.

Do come, it's going to be special...
The Dublin Review at 100 - Dublin Book Festival
The Dublin Review, Ireland’s quarterly magazine of essays, memoir, reportage and fiction, is celebrating its 100th issue. Join us for a special live broadcast of RTÉ Arena on Radio 1 in conversation w...
dublinbookfestival.com
October 20, 2025 at 1:24 PM
Reposted by Mark O’Connell
edmorrish.com
[me, a journalist who spends all day every day on a social media app where the discovery algorithm is personally controlled by its owner, captain birdseye] you know, a lot of people are talking about fish fingers, we should probably cover that
September 16, 2025 at 7:25 AM
Reposted by Mark O’Connell
nybooks.com
“It is often said that many nonfiction books should really have been magazine articles; this one feels like a LinkedIn post mercilessly stretched to nearly three hundred pages.” —Mark O’Connell on Palantir’s founder’s first book
The War App | Mark O’Connell
Last year, according to a recent report in The New York Times, Alexander Karp received a total of $6.8 billion for his services as CEO of the data
buff.ly
September 13, 2025 at 2:22 PM
Reposted by Mark O’Connell
jasonkirk.fyi
Discovering computer as an adult makes you go crazy. Discovering computer as a baby makes you go crazy. In all of human history, there will only ever be one generation to discover computer at the correct age: 13
internethippo.bsky.social Better Things Are Possible @internethippo.bsky.social · Nov 10
The problem with every post-Millennial generation is they got to go straight to high speed internet. Of course you'll get computer madness that way. Make them start with those old screeching modems and work their way up
September 12, 2025 at 8:58 PM
Reposted by Mark O’Connell
johnmerrick.bsky.social
Yeah man, keep being patronising snobs, that’ll get liberalism back on the road
September 13, 2025 at 8:19 PM
mrkocnnll.bsky.social
Terrible book, terrible guy, great magazine
September 11, 2025 at 3:03 PM
mrkocnnll.bsky.social
Yes, in the same way your thermostat suffers from the pain of burning
August 26, 2025 at 8:41 AM
Reposted by Mark O’Connell
meredithmeredith.bsky.social
Stand by this: www.politico.com/newsletters/...
What’s a technology that you think is overhyped? I’m going to give a sideways answer to this, which is that the venture capital business model needs to be understood as requiring hype. You can go back to the Netscape IPO, and that was the proof point that made venture capital the financial lifeblood of the tech industry. Venture capital looks at valuations and growth, not necessarily at profit or revenue. So you don’t actually have to invest in technology that works, or that even makes a profit, you simply have to have a narrative that is compelling enough to float those valuations. So you see this repetitive and exhausting hype cycle as a feature in this industry. A couple of years ago, you would have been asking me about the metaverse, then last year, you would have asked me about Web3 and crypto, and for each of these inflection points there’s an Andreessen Horowitz manifesto. It’s not simply that one piece of technology is overhyped, it’s that hype is a necessary ingredient of the current business ecosystem of the tech industry. We should examine how often the financial incentive for hype is rewarded without any real social returns, without any meaningful progress in technology, without these tools and services and worlds ever actually manifesting. That’s key to understanding the growing chasm between the narrative of techno-optimists and the reality of our tech-encumbered world.
February 19, 2025 at 4:42 PM
mrkocnnll.bsky.social
Instagram ads have gotten exponentially worse recently, right? Just an endlessly encroaching tide of slop and cheap scams
July 31, 2025 at 6:03 PM
mrkocnnll.bsky.social
The NYT talked to @jenniferwalshe.bsky.social and me about MARS, which opens tonight at Galway Arts Festival
An Opera Takes A.I., Pronatalism and Hustle Culture to Space
www.nytimes.com
July 25, 2025 at 11:19 AM
Reposted by Mark O’Connell
robpalk.bsky.social
Oo remembers lying awake after dinner at Combray for maman to give you a goodnight kiss?
July 7, 2025 at 8:39 AM
mrkocnnll.bsky.social
Don’t tell me about a thing being “downstream of” another thing. I don’t want to hear it, and I won’t listen to it!
June 30, 2025 at 4:19 PM
Reposted by Mark O’Connell
shamimmalekmian.bsky.social
This is an X screenshot I can get behind. No more J.K. Rowling screengrabs, just Bryan Johnson being delusional about how well his age reversal project is going
X post by Bryan Johnson: I'm 18 years old and have a 19 year old kid. Pretty wild.
June 28, 2025 at 9:53 AM
mrkocnnll.bsky.social
Patrick Collison here, illustrating a mindset that is, in many ways, a simple misunderstanding of life itself
drewharwell.com Drew Harwell @drewharwell.com · Jun 27
Really a sad way to go through life www.nytimes.com/2025/06/27/b...
On how A.I. can transform media consumption: Reading the A.I. summary — I think it can be useful. I think it has a powerfully inoculating effect. Like, I think long-form, lots-of-episodes TV is a waste of time. But it’s very tempting, right? You watch an episode and you’re like, “Oh, geez, I really want to know what happens here.” And so I discovered a couple of years ago, obviously, that the solution is you immediately go to Wikipedia and read the entire summary of the season, and then you’re cured of the desire to watch any more episodes. So there is a therapeutic benefit to A.I. summaries.
June 27, 2025 at 2:37 PM
mrkocnnll.bsky.social
For those of you who were simply too lazy to read my essay about MrBeast and the attention economy yourselves, here's me reading it for you www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2...
‘The Mozart of the attention economy’: why MrBeast is the world’s biggest YouTube star – podcast
He’s spent 24 hours immersed in slime, two days buried alive – and showered vast amounts of cash on lucky participants. But are MrBeast’s videos simply very savvy clickbait – or acts of avant garde ge...
www.theguardian.com
June 27, 2025 at 1:22 PM
Reposted by Mark O’Connell
sarahjeong.bsky.social
thinking again about this 2018 cover
June 18, 2025 at 5:40 PM
mrkocnnll.bsky.social
Seems a little drastic, he could just shut them down in the normal way
June 18, 2025 at 3:52 PM
Reposted by Mark O’Connell
mattielubchansky.com
(sliding out from under The Gyre on a mechanic's creeper, covered in grease) okay, bad news
June 17, 2025 at 1:15 PM
Reposted by Mark O’Connell
rickoshea.bsky.social
This is on Thursday, and my last gig until after the Summer.

