On Those AI Sparkles ✨
What they mean, and why they're everywhere
Welcome, cherished paid subscribers, to this new unnamed series! I may not know what to call it yet, but I do know what I want it to be. I want to write something just for you with more regularity. Maybe it’s a reflection on a social phenomenon. Maybe it’s a review of something based on the recommendations you give me. Or maybe, like today, it’s dragging you down a rabbit hole with me.
In general, I’d like to foster more of a community here. Community will be important in the years ahead. I want my Substack to be a neighborhood of muppets that all talk to each other. I will be the only human. It’s my show. But let’s make this a place where we can come to laugh, cry, and think. For my inaugural piece, I’m talking about a shape that’s all over the internet right now, what it means, and why it’s gained such ubiquity these days.
Oh, and if you end up thinking of a snappy name for this series, give it to me. Don’t be greedy. Thank you.
I love the word “glamour.” It goes without saying that I’m a fan of fur coats, expensive jewelry, lying on my velvet fainting couch, being hand-fed grapes, firing my butlers just before Christmas via my porcelain rotary phone, and so on. But I also love the word’s etymology. It stems from “grammar,” which, in ye olden days, meant “knowing one’s letters.” Learning. Education. Knowledge. “Glamour” came about as a variant to address a specific aspect of that learning: astrology, magic, the occult. “Glamour” eventually became a category of spells. Specifically, a glamour is an illusion cast to alter the perception of the glamoured person or item.
The entire web of this word is so neat. I really appreciate the fine, silky threads connecting all the meanings. Glamour (excess, glitz, shine) has long been a technology of the ruling class, advertisers, and charlatans. Glamour, whether it’s a spell or a sports car, distracts, occludes. What’s the truth underneath? The frailty of the universal human condition, I suppose. Glamour looks good. It’s aspirational. Special people have it, people leading lives shinier than our own, people we aspire to be more like. In reality, those people are mere flesh and blood, destined for the same box underground as the rest of us. There’s nothing actually better about them. But it feels nice to believe otherwise. That’s the spell. We can’t help but want a little bit of that sparkle for ourselves.
If glamour were distilled into an emoji, that emoji would all but certainly be the sparkles emoji. The sparkle✨ is the symbol of magic and of shiny new toys. I’m not going to lie, I thought “the sparkle shape” would have a lesser-known, more elegant name. But it doesn’t. I’m pretty sure it’s just called a “sparkle,” a stylized diamond often depicted in groups of three or more. You’ll find them trailing behind a magic wand or emphasizing the preciousness of a jewel. The sparkle’s domain is light, stars, gems, glitter, fairy dust, illusion, sorcery. Abracadabra! Presto! Like the word “glamour,” the sparkle straddles the line between jewelry and witchery. Also, like glamour, the sparkle is being used to hide something.