Is Push Content Over Yet?

Meet Eight & 322, an Art Magazine I Wanted to Go Out and Get

I remember when “push technology” became a thing.

At the time, we were all sitting around in the nineties with our web browsers, going on daily excursions around the internet to .com this and .net that. Back then, we had to visit web sites as if they were little towns, looking up the articles we wanted, keeping tabs on the writers we enjoyed, researching the products we wanted to buy. Then there were blogs to go visit, and we discovered RSS feeds, “push” technologies which would bring all the blogs we wanted to subscribe to straight to our Hotmail inboxes. Magical! Not so magical were the “push” marketing campaigns, where we’d get unwanted ads and emails. But the ease of the content feed was worth it. With push content, we could sign up for creators to just deliver their words and images right to our desktops, and never miss anything.

Fast forward through 25 years of social media exploding the internet. Now your feed rides around with you in your hand, and instead of keeping up with a few blogs and news sites, you have thousands of people and organizations flooding through your vision in a vertical stream. Instead of getting convenient delivery of the stuff you signed up for, now you see that, plus the stuff your friends like, the stuff you might enjoy based on your other shoe size, the stuff you mentioned glancingly in a live conversation. Our “push” is now controlled by something we nervously call “the algorithm” and only weakly understand, as rules that govern what we see. Our content feed depends on our leisure activities, how long our eyes linger on something, or what TV show we watched, or who paid to push it. Or something.

I love social media. I know I should feel sorry about this, but I admit I love to thumb through reels and pretty posts. When I think analytically about what I am offered in these reels, however, it makes no sense. One week I’m supposed to be interested in videos of cows getting their messy hooves neatly trimmed, the next I get to see people jumping into clear crystal lakes, or someone making a dress out of flax, or walking the Camino, explaining their mental illness, or reinventing tacos, or playing a folk song — and then it cycles back to rug cleaning, or funny dogs. I don’t really know who’s dangling these entertainments in front of my face, or why. I just watch it.

It feels a little crazy.

But I found Eight & 322 the old way, through a friend’s recommendation. The news and features web site was founded by a photographer in western Pennsylvania, Richard Sayer, after the newspaper he worked for downsized during Covid. My family is from western Pennsylvania, and as I looked through the pages (yes, I visited the actual site), I found myself nostalgic for this type of blog: photos and captions, an artist expressing himself, and writing about his community, capturing news and ideas that were exquisitely local. Last spring they announced (and I saw it on Facebook) that they were publishing an art magazine, which could be purchased locally in several shops, or by enquiry through email.

I am in Virginia. I was going to have to send that guy an email.

In a world of chaotic “For You” pages and corrupted Etsy search results, and sixty duplicate Amazon listings, and third-party drop-shippers selling through Ebay, writing a personal email asking to purchase something felt weird. I was so used to being pushed. It felt like I was licking a stamp to put on an envelope I addressed to a place I found in the back of MAD Magazine. I said, Hey, excuse me, I’d like to buy your magazine. Can I PayPal you? And Richard wrote back and said that I could, and then a couple weeks later I got the physical magazine in the mail.

And I loved reading it! It’s slick and colorful, full of really great art photos, and nicely designed. The content is local as hell: an interview with a local artist, a review of a book written by a local author, a comic strip, an article about a theater project. There is some material from other regions too, like a poem from an author in the southwest who went to school in Franklin, but all is focused through this same local lens. The magazine is designed by Jill Harry.

Here is a bold act of creation, an optimistic flag planted on difficult soil, in a region that was left behind by the oil boom. The area around the intersection of highway 8 and highway 322 (for which the magazine is named) is attempting a renaissance, trying to make a stand against economic failure, and lean into green tourism and heritage preservation. The pages of this magazine tell that story. In a place where Trump signs are everywhere, and cynicism against inclusion tends to defeat progress, people are still working to create art, to write books, to stage plays, to encourage arts education. It’s a good energy.

When you think about replacing “push” content with “pull,” where you have to go out and find what you want to consume, it can feel like the world is narrowing, and you might be missing out. But I have to believe it’s okay if I don’t keep up with fifty million different artists and their feeds. Eight & 322 is now opening a gallery space in Franklin, PA, with classrooms for workshops and an artist shop. They’re showcasing and promoting other new and positive initiatives in Franklin: a record store, a bakery, a floral boutique, and more. These are places that I want to put my phone down for, to physically visit and support. I’m glad I sent that email, and ordered this one specific zine. I hope to become a regular subscriber.