Constraints are good for creativity
Spending time with the Camp Snap screen-free digital camera
This issue of Social Signals was written to The Grand Illusion by Styx — if you haven’t played “Come Sail Away” for the Generation Alpha in your life, I highly recommend it. 🤯
Let’s get nostalgic for a minute. There was a time when cameras took film, you only had 24 shots, and you had to take the footage to a processing facility and then wait to see what you got. Oh, and if you dropped off on a Tuesday you got free doubles.
Creative people have a love-and-hate relationship with boundaries. From creative briefs to legal, budget to time, variables that create parameters are ultimately good for ideas.
There’s a wonderful book my friend
recommended to me years ago called “A Beautiful Constraint” by Adam Morgan & Mark Barden that argues that constraints, rather than being obstacles, can fuel creativity and foster a culture of resilience and resourcefulness.Knowing that every single press of the shutter on a camera was precious and limited created pressure and urgency on the scarcity of film. And having to wait until it was developed to see if you captured something wonderful was part of the fun.
Of course, you all know I’m not anti-technology when it comes to photos. For example, I went to a WNBA basketball game with friends this week and took 53 photos on my phone, and then chose the best ones to strategically share selects across Swarm, Threads, Instagram and Facebook in real-time.
But that scarcity and pressure is good, and I seek it out.
It’s one of the reasons I’ve been having so much fun seeing the creativity in my fax machine project (ahem — fax me at 316-854-0132) and love to explore how to create new things with outdated technology.
So when I heard about the Camp Snap Screen-Free Digital Camera, I knew it was going to scratch an itch that those “wait 24 hours photo apps” like Gudak, One Hour Photo and Dispo just didn’t.
I got a Camp Snap camera for Father's Day (thanks kids!), and it’s a screen-free digital camera where you just point and shoot. It holds 2,000 images, and doesn’t have different lenses, filters, a clock, nor a short battery life. And you have to wait to get the pics off until you're at a computer.
The device was created by a couple looking for a solution to help their kids capture pictures at camp without a phone.
Here are a few examples from me playing around with it this week:
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc98c05be-a71b-4ed8-bda9-0ac4c6518ed0_3264x2448.png)
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd38e3480-29cd-4e92-b3fc-70e5d751a5d8_3264x2448.png)
I will say that camera is incredibly sensitive to light, so you get a retro Insta-vibe on the pictures even without the default sepia filter that comes auto-loaded. And yes, that first picture is of my cellphone phonograph + fax machine taken by my weird screen-free camera.
Constraints are good for creativity. And I’m excited to push the boundaries of my new Father’s Day present. What a gift!
🏆 The Shorty Impact Awards Early Deadline Next Week!
Being in the business of ideas + tech + culture is my favorite. And having the opportunity to do GOOD in the world, too? Well, that's simply the best. 😎
Being named a judge for the 9th annual Shorty Impact Awards again this year is truly an honor, and I'm so excited to remind you to get those entries in!!! Early deadline is June 27th.
🎙️ The Cave Project LIVE at Social Media Breakfast is out!
We were THRILLED to partner with Social Media Breakfast for a special interactive and live recording of The Cave Project in Minneapolis with more than 100 attendees listening in, asking questions, and having conversations. Show notes are here on Substack, and the episode is LIVE on Apple and Spotify…
Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, subscribe on Substack to be notified of future episodes, and follow The Cave Project on Instagram!
⚡️ Social Signals
Likes on X are now private. Which means there’s even less accountability and transparency on the platform. Let alone if they are bots. Any brands actually still running ads there better be pushing deep into this in planning and reporting. Also, Elon Musk is walking telling advertisers pulling their ads to “go f— yourself.” Okay.
SimCity for Instagram!? There’s a new app called Butterflies where you create AI social network profiles and then they engage with each other. It’s…. something. I’ll have my fake ai profiles follow your fake ai profiles. The most fun part — writing the initial prompt for creating a character who will expand wildly out of your starting seed and then start posting, commenting, DM’ing using ever expanding bits of the personality you started.
