Natalie Hanson Sehnsucht – addictive yearning
It’s rare that I have a chance to do more than skim the headlines of my RSS reader, but there are a few that I check regularly. One of those is Elezea, written by Rian van der Merwe. He writes at the intersection of technology, design, and sociology, so the topics are almost always of interest. Plus, by my standards he’s prolific – there is always something new and interesting to read!
At the beginning of the summer I wrote a post about Digital Hoarding, so I was especially interested in his reference to a well-written article about online curation from the New York Times:
There’s a German word for it, of course: Sehnsucht, which translates as “addictive yearning.” This is, I think, what these sites evoke: the feeling of being addicted to longing for something; specifically being addicted to the feeling that something is missing or incomplete. The point is not the thing that is being longed for, but the feeling of longing for the thing. From Carina Chocano’s New York Times article entitled Pinterest, Tumblr and the Trouble With ‘Curation’.
I highly recommend his blog if you don’t already follow it! And, bonus points if you can find a way to use Sehnsucht in a sentence at the office. 🙂
Natalie Hanson 
Hi Natalie,
Thank you so much for the kind words about Elezea. It’s great to hear that you enjoy the site – this is the kind of encouragement that keeps me going!
Rian