Elan Ullendorff
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elan.place
Elan Ullendorff
@elan.place
1.4K followers 900 following 130 posts
Algorithmic escape artist | Rolling Stone called me one of the people "quietly keeping the spirit of the human, personal, creative internet alive"

Teaching @UPenn, Product @MarshallProj | 📍Philly

💌 Subscribe: https://escapethealgorithm.substack.com
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elan.place
Accepting "I loved his brain. I hated the idea of an intruder therein." into the canon of captions that would work on any New Yorker cartoon.
Two snowmen wearing boxing gloves face off in a snowy ring, one of their heads lies knocked off on the ground. A cartoon of Mr. Potato Head sitting on an exam table while a doctor reads from a clipboard. A cartoon of the Grim Reaper playing an electric guitar in his apartment, while a neighbor leans out a nearby window watching. A black-and-white cartoon illustration of a lively cocktail party. In the center, a smiling inflatable tube man — like the ones seen outside car dealerships — waves its arms cheerfully. Next to it, a man in a suit holding a drink gestures toward the tube man as if introducing it to the crowd.
November 17, 2025 at 4:38 PM
elan.place
teaching my escape the algorithm course again and it’s such a joy to be able to put such kind testimonials on the flyer 🥺
flyer for a course at penn called escape the algorithm. praise from past students: "this class was unlike any other one i've taken. it felt real and personal." "I'd enthusiastically recommend this course to anyone interested in platform design, media studies, or just figuring out how to move through the web more intentionally." "Escape the Algorithm taught me how to unsee the internet I thought I knew, and begin imagining what a more human, slower, stranger digital future could look like." "This class really reshaped how I think, create, and collaborate." "This course has been one of the most creatively liberating and intellectually stimulating experiences I've had at Penn."
November 3, 2025 at 5:13 PM
elan.place
I’m honored to have my essay The New Turing Test published in the Internet Phone Book, now in its second reprint through @metalabel.bsky.social

Revenue is split between contributors and the Living Web Institute, which has the goal of cultivating a better web

livingweb.metalabel.com/internetphon...
The Internet Phone book lying on a page being colored on by a child spread of the Internet Phone Book spread of the Internet Phone Book Internet phone book carried in a pocketbook
September 15, 2025 at 4:50 PM
elan.place
whoever said AI won’t create jobs can eat their hat now
Instagram screenshot, post by 404mediaco: freelance developers and entire companies are making a business out of fixing shoddy vibe coded software
September 11, 2025 at 4:05 PM
elan.place
In late March, @spencer.place and I wrapped up our Gift Interfaces class at @sfpc-study.bsky.social. On our last day, we threw a gift wrapping party. Then we opened them together. The resulting website represents the archive of our work together:

gifting-interfaces.pages.dev
June 11, 2025 at 2:45 PM
elan.place
the economy
upside down picture of victoria from white lotus with her thumb up. caption reads "(sighs, chuckles)"
April 7, 2025 at 4:21 PM
elan.place
one day maybe i'll write my snarky hyperbolic essay about how substack is three different pyramid schemes in a trench coat, but in the meantime i'll just point out that this is the most tried and true way to get engagement in the app 🥲
substack feed post 1: I don't care if you have 0 subscribers or 10,000. I want to read your work. Drop your Substack below. I will read as many as I can and subscribe to those that resonate. I will support the voices that need to be heard. And if a writer speaks to your soul, lift them up. Share their work. Pass it on. Your voice matters. Your words have power. Let's grow and rise together. post 2: Writers, let's grow together! Great newsletters deserve more eyes. Whether you have 0 or 100K subscribers, drop your Substack below and let people discover your work. See something interesting? Subscribe, share, or comment. Let's support each other! Drop your link & spread the word. substack post: i'm looking for non-viral substack essays. i keep seeing the same ones on my feed (and they're great!) but i want to read from smaller writers, the ones with fewer likes and views. so many people deserve to be read, but i feel like the algorithm is not vibing with me lately. anyway, drop your latest/favourite piece, and i'll read as many as i can:)
March 27, 2025 at 8:04 PM
elan.place
teasing you with more from our gift interface but sorry you'll have to stay tuned to open them!!
March 27, 2025 at 5:39 PM
elan.place
there’s nothing more telling than the fact that a platform like grammarly is both a tool for creating slop and for detecting it. like, the buttons are quite literally right next to each other.

