welcome to bloomscroll

your answer to doomscrolling

Hello and welcome to the first edition of bloomscroll — your answer to doomscrolling!

Let me introduce myself: I’m Grace — a journalist and consumer of content. One of my 2024 goals was to do less mindless scrolling, and instead, consume more thoughtful content that genuinely fills my cup. And I feel like a lot of people feel the same.

This is why I created bloomscroll — a bite-size recommendations list of some of the best long-form articles the internet has to offer.

It can be overwhelming and time-consuming to know where to go for good long-form reads, so let me do the hard work for you!

I’ll be releasing fortnightly editions, and hopefully, you will discover a new favourite article, quote, publication, author or journalist that gives you some food for thought.

If you’re itching for more content recommendations, I have a weekly paid newsletter with podcast, book, and video recs. Subscribe below!

2024 is the year for blooming!

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what to read this week…

with ur morning coffee

• Coming of Age at the Dawn of the Social Internet (The New Yorker)

  By Kyle Chayka

  Excerpt: ‘Like so many millennials, I entered the online world through AOL Instant Messenger. I created an account one unremarkable day in the late nineteen-nineties, sitting in the basement of my childhood home at our chunky white desktop computer, which connected to the Internet via a patchy dial-up modem.’

• Kierkegaard’s Three Ways to Live More Fully (The Atlantic)

  By Arthur C. Brooks

  Excerpt: ‘People hate being bored. Researchers show that we will go to almost any length to avoid boredom. That can even include giving ourselves painful electrical shocks to stave off ennui—experiments have found that many college-age subjects will actually do this rather than face as little as 15 minutes of doing nothing.’

• The tyranny of the algorithm: why every coffee shop looks the same (The Guardian)

  By Kyle Chayka

  Excerpt: ‘In the case of the cafes, the growth of Instagram gave international cafe owners and baristas a way to follow one another in real time and gradually, via algorithmic recommendations, begin consuming the same kinds of content. One cafe owner’s personal taste would drift toward what the rest of them liked, too, eventually coalescing.’

if u love celebrity and pop culture 

• Dua Lipa Is Done Being a Mystery (Rolling Stone)

  By Brittany Spanos

  ‘The wildly ambitious pop star is embracing freedom and fun — both in her life and on her upcoming album. As she kicks off a new era, she lets us into her dreams, her anxieties, and what she wants to stand for.;

• Playing the Pretty Boy: Ryan Gosling, Jacob Elordi, and More Redefine the Himbo (Vanity Fair)

  By Rebecca Ford

  ‘Their latest characters are stunning, stunted—and in the awards race.’

if u need something inspiring

• The Woman Who Spent Five Hundred Days In A Cave (The New Yorker)

  By D.T. Max

  ‘Beatriz Flamini liked to be alone so much that she decided to live underground—and pursue a world record. The experience was gruelling and surreal.’

• An Olympic Champion Goes in Search of a New Identity (New York Times)

  By John Branch

  ‘As she prepares to step away from surfing, Carissa Moore confronts a question that many people face when they make a change in life: Who am I if I don’t do this anymore?’

if ur sick of paywalls

• The complicated lives and deaths of TikTok’s illness influencers (Vox)

  By A.W. Ohlheiser

  ‘A ‘day in the life’ at the end of a life.’

• ‘Scars on every street’: the refugee camp where generations of Palestinians have lost their futures (The Guardian)

  By Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

  ‘Ever since the displacement of 700,000 Palestinians in 1948, many have been living in dejection and squalor in camps like Shatila in Beirut. Is this the grim future the people of Gaza could now be facing?’

• Feral Minds (Noema)

  By John Last

  ‘We still don’t understand the role language plays in consciousness. The future of AI may upend what little we know.’

• I Can’t Be The Only One Exhausted By Aesthetic Culture (Refinery29)

  By Jessica Cullen

  ‘In my teens, I was a Horse Girl. Later, a devout Emo Kid as thick black liner raccooned my eyes and My Chemical Romance dominated my iTunes playlists.’

off the beaten track (a smaller publication or writer whose work I admire)

• Dealing with Social Media Hate (Tea With HB) Sign up to her Substack here.

  ‘On the internet, ignorance is malice.’

always open to feedback and always looking for new publications or writers to read, so please reach out if you have something x.