Question Cards

Digital Magazine #6

Contributors: TJ Rinoski, John Schengber, 

Yes, the kids magazine. You may remember seeing it in doctors’ offices or kindergarten classrooms.


Highlights catered to children and then fell off at age 13 or earlier. Nothing really took its place as young adult readers embarked upon the rest of their lives, nothing besides romantic partners, self-help books, alcohol, and therapy, that is. 

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Yet with the level of distraction, loneliness, and digital addiction that modern humans are grappling with today, couldn’t there be — shouldn’t there be — a Highlights magazine for adults? 

 

It’s clear that some of us never quite grew out of kindergarten — let them fight in the sandbox, anyway — while the rest of us could surely use a refresher. This got us thinking — what if? 

 

So for the past two months, we’ve been exploring what it would mean to develop a magazine that acts as a companion for adults who are interested in cultivating a meaningful practice of living. This magazine would not only inspire and enlighten its readers via raw, authentic storytelling — our traditional modus operandi — but also empower readers via tools for reflection, mindfulness, and purpose-driven behaviors.

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Skinny Dipper Magazine 
exists to catalyze self-discovery and human connection through storytelling.

Be bold and act like we’re invited, so that when they open those velvet barriers we walk right in with a nod. Lose sleep over the music we have forgotten, and leave if there is neither beauty nor sadness. Ask questions over dinner that require pencil and paper to answer. Print. Less screens and thicker calluses. Practice our dance while doing the dishes, and stay out there late. Unbutton around corners and fall off the bike, but stay on the ground and admire the mark we made on the street. Full burritos and well-worn maps. Wonder who designs salad dressing labels because we have some ideas. Load our words into a new canon, curse traffic, and show up unannounced because we know our friends. Get a double and see it twice. Fetishisize the past and be aliens together. Find a new way home. Kick ourselves for missing, clap for caring. Go wild with our look because we aren’t there yet. Speak with the flight attendants and hope that the runway below is full so that we can circle above the clouds at golden hour. Remember Ivan Ilyich and the favorite books of our friends. Tug hard on the tension between absolute narcissism and crippling self-doubt and find your dream in the middle. Push through and search abroad to see if this is there too. Go simple, go solo, go now. The world or nothing. Because if just one piece of this works, then this is forever.