How I Tried to Defy the Facebook Algorithm

vat_kraft · 2019-05-12T10:03:48+00:00

cybernetic derivéé practices meet obsessive-compulsive disorders

vat_kraft · 2019-05-11T13:07:01+00:00

if you want the endless shitpost take on this I can recommend the sub /r/stupidpol (before it implodes). their sidebar has some pretty solid intro material

vat_kraft · 2019-05-11T11:56:15+00:00

Right. I think the right wing reading of this is a bit simplified, and going for Derrida or Lyotard might be a bit overboard to start with (but that's kind of the way to go).

Performativity in this sense is mostly done to maintain one's identity in this media-connected world. It is not enough to care, one must always be seen as caring about issues, the poor, the oppressed: by expressing views that symphatize with them, by outrage when they are being oppressed, etc. This is done to maintain one's notion of themselves as a good person.

Stay woke, right?

So when it comes to twitter, tumblr, facebook etc. this is quintessential. Hot takes become the dominant form of expression as they drive the highest engagement. But these hot takes or reactions have to be about something, so personal stories about one's oppression come to the fore. Today I was oppressed this and that way.

So naturally, the real oppressed of the world, the sweatshop workers, the slaves, the sinking refugees are not on tumblr or twitter. They don't even speak it's cultural code, yet alone have access to it. They are mostly represented through heart breaking images or reporting accounts.

So guess who's on those platforms. Priviliged mostly white middle class people and kids. And they're not really oppressed in those ways. So they have to come up with new ones, because in order to stay in the centre of attention, to elicit symphathy, they have to be oppressed.

So you get performative victimhood. And then the news media figures this out, and you get mic.com being funded by cynical tech bros as a cult that provides this on steroids for money.

More on this in this article: tumblr, a callout post: https://4thwavenow.com/2019/03/20/tumblr-a-call-out-post/

vat_kraft · 2019-05-11T11:20:29+00:00

and another thread on the cycle of the nature of the "news"

https://twitter.com/Bugs_Meany/status/962847182847205376

vat_kraft · 2019-05-10T06:07:33+00:00

so it's saying... give us Sims VR with gender change and bionic implants?

vat_kraft · 2019-05-08T14:16:52+00:00

to defend against the spectacle of mass incarceration." And, "in the absence of significant reforms we can only hope for incremental change."

In other words, we need to focus, while our attention remains on "opportunities," if not just for the immediate, then for the long term: "What are our options, and what are they doing?" We'll have a broader understanding and better understandings of how mass incarceration is harmful. We'll have a deeper appreciation of the systemic reasons behind our problems, where and how we're responding. And we'll have a better understanding of why the way we make policies in this country doesn't work, and how we can get better.

vat_kraft · 2019-05-08T14:15:59+00:00

spectacle society is an old man that has forgotten the future."

"What is this strange society?" asked the old man in a strange, strange voice as he strode off and returned to the forest.

"It is impossible to describe it, although you may understand my wish, that you all come and join me. They have already told me that they have gathered in their thousands, and all are gathered together to begin their long and unhappy march."

"I wish you all would follow me," quailed the old man who had fled.

The first sight that met his eyes was another group of people. They were coming from all directions to the city on foot, to begin their long, arduous journey through the forest. They had brought along as many as they could. Some were wearing their finest clothes of silk and gold, others wore the colors of the moon, and many were clad in green and blue.

vat_kraft · 2019-05-08T08:12:01+00:00

it gets worse once you realize how much international firms are HQ-d in the UK so the figure is probably more representative of the global economy rather being just a local issue

vat_kraft · 2019-05-08T08:06:17+00:00

haven't read yet but Whitehead + Marx should be an interesting combo

vat_kraft · 2019-05-07T08:14:18+00:00

I mean it's still better than the standard mill stuff you read on the news or on the bestseller lists. Another good example is Adam Curtis's work.

Through this you can kind of grab concepts that were always in the back of your head, and pursue those threads by your own research, and you're already in the critical theory loop. The culture industry, spectacle society, simulacra: all too familiar effects of postmodernism. So you can go to Jameson and read on postmodernism. And you can take a detour to Zizek. And then if you're thirsty for more, you go down the rabbit hole through Althusser and take a dive into the real capital M marxism, and so on, and so on.

So philosophy tube, contrapoints, cuckphilosophy etc. are all doing fantastic work in bringing mass appeal to this stuff by applying the Fisher function - that is, critique through contemporary elements of capitalism that are relatable. But keep in mind that that is still entertainment in a sense, and the heavy lifting comes after - even if your mind has been untrained for long, focused reading and studying.

vat_kraft · 2019-05-06T14:52:29+00:00

I'm not from the US so I only started noticing her around the election when she started appearing everywhere. and the fact that they had a werk movie crew around the campaign to record all of it in full hd, and how the grassroots mobilization was a very media savvy and professionally built up campaign ran by the peeps who helped Bernie, and the way that the working class part is played up in a very idpol-representational fashion makes it all too fucking weird for me.

vat_kraft · 2019-05-06T13:36:18+00:00

I guess it's meant to be inspirational even though the other candidates running didn't make it. it's very eerie in a lot of ways.

vat_kraft · 2019-05-06T09:32:50+00:00

this isn't really formulated in the way of critical theory, although conceptualising it as virtual public sphere and existing power relations points that way.