@urchinette.bsky.social @mrkocnnll.bsky.social and
@prasifcat.bsky.social

Tickets went in a couple of days but as there are frequently cancellations, @booksupstairs.bsky.social keep a wait list:

booksupstairs.ie/all-events/w...
Writehawks poster
June 16, 2025 at 2:59 PM
Reposted by Mark O’Connell
will-davies.bsky.social
‘Postliberalism’ is mainly books with titles like ‘The Fate of Civilisation and the Death of God at the End of the West’ by men with backgrounds as investment analysts
June 14, 2025 at 5:28 PM
mrkocnnll.bsky.social
I worked in a hotel during a golf tournament when I was 18, and brought room service to Tiger Woods, who was sitting on a couch in his underwear watching himself play golf on tv
bolt451.bsky.social Frey has a free writing Patreon @bolt451.bsky.social · Jun 13
Right folks. Feeling rather down at the moment so bringing back an oldie

Please Quote this with your most minor celebrity interaction
June 13, 2025 at 7:12 PM
Reposted by Mark O’Connell
jvagle.me
This essay is the best description of Mr Beast I have ever read: His oeuvre is “a Hobbesian gameshow of all against all,” and he “may not be the genius we need, or the genius we want, but he may be the genius we deserve.”

via @mrkocnnll.bsky.social

www.theguardian.com/news/2025/ju...
‘The Mozart of the attention economy’: why MrBeast is the world’s biggest YouTube star | Mark O’Connell
The long read: He’s spent 24 hours immersed in slime, two days buried alive – and showered vast amounts of cash on lucky participants. But are MrBeast’s videos simply very savvy clickbait – or acts of...
www.theguardian.com
June 8, 2025 at 8:29 PM
Reposted by Mark O’Connell
veryimportant.lawyer
every year there is a new pr blitz about a hardcore band whose gimmick is Not Being a Hardcore Band
May 6, 2025 at 4:12 PM
Reposted by Mark O’Connell
alkennedy.bsky.social
This is basically like Christmas morning for me, the guy who goes around posting "and this surprises you how?" under people's political tweets
June 5, 2025 at 8:58 PM