None of the week’s events, including the play, are advertised online. Signs scattered around the neighborhood advertise the Summer of Ludd and declare “only in real life!” and brochures with the calendar of the week’s events have been placed in community spaces in the area.
I found out about the event by chance offline. In early June, I was with a friend in the East Village and we were caught in a summer downpour. While waiting at the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space, a small place that documents the neighborhood’s history of activism, I found the pamphlet describing the events of Ludd Summer among several other magazines, posters, and pamphlets. So here I am, phone put away, notebook in hand, and sign in hand.
The new Luddite movement has been strongly associated with Generation Zthe first generation to grow up entirely with digital technology. Despite this fact, or perhaps because of it, some young people are becoming increasingly critical of the omnipresence of technology in society. TO Pew Research Study 2025 found that in 2024, 48 percent of teens surveyed said social media has negative effects on people their age, up from 32 percent in 2022.
In addition to the young people, there are Pride attendees, families, and some older East Village veterans, one of whom explains to the young woman next to him the meaning of “Bella Ciao,” which the orchestra has just played, an Italian resistance song created in response to Benito Mussolini’s fascism.
There’s a seriousness to the whole thing that the Internet often loves to punish. It is, in fact, fun.
The Summer of Ludd moved forward with a press conference led by the organizers’ spokesperson, Gowanus, the media puppet (yes, I’m serious), a blue cloth being with soda-cap eyes, directed by a masked puppeteer. Gowanus was conceived as a way for the movement to speak to the public and media without compromising the identities of the event organizers, who wish to remain anonymous. According to Gowanus, the New York Luddite Revival is an “informal group of organizers who have no formal affiliation as of yet but who have been coalescing as they notice similar problems of alienation and overdependence on Big Tech.”
