My Internet: Charlie Sosnick
The screenwriter and journalist has to put himself in a digital crib in order to get anything done.
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.
Every other week (or so) we quiz a “very online” person for their essential guide to what’s good on the internet.
Today we welcome Charlie Sosnick, writer and star of the short film Jasper Jelqs, and a GQ contributor who has reported extensively on looksmaxxing trends like bonesmashing and the PSL scale. There will be a live table read of his new screenplay on September 15 at The Bell House. Charlie is among the world’s 500 fastest New York Times crossword solvers and says that his goals to work out more, eat slightly fewer pointlessly decadent meals, and drink a little less can all be achieved without content to guide him. —Nick
EMBEDDED: What’s a recent meme or post that made you laugh?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: This one
EMBEDDED: Do you tweet? Why?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: I make a solid chunk of my income ghost-tweeting for people in tech, so yes.
But as myself, barely ever anymore. I was quite good at it and went viral many times. I think I aged out of it. Tweeting is for when you are young, broke, lost, aimless, and awash in ideas. Then you grow up, have stuff to do, and it doesn’t scratch the itch anymore. It’s basically this:
EMBEDDED: What do you use Instagram for?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: Sending Reels of weird-looking animals to my girlfriend and saying “This is you.”
EMBEDDED: What types of videos do you watch on YouTube?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: I watch all sorts of stuff, but I am interested in paleoanthropology. People make very impressive documentaries about archaic humans and prehistoric life. Stefan Milo and North 02 are two, but there are lots of others. I also watch a lot of music videos and Live Lounge-type recordings.
EMBEDDED: What do you like about TikTok? What do you dislike?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: I haven’t used TikTok since 2020. I was quite early to the app, actually, because I used to make videos on Musical.ly. When it turned into TikTok, I somehow immediately recognized it as a new type of media and the most addictive thing ever. By some rare feat of discipline and self-awareness, I deleted it and never looked back.
EMBEDDED: Are you concerned by the claims of censorship that some users have made since TikTok was taken over by investors led by Larry Ellison, an ally of President Trump?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: Short-form video is for watching people dance, chug alcohol, and do pranks. As long as they don’t censor that, we’ll be ok.
EMBEDDED: Do you watch Twitch, Kick, or any other livestreaming services? If so, which streamers?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: I cover male subcultures like looksmaxxing, so I know about a lot of streamers. But I don’t really watch streams. I’m too old for it by about five years, which is enough to make it completely foreign to me. I can’t imagine having a stream on for hours and watching it. I like watching the clips, though. Sometimes they are truly charming and impressive with a slapstick flair, like when Kai Cenat made the room with giant furniture. Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner used to watch Dodgers games on TiVo, so they could fast forward to only the ball-in-play action. That’s how I feel: I’m too old for the whole thing, so I watch the clips.
EMBEDDED: Where do you tend to get your news?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: I listen to an NPR podcast every morning in the half-sleep between the alarm going off and getting out of bed. I also read The New York Times and Financial Times, but not religiously. I wish it was more of a concrete habit to thoroughly read them every morning. I bet I would feel like Warren Buffett.
EMBEDDED: How do you keep up with the online discourse? How important is it to you to do this?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: I guess I do. It’s not on purpose. But I’m on the computer literally all day long. Whenever “discourse” comes up as dinner party conversation and I know what we’re talking about, it makes me feel like an idiot. I wish I had no idea.
EMBEDDED: What’s the last strong opinion you had about a story, topic, or controversy online?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: I don’t think anyone has ever sounded smart discussing “native New Yorkers” and what the Internet calls “gentrification.” One of my personal mantras is: Nothing changes and nothing stays the same.
EMBEDDED: What are your favorite newsletters?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: Robert Sietsema, the food critic.
EMBEDDED: What’s one positive media trend? What’s one negative trend?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: A positive trend is that there have been a lot of good, original movies in the theater lately.
A negative trend is people talking to AI to help them think about their life. I saw a self-help guy on Twitter telling people to ask themselves reflection questions about your path in life, and he added a caveat to do this without chatbots. Bizarre.
