Today F.A.T. Lab shut its doors with this lovely note from Magnus Eriksson and Evan Roth.
But the "we lost to them" narrative is only one perspective. As a "virtual research fellow" since 2011, I had the opportunity to both look up to F.A.T. as an outsider for its first half, and get the inside scoop for the second half. But my first project appears on page 20 of the blog's 200+ pages. With that in mind, here are some other stories about why F.A.T. "lost":
- F.A.T. lost its rowdy juvenile edge when almost everyone got married, had kids, got (mostly) real jobs. The biggest producers from early F.A.T. effectively "retired" from producing F.A.T.-style work.
- There was not enough new energy to replace these retired members. To fix this, sometimes a member would propose adding someone. Inevitably, someone else would suggest they "weren't F.A.T. enough", or just thinking about how many inactive members we had, and how much of a boys club it was, would get us down and discussion would stop. We didn't want to get big, we just wanted to be part of something with more concentrated energy, and couldn't add or remove anyone.
- One of the best definitions of F.A.T. is "where pop culture meets open source". A big part of this intersection is internet culture, but the site of the internet has changed: FAT was built for an older web. We've had some insight on mobile & social media, but we never really adapted to their total dominance. You can't toe the 2010 "Fuck Google" line and encourage people to host their own data in 2015. Users have developed advanced coping mechanisms for dealing with their abusive relationship with the web. There's nothing we can say to them.
- F.A.T. spent a lot of time exploring copyright and free speech early on, but when Snowden happened privacy took center stage in the popular consciousness. There is not a single FAT project addressing massive global surveillance. For that matter, there were only two speed projects (Apple Eyes, Obama Mask) mentioning Google Glass, the ideal F.A.T. subject, and both a year after the Glass announcement. We failed to stay relevant.
- The aesthetic of net culture has been refined into intensely hyper-saturated gradients and dolphin-filled maximalism. Microsoft Paint magenta is a nostalgic throwback now, like some ragtag group is yelling at you. Being loud and provocative isn't enough, mystery is valued more now. Weird Twitter still reigns. The origin of that meme or Tumblr is ambiguous. That new website/product/service that seems too crazy to be real could actually real, or it's artwork, performance, design fiction... or some combination. The format F.A.T. stuck by for almost a decade doesn't make sense anymore. Who else runs a WordPress blog in 2015?
- When you're excited and hopeful about what you're making with friends, it's hard to deal with it ultimately effecting zero change outside your circle. That can wear you down. This is one thing the text from Evan and Magnus addresses, and I wanted to agree with it.
We all knew this was coming for a while, after the book was released in 2013 I joked that we should "break up and pursue solo careers". We're so lazy, the shutdown itself was delayed by two months.
F.A.T. was amazing for its time, but I think the most important thing to emerge from it are some great friends. And while the site will be archived and some of the work will survive, I think the way we were working is even more important: irreverent adolescent humor, speed projects, rampant appropriation, "release early, often, and with rap music" are all timeless.
Thank you for a thoughtful piece.