Hello, dear friend. You are here because you believe, as I do, that the internet has become too fast to actually read. We have traded depth for speed, and context for the infinite feed. The Ampang Observer is an experiment in building a 'slower' web -- a place for longform essays that demand more than your passive attention, and most of all, your peripheral vision.
Will you write something for my birthday?
An Anti Scroll Manifesto: Longer Reads, Slower Reads, Deeper Observations
2026
1
The 'Infinite Scroll' was designed to keep us in a state of perpetual consumption, optimized by algorithms that prioritize engagement over understanding.
2Citation
The medium is the message / We shape our tools, and, thereafter, our tools shape us.
— M. McLuhan / J. Culkin (1967)
This is not going to be a blog. I designed it by hand instead of reaching for a Wordpress template expressly so I could avoid the bloat that has befallen the modern web. Let this be an archive of a worldwide web we've lost: the web of joy and curiosity and passion projects, not branding or Instagrammability. As you read these words, the sidebar on your left and right provides some of the friction we've lost. It might be a historical citation, an ambient field recording from the streets of Kuala Lumpur, or a high-resolution scan of an artifact of Malaysia's disappearing architecture. To me, essays are meant to be equally indulgent as they are restrained; poignant as well as precise. It's been far too long since I tried to put my observations down in words meant to be read rather than videos, tweets, podcasts. Textual intercourse.
3
Friction, in this context, is a good thing. It forces a pause, a look aside, and a synthesis of information.
4Citation
Open an old paperback, spangled with marginalia in a handwriting you outgrew long ago, and memories will jump out with as much vigor as if you'd opened your old diary. These book-memories... are pegs and loops on which we can hang up, or from which we can take down, at pleasure, the wardrobe of a moral imagination.
— A. Fadiman (2005)
5Audio
Field Recording: Train PA announcement of the KTM Shuttle Timuran while I write this essay.
/sound5.mp3
6Figure
I am inviting you, my friend, to help me populate this archive. I want your deep-dives into anything personal and thoughtful. I want thought, not slop. Give me urbanism, culture, decay, and an optimistic speculative future. No SEO keywords. No algorithmic bait. No hooks. Just the stuff that matters: punchy writing done out of love for the game. If you're ready to write something that lasts longer than a tweet, reply to this invitation.
7
The way I see it, what I'm looking for are stories that 'have no home' elsewhere. The weird, the specific, the obsessive.
8
Email thekulthings@gmail.com or hit the RSVP button below (as well as in the header) if you're in. Let's build something beautiful. Let's remind ourselves how much we loved the creativity of writing without the constraint of algorithm or attention.