r/Does-
This-
Matter

Jiyeon Yang
& Emily Wagner

About

This project presents a book as an immersive scroll through online thinking. Rather than curating or explaining content, it recreates the experience of moving through Reddit, where people externalize everyday thoughts, fears, anger, and speculation. Posts often drift away from the present moment into imagined futures, worst-case scenarios, or emotional spirals. The project is motivated by the observation that fear of the future increasingly dominates online discourse. Technological anxieties and existential questions accumulate in digital spaces, making it difficult to stay grounded in the “now.” The internet becomes a shared environment where these thoughts are amplified, repeated, and validated.

Design Rules

The visual system remains identical throughout the entire book. All layout decisions are automated to mirror the uniform interface of online platforms.

  • Randomly sized text boxes (S / M / L)
  • Typography scales according to box size
  • No manual layout decisions per chapter
  • No visual hierarchy or emotional ranking

Variation in scale does not assign meaning or importance. Instead, it reflects the apparent randomness of online discourse, where very different voices and emotional states appear side by side.

Technology

All content was collected and organized in Google Sheets, which functioned as a shared database. The texts were then connected to a custom web layout using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This setup allowed the project to function as a web-based system while simultaneously enabling a web-to-printworkflow. The same rules that structure the digital layout are directly translated into the printed book, reinforcing the idea of an automated, continuous feed.

Conclusion

The project explores immersion, loss of orientation, and the ease with which attention is pulled away from the present moment when engaging with the internet. By maintaining a fixed system while shifting emotional content, the book exposes how online spaces normalize speculative, fearful, and unresolved thinking — not through emphasis, but through accumulation.

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