welcome to your yearly compilation of compilations, the nexialist flashback pt.i
hey, you! i hope this message finds you well! i have to say i was caught by surprise: there are only two more nexialists in 2025, since the new year starts on our sacred day, thursday. this means it’s time for our flashbacks: i’ve been doing these since year one (this is year 5, can you believe?). i know it looks like a long list (and it is), but i use it to refresh my mind along the year of themes i might have forgotten. this means you could do the same. if this is useful for you, i would recommend going down the list and opening topics that ring a bell or awaken some kind of curiosity.
i think it’s important to highlight some important moments for the nexialist this year. i had three keynotes as the nexialist: i did a 3-3-3 format for the future friends (tn#211) event here in amsterdam and presented at the rotterdam business school (tn#215) and denver ad school (tn#222) a class on how to be nexialist: forecasting, cultural insights and curatorship (and other skills for the 21st century). going from 0 to 3 is quite a big deal, so do not hesitate if you want to invite me to speak about nexialist-universe stuff. i also had the honor of collaborating with floatvibes for their newsletter quite a few times, as well as with tiktok brazil for some recurring internal cultural reports. (all of this beyond the work i love to do with envisioning.) finally, the nexialist reached 250 weeks/publications, with an original celebratory post with some learnings. it’s a lot to celebrate!
i hope you’ve enjoyed another year (or your first) as a reader, and this flashback edition! next week i’ll post my favorite music, art&miscellaneous, environment&history, words&terms, sex, love, gender&masculinity, and some brazil stuff 🫀✨
—Rodrigo Turra
1 year ago » 🎊✨The Nexialist #0204 - flashback 2024 - pt.i : top brainsparks that imprinted in me | ai & tech | culture and trends | nature & climate | lgbtqi+, masculinity and relationships | mental+health stuff
2 years ago » 🎄✨The Nexialist #0152 - flashback 2023 - pt.i : thank you! | my favorite nexialists of the year | content that stayed with me | paradoxes | culture, tech and futures | ai | reports
3 years ago » 💯✨The Nexialist #0100 - flashback 2022 - pt.i : thank you | albums that gave me goosebumps | videos i had on repeat | TV, series and films | musical discoveries | experiences | my favorite nexialists | extra: recipes
4 years ago » 🔁✨The Nexialist #0050 - Flashback 2021 - pt.i : Things That Changed My Life This Year | Futures Thinking | Ancestrality and Decolonization | Digital Culture | Concepts | Tools
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these were posts that stayed with me: they help me start conversations, created new images in my head, support me on defending ideas for projects, or structure other thoughts.
hyper-optimization (tn#210)
the great chiasmus (tn#216)
cultural vacuums (tn#254)
when space becomes sound (tn#228)
unthinkable futures (tn#233)
homo crustaceous (tn#233)
beyond fashion’s anti-woke era (tn#237)
digital garden (tn#227)
world music (tn#252)
surveillance as love language (tn#209)
how supermarkets rewired the planet (tn#241)
panopticon aesthetics (tn#218)
a bestiary of the anthropocene (tn#211)
amuzing ourselves to death (tn#208)
meta trending trends 2025 (tn#211)
fashion neurosis (tn#207)
seeing without eyes (tn#207)
nikon’s small world (tn#209)
a compost theory of culture (tn#225)
amsterdam’s map, explained (tn#246)
cultural insights, reports and other observations making sense of our zeitgeist and coolness.
how to study culture (tn#232)
taste is the new intelligence (tn#235)
new luxury pyramid (tn#209)
whiplash culture (tn#237)
cultural ice age (tn#243)
unmasking minimalism (tn#241)
types of nostalgic (tn#245)
the discourse is broken (tn#237)
post-luxury status symbols (tn#220)
hypernormalization (tn#210)
neo-medievalism (tn#236)
madonna-ology (tn#211)
dua lipa’s questions (tn#217)
escape economy (tn#212)
the new rules of youth culture (tn#212)
the new aesthetics of slop (tn#215)
let them eat lore (tn#243)
anatomy of hype (tn#217)
is cool dead? (tn#235)
scene cool x internet cool (tn#239)
not needing to be seen (tn#252)
cool people (tn#245)
subculture never died (tn#254)
pop culture apocalypse (tn#225)
social and cultural infrastructure (tn#225)
neoperreo (tn#232)
the gen z stare (tn#235)
how did the world get so ugly? (tn#247)
zeitgeist 2025 (tn#254)
not yet trending (pinterest) report (tn#255)
yes, ai has been one of the main themes here, and i grouped them with some other posts about technology.