‘Oddly Satisfying’ cow pedicure videos are a hit on TikTok. Stop it.
TikTok introduced Symphony Digital Avatars, and things are gonna get weird(er). In other words, TikTok is about to change forever.
The week before the Tony’s I turned to my wife and said, “I think flash mobs are coming back,” and we both kind of scowled. So you can imagine how anxious/excited I was to get
’s latest substack post, “I'm Sorry But Flash Mobs Are Back.” I’m dreading the brainstorms on these already.David Holz mentioned in today’s Midjourney office hours that they have more customers over 45 than under 18. He said you’re more likely to run into a 65-year-old woman than a teenager in MidJourney’s community (via
).Meta launched its Threads API for developers, allowing them to build "unique integrations." This should lead to third-party Threads apps.
Check out South Korea’s space out competition, where contestants compete to see who is the best at doing… nothing.
This paper called Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead by Leopold Aschenbrenner, an OpenAI engineer, is only 140 pages and is hitting my feeds in chunks. Good Twitter thread summary here. Always skeptical but watchful on signals like these. Key quote: “We are building machines that can think and reason. By 2025/26, these machines will outpace many college graduates. By the end of the decade, they will be smarter than you or I; we will have superintelligence, in the true sense of the word.
Gen Z wants to be cool and gatekeep culture, but they also don't remember a world without algorithms recommending content at them. So things are getting a little confusing (via
).NASA's stunning Pride flag is made entirely from space imagery.
Biden is hiring a meme manager. This is a huge milestone that I equate with Obama launching a White House blog.
Key quote: Specifically for Gen Z, a 2021 study from the Journal of Student Research concluded that meme culture for the generation is deeper than a simple online joke and is “a form of speech” in “political discourse.” The study concluded that if marketing teams “use memes, understanding humor preferences” of Gen Z, it “could be greatly beneficial to marketing and social outreach.”
Apple’s upcoming iOS 18 features had a few that didn’t make the keynote worth noting (New eye tracking for iPhone; ‘Math Notes’ works on iPhone; Change the flashlight’s beam width; Bezel animations; QR code for sharing your Wi-Fi password)
Op-Ed of the Week: I won an AI image award with a real photo to show we’re not adapting to the technology fast enough.
Key quote: “I think the jury is not to blame here. The fact that they didn’t pick up on my little stunt doesn’t speak to a lack of expertise, but to the existence of psychological biases. They were simply not prepared for anybody entering a real photo into the AI category because they didn’t expect it. Why would they?
But that’s the thing: In the same vein, we, as a society, are nowhere near prepared to question every image, audio file, or video we come across, because historically we didn’t have to. And maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe that would be sad, to question everything and everyone that is not right in front of our eyes. But our critical thinking will have to race AI’s lightspeed development if we want to stay ahead of it, and that’s an individual responsibility we all share.”
Instagram became TikTok, so TikTok is becoming Instagram. As predicted, TikTok’s parent company is launching a new photo app called Whee!
Good Read of the Week: I Know What the Apple Vision Pro Is For = The headset is already changing disabled users’ lives.
Thread of the Week: 40 years of Boston Dynamics robots.
Tweet of the Week: earth is littered with the ruins of empires that believed themselves to be endless.
TikTok of the Week: Military recruiting social has gone up a notch (via Jake Bullington)
Stream of the Week: The Year Earth Changed is a must-watch. Brought me right back to the lockdown.
YouTube of the Week: How to Make a CPU
Insta Reel of the Week: Analyzing how much Nemo is in Finding Nemo
Insta Account of the Week: I absolutely love this kid Jack and his unbridled enthusiasm to watch, record, and share the lights turning off at places like Applebee’s, Dollar Tree, and Subway.
See you in the future! 🚀
Greg