Introducing "Ick"

Dani Loftus introduces Dirt’s new Instagram-native magazine.

In 1750 BCE a merchant etched "what do you take me for…?” onto a clay tablet, now sitting behind glass at the British Museum. Icks are as old as Babylon. But in our chronically online culture, there is something for everyone to be repulsed by—from trolling, to ragebait, to staged beef. 

Very little of this is artful. It’s unlikely to end up in any museum. To wit, we’re bringing back the art of creative complaining, asking the smartest people we know what disgusts them. 

Rather than confusing icks for ineptitudes, at Dirt we understand them as a powerful charge for creation. As Oscar Wilde puts it in his short fairytale The Remarkable Rocket, “The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everyone else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.” 

A tribute to the energy that lies within distaste, Ick is an Instagram-native magazine for creative complaining. Edited by This Outfit Does Not Exist’s Dani Loftus and existing solely on social media, Ick is the place to scroll through the snarks of people you admire.

Ick is made possible by Air—a creative operations platform for individuals and teams. As a visual workspace that optimizes how teams collect, approve, and share content, Air is a place for ickspiration to fester and eventually find its final form.  

Ewwww, 
Dani Loftus & Daisy Alioto

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