The Weekly Reekie: As Mankind Devolves, Sick The Mag Stands Out
The Spring 2024 edition of Sick The Mag dropped in my mailbox this week in all its metallic bubble-wrapped glory, and I was bursting with pride to see that editor Luke had chosen to use one of my black and white film photos on the cover. It’s an honor I hardly felt worthy of. But there were even more surprises in store for me inside the book. I can’t even describe how incredible it felt to see my coverage of the Hardass 1000 event laid out across 35 pages featuring 70 (yes, 70!!!) of my analogue photos, plus the cover starring AJ John’s Chevy gasser. I went into shock for a little bit. All I could do was stare at it and drool. Needless to say, your not-so-humble videographer was feeling very effing humble.
This is a high point in my career and in my life, but it’s far bigger than me. This is about human devolution being done the right way.
You see, as a fan of late-70s new-wave pop group Devo, I subscribe to the theory of De-Evolution – the notion that species can revert to supposedly more primitive forms over time. The band’s somewhat playful hypothesis was that human evolution had peaked and we are now on the downside, which almost seems irrefutable when you look at the way some things are going (or have gone).
At the risk of turning this into an ‘Old Man Yells at Cloud’ routine, it seems pretty clear that humans are getting dumber as technology gets smarter. We’re losing our skills for convenience sake. First went our basic survival skills, next will be the core educational values of reading, writing, arithmetic and navigation! I look forward to the day that mankind invents the self-tying shoelace. Then we can all get lobotomies and call it mission accomplished for the species.
This is why I feel it’s important to recognize and to celebrate those times when devolution manifests in ways that help keep us in touch with older technologies and endangered artforms. A great example is Sick The Mag itself.
The traditional publishing industry has been bleeding out slowly since the internet first reared its head. Masthead closures and staff cuts are all too common. You only need to look at the complete editorial bloodbath at sports bible Sports Illustrated earlier this year to see that the industry is not in good health.
Sick The Mag is an outlier in modern media – an independently owned, high-quality print publication that’s bucking every trend. Their decision to publish my 35mm black and white film photos only underscores their commitment to creating something unique and special.
The reason Sick The Mag is flourishing where others flounder is that they focus on doing everything that the internet can’t do – big glossy pictures, intelligent long-form journalism, a deep tactile experience. Even just the sheer density and weight of the book – it’s over 200 pages and it feels like something significant. It’s so damn impressive that it’s no wonder it’s growing at an exponential rate. Magazine production, black and white analogue photography, the internal combustion engine, they’ve all supposedly been usurped by newer, better technologies, but there’s good and bad sides to everything. We sometimes need to ask ourselves: is the trade-off worth it? In some of these cases, I’m not convinced that it is. Some might say I’m trying to hold on to the past too tightly, but I could counter that maybe us humans shouldn’t throw away ideas and technologies so easily.
Next time you push a button, consider what you may ultimately stand to lose. At least while you can still exercise your ability to think.
Sick The Mag is devolution done right, and it’s a privilege to be involved.
More from Matt Reekie…
