Factory Settings is an independent, Los Angeles-based culture, arts, and lifestyle publication made for and by people who pay attention, covering what’s worth seeing, doing, buying, and reconsidering.

Founded by former legacy media professionals, this project was envisioned in response to the glaring gaps we saw within today’s media and publishing landscape.

We champion individual voices, perspectives, and creativity; celebrate community and human connection; encourage dialogue, discussion, and discourse; and are dedicated to carving out a collaborative, thoughtful, diverse space for examining and navigating the complex, cacophonous, high-speed, hyperconnected, disjointed, reality-bending, modern world we inhabit.

We urge contributors to dig into what they actually, personally find interesting—what they’re excited about, obsessed with, rabbit-holing on, fascinated or perplexed or bothered by. We don’t all always agree—we believe dialogue is critical, worth championing, and possible only in the absence of expected unanimity. We started this, in part, because there’s more content being published right now, and yet so little of it feels as if it is coming from anyone in particular. We wanted to create a space for people to write and talk about things specifically, authentically, personally.

While some of what we do happens online, much of it doesn’t. You can find us right here anywhere with an internet connection, in your mailbox monthly across the fifty states when you subscribe to a print membership, and in person in Los Angeles at our regular, ongoing Factory Nights event series.