you’re participating in an arms race against an industry that is already both sides of the arms race
three buttons in grammarly's interface: 1) review suggestions, 2) write with generative AI, 3) check for AI text & plagiarism
March 11, 2025 at 5:35 PM
elan.place
Every semester I take my Escape the Algorithm students at Penn to the local zine library called The Soapbox to talk about radical publishing and expressive design. While we’re there, the students each pick a zine and recreate it as a website.
Zines spread on a table Two students sitting in a zine library. One is holding a zine. One is on a laptop. Many students holding zines or browsing the stacks of a zine library A hand holding up a zine called Razorcake with orange splats and a spiderweb. Next to the zine is a laptop displaying a website copy of the zine.
March 6, 2025 at 4:00 PM
elan.place
A real embarrassment of riches: postcards from Escape the Algorithm readers turned ᵐⁱᶜʳᵒsupporters!! 🥺🥺🥺
8 postcards spread out on the table. one has an illustration of the chicago bean, one has a comic, and one reads "Hi, Elan. Did you expect to get one from more than 6,000km away when you typed 'write me a thoughtful postcard?'"
March 5, 2025 at 2:54 PM
elan.place
FlappyFavi is a flappy bird clone that lives in your favicon

mewtru.com/flappyfavi

(by tru narla)
February 13, 2025 at 10:12 PM
elan.place
📍 Location: anywhere
💲 Salary: $95-110k
✊ Represented by The Marshall Project Guild
🍃 Benefits: attached
Compensation and Benefits This job is full-time, with a competitive salary and benefits including: 100% employer-paid medical, employer-subsidized vision and dental insurance; matching traditional and Roth 401k (immediate vesting). Voluntary benefits include: Health and Dependent Care FSA, commuter benefits, pet insurance, short and long-term disability insurance, employee and dependent life insurance, AFLAC accident, hospital indemnity, and critical illness coverage, legal benefits, personal excess liability insurance, and employee discount marketplace. We also observe 17 days of paid time off each year (in addition to office closure between Dec. 24 and Jan. 2), and provide 20 weeks of paid parental leave. Annual Salary Range: $95–$110k The Marshall Project has office space in New York, but this job can be filled remotely. This job is represented by the Marshall Project Guild.
February 7, 2025 at 3:40 PM
elan.place
your subscribers are sending you $10/month. my subscribers are sending me jars of homemade pepper jelly. we are not the same.
Comment from Tom Pendergast: "How do you feel about homemade pepper jelly?"
February 5, 2025 at 8:05 PM
elan.place
Every generation gets a Tronc
It would allow us to create a new social media-like interface for journalism. Where we could reclaim the word ‘Fact’, and separate research and journalistic work from everyday opinions. Where short content links through to longer articles, where local news comes first, and where revenue is shared. We believe it’s a vision worth fighting for, and we’ve started bringing it to life under the name “niooze” (pronounced like ‘news’).
February 4, 2025 at 7:32 PM
elan.place
Our remaining rubrics:
Curiosity The exciting thing about this course material is that there are infinite lenses through which to examine algorithms. Please do not turn in work targeted at my curiosities. Everyone can find some way to square the course material with their own interests. So I expect you to obsess. Go down rabbit holes, seek out things that excite you. If you want to do a slightly different assignment, make the case to me for how it will better your learning. You may want to learn a skill not covered in class. I encourage that, and am happy to serve as a resource. Conscientiousness This classroom is a community. You are not in competition with each other. I would be thrilled if everyone received an A. I want you to complete your assignments and to pay attention not because it will affect your grade, and not only because it will facilitate your learning, but out of respect to your peers and their learning. Come to class on time. Avoid distractions, particularly when someone is speaking. Furthermore, I want you to support each other. Notice when your classmates are struggling. Share your expertise, and offer and ask for help. Criticality This course is all about having a critical eye towards algorithms, platforms, and the world. Criticism might not be a core goal of many of your other classes, but it is here. I want you to get used to questioning assumptions, and to imagining better alternatives. Accordingly, please disagree with each other (kindly). Please disagree with me (kindly). Your grade will never be at risk as a result of calling me out. On the contrary, that is valued here. Communication I am only one person. Hopefully I bring some expertise and interesting lenses to the material, but you all have valuable perspectives that I don’t, and I want you to share them with each other. Everyone has different strengths and preferences for participation, but you must find ways to contribute: by joining class discussions, asking questions during lectures, sharing a project or idea you came across between classes, taking notes for the class, or helping a classmate with their projects. Let me know if you’re going to miss class or if you’ll be running late. Let me know if you’re struggling or falling behind on work. If you do not communicate with me, it’s hard for me to support you.