EMBEDDED: What, if anything, is there to learn from the popularity of the looksmaxxing trend and influencers like Clavicular?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: I say this as one of the foremost non-looksmaxxer experts on looksmaxxing:
The most important lesson is that being a Twitch streamer or YouTuber is, to many 15-year-olds, the most viable way to quickly make a lot of money. (Getting rich quick then living off risky investments is the only way many young people imagine succeeding financially.) That career path incentivizes them to do incredibly stupid things in public. This is much more dangerous than bonesmashing, in my opinion. We should all be judicious, as the adults in the room, to recognize when a young person is acting out for attention and try to help them.
EMBEDDED: Do you have any advice for people who use sports betting apps or prediction markets?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: Check into a residential treatment facility TODAY!
EMBEDDED: Have you found Claude, ChatGPT, or any other AI tools useful? How so?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: I use Perplexity. I think I started using it because it was clearer where it got the information from, but I ended up brand loyal out of habit. I pretty much use it like Google.
EMBEDDED: Do you believe that advances in AI will spawn a new “underclass,” as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has suggested might happen?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: Isn’t there already an “underclass”? The proletariat?
I don’t know if he’s right from a political economy standpoint, but he’s correct that not learning how to use new technology is terrible for your existence. My grandmother never learned how to use a computer, and it kept her life very small as she aged. Meanwhile, her husband was emailing with friends and family, researching things, managing money, and generally staying in touch with a changing world. I suspect that remaining permanently skeptical and afraid of AI will similarly constrain your life as it becomes more ubiquitous.
EMBEDDED: Or do you believe that the AI bubble about to burst?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: I think the real bubble is in venture capital and private credit, though that bubble and the AI bubble are two conjoined bubbles connected by surface tension.
EMBEDDED: Do you try to limit your phone use? If so, what methods have been helpful for this?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: I use a Brick and Jomo, two overlapping methods to keep me off Twitter, Instagram, and the ESPN Fantasy Baseball app. When I’m writing on my computer, I use ScreenTime to turn distracting websites off. It’s all embarrassing; I have to put myself in a digital crib in order to get anything done.
EMBEDDED: What’s something that you have observed about the online behavior of Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and/or Boomers?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: Donald Trump is a very bad president and a very bad person. But Trump Derangement Syndrome is real. Many older people have their mood ruined multiple times per day by push updates about his malfeasance. The first thing they do upon waking is check the news and get angry. The last thing they do before bed is check the news and get angry. That’s no way to go through life.
EMBEDDED: Have you had posts go viral? What is that experience like?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: Many times on Twitter. I remember wanting it so bad, and then it happened, and it felt like nothing. It’s almost like desire is the root of suffering …
One funny incident: one time, I replied to myself with the vibrator link people used to post under viral tweets and said “I love going apeshit on my scallop with this product.” (I had not actually been contacted or paid by the vibrator company.) People got really mad at me.
EMBEDDED: Who’s the coolest person who follows you?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: The girl reading this.
EMBEDDED: Who’s someone more people should follow?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: Errands, my friend Noah Blau’s wonderful Reels show about people doing their errands.
EMBEDDED: Which big celebrity has your favorite internet presence, and why?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: I like the way Shohei Ohtani posts on Instagram. “Great game! Love my teammates! Looking forward to the next one! Here’s my beautiful wife and cute dog!” Classy.
EMBEDDED: Are you into any podcasts right now? How and when do you usually listen?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: I like True Anon, Odd Lots, and Baseball Today. Certain interviews on How I Write have been very helpful to me, but listening to writing advice all the time would just stress me out, so it has to be occasional. I listen while walking around in order to have a constant barrage of other people’s thoughts that prevents me from ever having ideas or inspiration of my own.
EMBEDDED: How would you describe Tumblr’s legacy?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: It saved the entire publishing industry, and perhaps literature itself, by getting a generation of women addicted to erotica.
EMBEDDED: Do you use Slack or Teams for work? What’s the best thing about Slacking with your co-workers? What’s the worst thing?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: I’m self-employed, so no. Past projects have required me to use Slack. Awful experience. There’s something about it that feels antithetical to making really exciting and great work. Maybe it’s the UX or something, but I can’t imagine an incredible movie or album or whatever coming together on Slack.
