Salons are the future of socializing and I’m hosting one online this Saturday

Rachel Haywire

Oct 19, 2023

It goes like this. I’m hosting a salon this Saturday afternoon and would love for you guys to attend. I believe that salons will take on the leading role for social gatherings in the coming century. In the next few years, they’ll take place at pop-up shows and speakeasies, and this Saturday I’ll be hosting one online. The topic is Artificial Intelligence and Music – Sounds of the Future and Beyond. You can purchase tickets here.

Old readers of mine know that I’ve been a host at the Interintellect for a while now. My host profile was recently updated. I’ve hosted salons on Artificial Intelligence and the arts, festivals, digital subcultures, fashion, architecture, and propaganda. I also hosted the first online salon known to the public during the pandemic, which featured guests ranging from philosophers like Alexander Bard and Nina Power (now Senior Editor of Compact Magazine) to economists like Robin Hanson to burlesque dancers like Heather Siler to experimental electronic musicians like Guilty by Design.

It is fair to say that salons are my passion.

Recently, I decided I wanted to host a new salon on AI and music with Berlin music pioneer Zsolt Török. The description is as follows:

“Much has been discussed about the intersection of AI and art, but what about AI and music? Rachel Haywire and Zsolt Török will explore the intersection of AI and music in this premier salon, welcoming everyone to stop by and converse about the future of music and how AI will impact our creative growth as a species. 

As more and more new AI-powered tools are being developed to assist musicians in every part of their workflow from composition through sound design to mixing and mastering, pioneer artists like Holly Herndon and Grimes are leading the charge for a new type of creativity in which musicians can use their voices as AI instruments in their own songs. 

Rachel Haywire and and Zsolt Török will discuss their careers in the music industry while conversing about the ways in which AI and music have impacted the culture in the past and the present, drawing comparisons with past technological innovations like sampling, and going over a wide range of possibilities for AI and music in the future. Feel free to come by with links to your own AI music projects, or simply to share your ideas about what you think will happen when AI and music collide.”

If any of you buy tickets to my salon, I will give you a free lifetime membership to The Cultural Futurist. I know the tickets are a bit pricy since I have a co-host who I’m splitting the royalties with, so I want to make sure the experience you’re getting is worth it. If you buy a ticket, just shoot me an email with your confirmation, and I’ll sign you up for a lifetime comp to The Cultural Futurist.

Additionally, I welcome anyone who is against AI to attend this event, as I don’t want to be speaking into an echo chamber. If you think AI is bad for musicians, please come by to share your opinions. Also, if you have a project you want to promote, come by and share your work. Even if you just want to hang out with me online, join me and Zsolt this Saturday afternoon.

I’ve been throwing salons for the past decade, and my core mission is to bring them back to this modern world. Picking up where I left off, this salon marks my transition back into the world of hosting.

While I know this is a promotional post about my new event, I invite any and all of you to share your opinions on salons in this post. Will the future of socializing be at salons in speakeasies and pop-ups as I have predicted, or will the way people socialize in the future take another shape? Have you been to any recent salons offline or off? What was your experience like? Sound off about salons in this thread, and buy tickets to my salon this Saturday.

I’m not going to lie. It has been hard to get any promotion for this event due to the deletion of my Twitter/X account. While the deletion feels like the right decision for me, it has outright locked me out of visibility. Since it has been over 30 days since my Twitter/X account was nuked, there is nothing I can do to get it back. This has been causing me some unfortunate mental health issues. It’s very difficult to go from visible to invisible without any transition. Yet I’m staying strong and adjusting to my new life of invisibility doing something that I love, completely from the ground up.

When asked why I deleted my Twitter/X account, I cited the following reasons:

• Algorithm boasting of the same annoying meme accounts over and over again
• Lowering of the general intelligence of the platform
• Attention-seeking e-girl/trad influencers
• Astroturfing of the dissident scene
• Irony poisoned nihilists without anything interesting to say clogging the spotlight

So, while I support what Elon has done for free speech and his Community Notes feature that has helped expose the bias of fake and partisan journalism, I could not stick around for what was basically a glorified version of 4chan. The Elon I respect is the Elon who started SpaceX and Neuralink. I actually don’t know how so many of you are still on that platform now, but you guys have a visibility which I no longer do, and it’s a visibility I was willing to sacrifice so I could do what I felt was right.

I believe that the future of social media is offline, and that Substack is the place where this transition from online to offline socializing is occurring. We may not be fully there yet, but I believe we are on our way. I’m excited for the era of irony and nihilism to be over and the era of sincerity and gravitas to begin. I’m excited for an end to the tyranny of engagement farming and the beginning of a beautiful future.

Anyway, I hope to see you guys at my salon this Saturday. <3