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A Brief History of the Slowcore Manifesto
"Slowcore" on the purple app started out as a made-up term to express distaste for hustle culture.
@trishd and I started the /slowcore-hq channel on April 8, 2024 for another project: Black Stone Sanctuary. We selected /slowcore-hq after considering many abbreviations for our name, none of which fit well into the 16 character limit for channel names. Since the word "slowcore" was already part of our behind-the-scenes lingo, it made sense at the time.
Then Farcaster adopted the concept of slowcore, and it took on a life of its own: /gmfarcaster featured slowcore as a trending topic, and @tombeck.eth published a timely essay called "In Praise of Going Slow," which received rave reviews and put slowcore "on the map."
Tom writes:
"I am reminded of Jenny Odell and _How to Do Nothing,_ where she writes that part of "doing nothing" is "about disengaging from the attention economy" in order to "reengage with something else." Both Odell and Swanson have pointed their sights directly at the extractive forces behind the commercial web of the '10s and '20s, asking the question: can we build internet platforms and social media networks with different incentives built in? To do so, we might first have to incubate a slower frame of mind."
Inspired by Tom's work and the Farcaster scenius, @trishd and I wanted to help this nascent movement reach the right people. So we moved Black Stone Sanctuary to a new channel (/blxstonesnctuary), turned the /slowcore-hq channel name over to the community, and signed on for the collective journey.
We did not set out to write a slowcore manifesto. But after Tom's essay and the enthusiastic response to the following excerpt adapted from my essay "Slowcore and the Inner Genius," it became clear that the concept "belonged" to the Farcaster scenius — a reminder that the context is smarter than us.
We wouldn't have it any other way.
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THE SLOWCORE MANIFESTO
The term slowcore is an affirmation of a commitment to cultivating patience, holding space for emergence, protecting our time and attention from extractive forces, and respecting the indwelling intelligence of the creative process.
This means:
- Slow culture is the norm, not the exception.
Slow culture is the norm for all our endeavors, business endeavors included. As much as possible, we work in ways that allow sufficient time for leisure, rest, play, reflection, and quality attention for everyone involved.
- Prioritize meeting unmet needs.
We prioritize meeting unmet needs (human and non-human; this includes our own) for care, reciprocity, health, service, silence, rest, darkness, deep listening, play, beauty, time spaciousness, incubation, artistic integrity, and collective long-term sustainability.
- Cultivate emergence, not "jobbing."
We endeavor to shape the emergent entity into what it wants to become, at its own pace, through an iterative process. If we compromise, rush, overcommit ourselves, or cut corners, sooner or later the work will become more like a job than a creative process. "Jobbing" is not the right approach for this project; taking on excessive attention labor will lead us in the wrong direction.
- The slowcore north star is deep refinement, reclaiming, and sovereignty of human attention.
Of course, in a culture that normalizes endless micro-dispersals of attention and extractive "creator economy" patterns, all this is far easier said than done.
A slowcore philosophy serves as a reminder to keep these ideals top-of-mind as we endeavor to build something we hope will endure beyond our lifetimes.
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