The key to creating gorgeous, glitchy YouTube images: anticipation and deletion
When I was younger, I had a soccer coach who stressed the importance of anticipation. “An-tiiii-ciiiiiii-PAY-shun,” he’d yell at us, while we were diving around for the ball. If we did it right, he promised, we’d be able to do in soccer what Neo does in The Matrix — not, like, stop bullets, but be in the right place at the right time to stop an attack on our goal. I wasn’t too great at it, at least not at first.
But the lesson stuck. I can hear coach’s voice even now, when I navigate the crush of travelers during New York City’s all-too-frequent rush hours. This is all to say that prediction is key; it’s the difference between getting the ball in the back of the net and whiffing entirely, the gap between getting a seat on a crowded...