February 3, 2025 at 5:42 PM
elan.place
This is the policy/rubric for using generative AI in my Escape the Algorithm classroom:
Expressiveness I am a real-life human bringing my full messy self to this classroom. I ask that you bring your full self as well. You will never hear me accuse you of cheating with generative AI. However, you will likely hear me tell you that I want to see even more of you in your work (whether or not you used AI). Generative AI will have limited use in acting expressively. If you do find uses for it in your work, be open about it and share. It’s less important to me that your work is perfectly polished, or that it reaches some [non-existent] objective aesthetic ideal. I want to see work that an AI wouldn’t have known how to make. Or forget about AI: I want to see work that is so you that nobody else could have made it.
February 3, 2025 at 5:42 PM
elan.place
"[This] connects me to the long history of queerness... Anonymous, often scared people saying 'I was here. No matter what they told you, I was here.' Queer people will never be erased. Trans people will never be erased. We were here. We are here. You are living history that deserves to be saved."
In light of all the chaos in the United States, I was thinking about archives, about how information is preserved when so many want to destroy it. I was thinking especially about queerness and how often regimes try to erase our history, our art, our lives. And so I started thinking about what I want to save. Not just of myself, but the digital artifacts I've collected over the years of our vibrant community. So I opened a web browser to search. I followed a link. I found the Zine Bakery's zine about web archiving. I followed more links. I found stickers from Molly White that say "I'm not hording I'm archiving". I followed her website to Maxwell Neely-Cohen's essay "Century-Scale Storage". I scrolled through his Bluesky. He mentioned an essay called "The Doc Web" by Elan Ullendorff. On his Bluesky account I found this link. This link and this story remind me of my early days on the internet, where looking for answers often led you someplace unexpected. Sometimes that place was personal or public or personally public in the ways only the internet can be. Sharing in these spaces, being visible, connects us even in times of disconnect. And for me, right now, in a tiny way it connects me to the long history of queerness that's come before. Anonymous, often scared people saying "I was here. No matter what they told you, I was here". Queer people will never be erased. Trans people will never be erased. We were here. We are here. You are living history that deserves to be saved.
January 30, 2025 at 3:22 PM
elan.place
collecting anecdotes of how it felt to use the early internet. this one from gary wolfe in a 1994 issue of wired is hitting me as simultaneously familiar and foreign
Upon entering the page, I was immediately distracted by another link, a quiet alcove halfway down that read "poetry archive". I wanted to see the poetry archive. I clicked. "Unable to connect to remote host," Mosaic responded. I was peeved. The door was locked! I clicked a link at the bottom of the screen, where the name of the author of the page was listed: Paul Mende. After a minute of waiting (not unusual), Mende's picture appeared. He was smiling and young, with bushy brown hair and a large mustache. His page listed his research interests: "String Theory, Quantum Chromdynamics." Then came a section called Odds and Ends, under which were listed New Fiction and Readings, Benjamin's Home Page, and "local docs." What were the local docs? Who was Benjamin? Most Popular The 22 Best Movies on Amazon Prime Right Now Culture The 22 Best Movies on Amazon Prime Right Now By Matt Kamen The 25 Best Shows on Amazon Prime Right Now TV The 25 Best Shows on Amazon Prime Right Now By Matt Kamen Before finding out, I glanced at the rest of the document, and it was then that I began to experience the vertigo of Net travel. On the lower parts of the page were abstracts of Paul's scientific papers, some co-authored with Benjamin Grinstein. "High energy string collisions in a compact space," was one of the titles. This meant nothing to me, of course. But, having sought a respite in poetry, it was dizzying to have wandered into the company of a physicist. It was a type of voyeurism, yes, but it was less like peeking into a person's window and more like dropping in on a small seminar with a cloak of invisibility. One thing it was not like: it was not like being in a library. The whole experience gave an intense illusion, not of information, but of personality. I had been treating the ether as a kind of data repository, and I suddenly found myself in the confines of a scientist's study, complete with family pictures.
January 26, 2025 at 3:31 PM
elan.place
"Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself"
January 24, 2025 at 8:26 PM
elan.place
the tediousness of synthesizing and summarizing [in this case, public meetings] is a feature, not a bug (by @biancawylie.com)

