web curation as art
There is too much stuff on the internet.
You've probably heard of "decision fatigue" and read about the jam story. Put simply, when faced with five jams, customers will comfortably make a decision and buy a jam. When faced with one hundred jams, the customer feels overwhelmed, and won't buy any.
Curation, or the art of picking notable things out of a pile of stuff, saves individuals time and makes decision making easier. Everyone on the internet is a kind of curator - every day we like and bookmark and share things to our friends. In a way, every time we do this we are saying "This, out of all the things I've looked at, is worth something."
Curators can also elevate their craft to a level of art. These tastemakers can pick a collection of seemingly unrelated things and put them on a list under the banner of their personal credibility or brand to delight or inspire an audience. For example, it might be extremely interesting to browse an author's Pinterest boards to see what images inspire their work. Fashion moguls can create lists of their favorite pieces across brands based on extremely specific criteria, in order to meet an extremely specific audience.
Curation tools can be lists of any kind - analog or digital, there are numerous tools to keep track of it all. I like the minimalist aesthetic of are.na, though keeping iPhone notes works just as well. Bookmarks in Chrome is passable, as long as you find a way to aggregate and share what you find. Similarly, making and sharing Google Sheets is the simplest way to make a collection and share it with the world.
However, it is also possible to curate directly on a social media feed like Instagram or X. The purpose is to highlight cool things without a search engine, and to almost create feeds within feeds to connect to specialized, niche audiences.
Keeping this in mind, I hope to share more curated lists of internet things I find interesting and valuable. I've been collecting such lists from friends for years, but I am beginning to consider what this kind of curation should look like in 2026.