Closing the Loop
...of non-normative identities to circulate and receive validation on user-driven platforms like Tumblr and Instagram — whittled itself down to its most palatable iteration. With aid from online art and...
Serious action
...I have a long essay in the latest New Inquiry issue about the metaphor of "microfame" and what sort of ideological work it performs. (It's not online yet,...
Social discovery vs. sociability
...One of things Dan Slater reports on in Love in the Time of Algorithms is online dating's evolution into "social discovery," which is not a matter of algorithms...
No Epiphanies Whatsoever
...Internet fascination—or an online meme even in the smallest of online corners—their character usually gets flattened through repetition and analysis, and repetition of analysis. Against these odds, Marnell has sustained...
Our Brand Could Be Your Crisis
We Are Your Friends is not our youth, but it might as well be
“The Beyblade Strategy” or: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Focused Protection
...masking,” an idea popularized by J.G. Allen (otherwise notable for, as early as October 2021, loudly advocating to drop masking in schools as quickly as possible). “One-way masking” is the...
Champagne Wishes and Crypto Dreams
Of course there are crypto memoirs. But how do they theorize history?
zero-knowledge proofs
...a neglected area of castles studies – the spiral stair. [full study | PDF] as restaurants increasingly receive takeout orders online and through apps, they face a new challenge called...
Social media as masochism
...it intensifies it. Not only would this let us keep obeying the imperative to "express ourselves" and build out our all-important online reputations and networks, but it would allow us...
Games of Truth
...have to build the community (that once was geographical) as an online audience and hold it together by performing for it perpetually. The truth test becomes a way to ascertain...
Fear of Screens
...when she discusses a “world of screens,” or when she laments “the pull of the online world” away from the real world of humans. “We turn to our phones instead...
The Algorithm and the Watchtower
...year: “As you read this online, the United States government makes a note.” And as more recent reporting from the Times and ProPublica has disclosed, this is made possible not...
Social Media Is Not Self-Expression
...a "connected world" all around you, and there is no denying that being online metes out "connectedness" in measured, addictive doses. But those doses contain real sociality, and they are...
Coming & Crying
...online via the website Kickstarter, which they then plan to take to an on-demand press. Their goal was $3,000. At present they’ve garnered $4,728 from 114 backers (of which, yes,...
The Failure Addict
...around the different places online where someone might send some indication that they have noticed me, send some message that tells me I exist — one that says, Everyone thought...
Permanent Records
...my feelings change with time. When I look at my middle school students post photos and videos of themselves online, I have the instinctual reaction of adult horror at the...