biancawylie.medium.com/automating-s...
That’s the impact on me on the inputs process. Then comes the summation, the work and skill required to try to figure out how to properly summarize what happened in a room, what happened on the worksheets. When I see AI being suggested as a summarizing agent, I’m not only concerned about the accuracy of what is created through the use of automation, but moreso the absence or loss of what does not get done — what is inefficient and what is dull. I’m concerned because in the time-pressured world we live in, where efficiency is a constant measure of our professional capacity, there is every incentive to rid ourselves of this type of work if and where we can. Then comes the difference between what a machine can summarize of words and what it cannot even consider because of how something was said. We’ve all been in a meeting where the delivery of a remark was much more important than the words used to say it. That is something that I’ve learned how to translate into my reporting. I’m pretty confident this skill is hard to pull off in any automated way.
January 23, 2025 at 8:58 PM
elan.place
i've spent months searching for a definition of "algorithm" that feels alive to the agency of both practitioners and users, and looks beyond the codebase to inputs and outputs in the broadest, societal sense. stumbling upon @nickseaver.website's work feels like homecoming.
We need to examine the logic that guides the hands, picking certain algorithms rather than others, choosing particular representations of data, and translating ideas into code. when our object of interest is the algorithmic system, “cultural” details are technical details — the tendencies of an engineering team are as significant as the tendencies of a sorting algorithm We can call this the algorithms as culture position: algorithms are not technical rocks in a cultural stream, but are rather just more water. Like other aspects of culture, algorithms are enacted by practices which do not heed a strong distinction between technical and non-technical concerns, but rather blend them together. In this view, algorithms are not singular technical objects that enter into many different cultural interactions, but are rather unstable objects, culturally enacted by the practices people use to engage with them.
January 22, 2025 at 5:00 PM
elan.place
building algorithmic attunement and agency (for @are.na editorial)

www.are.na/editorial/so...
If the most common metaphor for algorithms is following a recipe, then the goal shouldn’t be to stop making food, but to become so attuned to the shape of cooking that we can make substitutions and eventually, our own recipes. If we’re bold enough to question the maps we've been given, we may discover a world richer, stranger, and more alive than anything an algorithm could drop at our feet.
January 16, 2025 at 4:00 PM
elan.place
it makes me incredibly sad that it's become cool to brag about how little time and care was put into building something
Screenshot of a website with the text: Came up with the idea after getting tired of making boring weekly research presentations. Built the app in 1.5 days, and whipped up this landing page in 40 min
January 16, 2025 at 2:56 PM
elan.place
Honored that read.cv named howdidyoufind.me one of the best projects of 2024!
CycleMarks by Jon-Kyle Mohr The only circling back you should be doing this year. This fun new spin on bookmarking rounds up links for you to revisit over time! Homes + Studios by Isabel Münter and Rachael Yaeger This must be the place... I got plenty of time to explore this archive of artists’ homes and studios around the world, and it is where I want to be. howdidyoufind.me by Elan Ullendorff Nothing to track here — just stories about the site that give you a little more to chew on than cookies usually do. A real treat to read through!
January 7, 2025 at 9:10 PM