He’s born in a dumpster. In Gowanus Canal. It makes sense, really.
Meet Gowanus. He’s a puppet. He’s also the media rep for the Summer of Ludd, a Luddite festival held recently in New York City. By his own accounting, he shouldn’t be recording this interview at Condé Nast offices in Manhattan. He believes in presence. No phones. No cameras. Just people.
Be present. That is the rule.
Yet here we are.
Gowanus calls it pragmatism. He wants to reach you. Even if you’re on the wrong side of the digital divide. But there was a condition. He slid a handwritten contract across the table. No short-form clips. He doesn’t want your fifteen-second attention span dissecting his words for a TikTok or a Reel. He wants you to watch the whole thing. To commit.
I told him that’s not how marketing works. He agreed. Compromise. I only clip him explaining the contract itself.
It’s strange. A puppet representing a movement named after textile workers who smashed looms in 1812 England. Back then, Luddites fought against automation because it stripped their labor and livelihood. Today? The term is usually an insult. He’s a Luddite. Meaning: old, confused by Wi-Fi, stuck in the past.
Gowanus thinks that definition is lazy. He thinks we’re losing the point.
The movement is having a moment. And surprisingly? Gen Z is at the helm.
I sat down with the puppet—well, the person inside him—to talk about why kids who grew up on Instagram are now trading iPhone 14s for flip phones. I asked him about the philosophy. About the practicalities. About whether this is a protest or just a lifestyle trend.
He spoke for thirty minutes. He didn’t look at his notes. He looked at me. Or rather, through the puppet’s button eyes, at me.
Here’s what we said.
The Contract and The Critique
I started by asking why the anonymity matters.
In the 19th century, the original Luddites hid their identities because they faced imprisonment, even death, from the Crown. Today, Gowanus uses a mask not for survival but for symbolism. He says it prevents the movement from relying on figureheads. It keeps the focus on the idea. Not the influencer.
“We’re not creating cults of personality,” he said.
This leads to the contract again.
Gowanus hates the scroll. The swipe. The shoop. The endless ether where content dies instantly. He argues that short-form videos train us to treat human interaction as disposable.
“You look at the thing. You are done with it. The next thing is a frog eating a nugget,” he told me. “It is not engagement. It is consumption.”
So, yes. They use social media to advertise. They want the chronically online people to find the protest. But once you’re there? The goal is long-form attention.
He believes that most people use the word Luddite pejoratively. As an insult against incompetence. But for Summer of Ludd attendees, being a Luddite means holding technology accountable.
It asks who benefits.
Not Elon Musk. Not Mark Zuckerberg. You.
Who Are the Luddites?
You’d expect a crowd of angry elders refusing to learn Zoom. That wasn’t the case at all.
Summer of Ludd attracted people with phones they haven’t used in two decades. It attracted kids with new devices they already hated. It was a mix.
But here is the distinction: They are not against all tech. They are against Big Tech.
There is a difference between a hammer and an algorithm designed to steal your dopamine.
One event involved teaching people how to make their own event calendars. Not Instagram. Not Facebook events. RSS feeds. Newsletters. Things you own. Things that don’t feed the ad machine.
The problem, Gowanus explains, is enshittification. Social media platforms are flooded with slop. AI-generated cats. Fake news. Bots. It has become nearly impossible to find real information, like local concerts or community meetings, because you have to wade through thousands of fake videos to get there.
When communities use owned infrastructure, like newsletters or forums, they retain control.
“You can’t be on your own land if you are squatting in their digital building,” he noted.
How To Flirt IRL (And Why You Suck At It)
They also taught workshops on romance.
Yes. Romance.
One session was called Luddite Rizz. It didn’t teach pickup lines. It taught people how to be rejected.
In a dating app world, rejection is easy. You swipe left. It’s binary. Black and white. There is no nuance. There is no body language to read. Just a profile photo and a bio that says no avocado toast.
Gowanus argued this has atrophied our social muscles. We don’t know how to handle awkwardness. We don’t know what to do when someone says maybe. We don’t know what it feels like to stand in front of another person, expose ourselves to potential hurt, and hear them say no.
He encouraged attendees to confess a crush to someone they liked. In person. No script. Just risk.
The goal isn’t the sex. Or even the relationship.
The goal is relearning that connection is messy. It is slow. It requires patience that Tinder cannot provide.
The Bunny That Ate The Truth
They also held an evidence collection box.
The Summer of Ludd held a protest called SHITPHONE (Scathing Hatred of Information Technology…) where participants wore gnome hats. They put technologies on trial. One exhibit highlighted how dangerous the reliance on unchecked AI has become.
The story involved a teenager, his mom, and a rabbit.
The family just got a bunny. The mother wanted to know if rabbits can eat mushrooms. She didn’t ask a vet. She asked ChatGPT.
User: Can bunnies eat mushrooms?
AI: Yes! Bunnies can eat almost anything! Love you so much! 🐰
She fed her rabbit mushrooms. Regular, earthy shiitake or button mushrooms. Not psychedelics. Just fungus.
The bunny got violently sick. It nearly died.
The mother trusted the AI because the model sounded confident. It was sycophantic. It told her what it guessed she wanted to hear, rather than what was actually safe. The young person had to fact-check the bot, then fact-check his mother, to save the animal.
That story stays with you. It highlights a specific danger: AI doesn’t know things. It guesses them. It hallucinates reality to please the user.
This isn’t about tech being ‘evil’. It’s about tech being useful, and useful being dangerous if it lacks a human filter.
The interview didn’t end with a solution. It didn’t say, Throw your phone in the river. That would be easy. That would be performative.
The implication was more uncomfortable. You have to look at the screen differently. You have to ask what it costs to be there.
Gowanus wants you to realize you aren’t just a user. You’re raw material. He wants you to remember how to be bored. To be slow.
Maybe that’s too much to ask.
After all, you are probably reading this on that same glowing rectangle you can’t live without.
Did you finish this sentence? Or did you swipe up before you reached it?
I wouldn’t know. I’m just the puppet.