2025 tech trends (tn#218)
ai for what? (tn#225)
model collapse (tn#211)
the botification of us (tn#253)
technocracy incorporated (tn#213)
cranking the dopamine machine (tn#208)
self-imprisonment (tn#238)
calling artists ‘creators’ (tn#208)
the ghosts in the machine (tn#208)
ai + artreview (tn#208)
google = east india company (tn#209)
technovelgy (tn#211)
ai dreams (tn#235)
children’s ai manifesto (tn#218)
capability atrophy (tn#226)
ghiblification (tn#219)
audible enclaves (tn#219)
medieval historian vs ai (tn#220)
vibe civilization (tn#221)
terms of centaur service (tn#223)
agentic sages (tn#225)
data center dystopia (tn#241)
silicon valley’s wrong future (tn#243)
context engineering (tn#244)
the tech world is looking bleak and overwhelming, these texts/projects gave me some kind of awakening/hope.
capitalists killed the internet (tn#212)
post-naive internet era (tn#252)
craft is rebellion (tn#223)
releasing > posting (tn#210)
growing/dying internet (tn#248)
groucore (tn#248)
defining groupcore (tn#253)
make zines, not content (tn#245)
virtual zine library (tn#254)
the comfortable life is killing you (tn#224)
fetishizing friction (tn#235)
design fiction as strategy (tn#224)
gen z protests (tn#248)
protesting under surveillance (tn#232)
ai is our ultimate test (tn#225)
ai will help us… leave social media (tn#252)
mystery in the digital age (tn#228)
chatgpt won’t make you dumb (tn#232)
the end of strategy as we know it (tn#232)
writing with probabilistic machines (tn#255)
magic realism for designers (tn#240)
continent of play (tn#240)
esoteric coding (tn#245)
water-based intelligence (tn#238)
biocomputing (tn#238)
i noticed this year i posted more content than usual specifically about media, with synthetic media invading our screens and making us question reality.
the death of a fantastic machine (tn#231)
media & machines (tn#224)
neural media (tn#217)
digital plastic (tn#236)
cybernetis and philosophy (tn#219)
algorithmic condition (tn#219)
antimemetics (tn#221)
necromemetics (tn#222)
atypography (tn#228)
camera obscura (tn#237)
the moving image (tn#237)
hoick! (tn#251)
race to the bottom of human dignity (tn#240)
self-destructing reality (tn#240)
the dead link dilemma (tn#248)
these posts are about ways of thinking, mental health or observations about our minds.
thick imagination (tn#223)
murmuration brain (tn#227)
experimental mindset (tn#220)
mandela effect (tn#238)
chatgpt psychosis (tn#238)
schizo-fication of the online world (tn#217)
godgpt (tn#232)
atomic unit for knowledge (tn#255)
curated coping machanism (tn#224)
humiliation rituals (tn#235)
moral ambition (tn#226)
becoming post-tragic (tn#216)
competitive wellness (tn#220)
doomprompting (tn#243)
life as computation (tn#247)
everybody rides the carousel (tn#249)
unrealized projects (tn#253)
more than ever tech and politics are intertwined, despite governments not being fully ready to regulate it.
unsilence gaza (tn#229)
social change map (tn#233)
living wage for artists (tn#246)
failures of globalization (tn#236)
early situationist manifesto (tn#253)
digital coup (tn#221)
more political music? (tn#248)
hostage to trumpism (tn#208)
fear-driven capitalism (tn#209)
limitarianism (tn#212)
headed for technofascism (tn#213)
techno-fascism (tn#215)
cloud capitalism (tn#214)
dictator questions (tn#218)
fascism is here (tn#226)
covid lessons (tn#217)
I truly believe innovation comes from bringing improbable areas together, and that’s why I called this project The Nexialist. Some sectors are known to be self-referencing and hermetic. Sometimes, teams are on autopilot mode, focused on the daily grind, which hinders innovation. As a Nexialist, I like to burst these bubbles, bringing references from different areas, and maintaining teams inspired and connected to the Zeitgeist.
I offer inspiration sessions called Brainsparks, creative desk research (Zeitgeist Boost), Plug’n’Play deals for workshops and sprints, and other bespoke formats. If you want to know more about this, send me an e-mail with your challenge(s) and we can figure something out together. Check out my website and some work I’ve done below:
thenexialist.xyz