EMBEDDED: What is your Wordle starting word?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: I share a NYT Games app with my dad and he does the Wordle. I do the Crossword. I have a 6+ year streak, and am among the 500 fastest crossword solvers in the world.
EMBEDDED: What words or phrases do you have muted?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: I report a lot about online subcultures, which has changed my Twitter algorithm over time. I also think something fundamentally changed after Elon took over. About a year or so ago, I began seeing shockingly racist and anti-Semitic tweets—like, things out of Der Stürmer. I muted a lot of those accounts because it was just extremely unpleasant to see.
EMBEDDED: What’s your go-to emoji, and what does it mean to you?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: I’m fond of this combo: 🫵😂
It means I’m laughing in your face like a schoolyard bully.
EMBEDDED: Do you text people voice notes? If not, how do you feel about getting them?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: Hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate. Do not make me hold my phone up to hear you talk. Just write it out. You’re saving time by wasting mine. Fuck you.
EMBEDDED: Do you pay for a music streaming service, and if so, which one? What’s a playlist, song, album, or style of music you’ve listened to a lot lately?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: I have Spotify. I really like kora and balafon music from Senegal and elsewhere in West Africa. It helps me relax.
EMBEDDED: If you could only keep one streaming service for TV and/or movies, which would it be, and why? What’s a show that you’re really into right now?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: HBO I guess? The new Game of Thrones is pretty amazing technically. Whenever they have those big set-piece battle scenes, I wonder how they made it.
EMBEDDED: What’s your favorite non-social media app?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: I have used a budgeting app called YNAB for three years, and it is the best thing I’ve ever done financially.
EMBEDDED: What’s the most basic internet thing that you love?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: Texting. Sometimes, on a free night, I pull out iMessage on my computer and text 20 people, see who bites, then just continue those conversations on my laptop all night long. This 28-year-old writer still makes AIM the old fashioned way!
EMBEDDED: Is there any content you want but can’t seem to find anywhere online?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: I went to Senegal two years ago and learned about the fascinating culture of the Mourides, a powerful Muslim brotherhood there. I want to learn more about that and have found it very challenging to find information in English online. They have a unique tradition of decorating taxis in honor of their marabouts, and I can’t seem to find good pictures of it.
EMBEDDED: Do you regularly use eBay, Depop, or other shopping platforms? What’s a recent thing you’ve bought or sold?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: I like giving really good gifts. My method is to think hard about a person’s very subtle interests which only a close friend would know, or inside jokes between us. Then I go on eBay to find something that represents it. Examples: a Swarovski Hello Kitty, a signed Jon Taffer baseball card, a rare Dr. Fauci bobblehead.
EMBEDDED: Do you consume any content about fitness, diet, or other types of “wellness”? What creators or sites do you find most useful?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: I look at a lot of that kind of stuff for article research: Looksmaxxing Discords, Ray Peat Twitter, jelqing subreddits. The personal lesson I’ve taken away is that your mental defenses are amazingly weak, and just looking at that kind of stuff can quickly take you to really nasty places. I’m lucky to have a fairly chill relationship to my body, my diet, and exercise. I’d like to preserve that. My current health goals are to work out more, eat slightly fewer pointlessly decadent meals, and drink a little less. All of that can be achieved without content.
EMBEDDED: Is there a site you like for product recommendations? How do you decide, for example, which air filter to buy?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: I ask my mom, who then uses her subscription to Consumer Reports.
EMBEDDED: Have you recently read an article, book, or social media post about the internet that you’ve found particularly insightful?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: I read The Age of Surveillance Capitalism about five years ago, which did a good job of convincing me that social media is a mechanism of behavioral modification. Shoshana Zuboff argues that “Internet privacy” is important, not so much because you need to safeguard your secrets, but because it protects you from being unknowingly controlled. It’s cool to learn about the Internet by reading a giant 800-page hardcover book.
EMBEDDED: What’s the last thing that brought you joy online?
CHARLIE SOSNICK: I play the bass and I learned how to play “Midnight Train to Georgia” from a tab on UltimateGuitar.com. It’s awesome to be able to hear any song and find the sheet music instantly, for free.
Thanks Charlie! Read his writing and watch his short.
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