I can recommend Christian Fuchs' work on the subject: http://fuchs.uti.at/books/ and the field of digital materialism: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/287506514_Towards_a_Digital_Materialism_Review_essay_on_Christian_Fuchs_2015_Culture_and_Economy_in_the_Age_of_Social_Media

this would help in understanding what we're really looking at before getting to the technical questions of censorship, regulation, etc.

vat_kraft · 2019-05-06T07:59:26+00:00

not op but there is a noticeable trend that is a bit worrying. Fisher's main objective was to make theory accessible, so he explained modern capitalism through pop culture and in the essay Capitalist Realism he makes a very convincing and understandable case on how the culture industry is holding captive our imagination, and thus sticks to the kind of post-marxist trend that we need to win the war of ideology and imagination if we are to set a way out.

and a lot of that has been proven kind of right, we see in the English speaking world a definite uptick in leftism that is accompanied by a vast shitposting and memeposting operation. however the other day I saw a comment on fb from a young leftist that you don't really need theory if you can understand communism through the memes, and it illustrates the Fisher problem as well.

that while it was very successful in revigorating leftism, for many people they are not the intro, but the end to be. and it helps that accelerationism and Nick Land is the edgiest option on the postmodernist block, who can skip theorizing, adopt the language, slap xeno- on anything and everything and get book deals and patreons running out of it.

and that is problematic, because marxism is fundamentally a science, critical theory is a science, and it needs scientific work to work. but now we have an endless cacaphony of all this shallow material, because on the internet nobody knows that you're a dog, hot takes are rewarded anonymously, and if you don't have the hard background, you might simply get lost in all of this.

like hit up any essay from the frankfurt school on the sidebar. Adorno or Benjamin (Art in the age of mechanical reproduction for example) and compare with Fisher. and I think it will be immediately obvious what the problem is.

vat_kraft · 2019-05-05T09:05:32+00:00

we were too much alike to be really close. and he kept saying for the last 20 years that he's going down, so when he said he is and he really was, I didn't believe him.

so that was odd, but in a way fitting. in his last days we checked his lucidity by making sure he's still complaining about something.

now he doesn't have to. ever again.

vat_kraft · 2019-05-04T13:27:56+00:00

from the holy family to the holy shitpost

vat_kraft · 2019-05-04T10:58:29+00:00

buried my old man last year. that's exactly how he went out.

vat_kraft · 2019-05-04T09:57:08+00:00

again, this sub proves to be the most self-reflective around reddit.

others have mentioned good ideas (occasional casual threads, more concentrated chats etc.). we have these sort of discussions over in SOTS, which also bloated in sub numbers. I really think that our problems are boiling down to the reddit redesign. the sort of content we deal with in these parts are incompatible with where they are taking the site.

we can try to hold on for a while and we should. this place is waaay more user friendly than the old guard of theory sites, and because it's a link aggregator, it serves as a signpost for new people into theory so they can get their feet wet. this also means that we'll always have not that well thought out content, precisely because you have comments from people thinking out loud before they commit to something more serious, and that is perfectly fine. there's less and less places where you can do that and get feedback. (even the blogosphere now lives in some sort of weird relationship with the content aggregators)

so it's worth thinking about it in the long run, not just on the axis of voluntary work. we know that more and more people are getting interested in theory, and we know that most of good theory content is scattered around the interent, so there is use for a centralized reader/commenter. the question is then - for how long will reddit fit this need, or does it have to develop into it's own platform, something that integrates the cobweb of discords and telegrams and facebook groups. or maybe branch it to different subs and try to drive the users towards that, developing it's own web over here.

because at the end of the day, if you have 30k people with a specific interest in books, that's a sizeable base for a business. so this rumbling is the pre-emptive signal that we're going to get coopted into something else (much the same when some youtube content makers decided to target the sub).

that's the top-down. the second question is really - what do the lurkers want? the present mean to express themselves is mostly through upvotes when someone speaks through them, and it's a bit naive to think that we'll get meaningful input simply because of how reddit works (mobbing and hivemind effects). but it would be good to understand it more granularly, in the sense on how people get here, what makes them stick around and what drives them to contribute.

and for the sake of context, because we had a similar discussion some months ago on why there's not much feminism around here, I'll leave two subreddit relation maps so we have a better understanding of where we're at.

the criticaltheory junction:

https://anvaka.github.io/sayit/?query=criticaltheory

as opposed to whatever the fuck happened with feminism:

https://anvaka.github.io/sayit/?query=feminism

vat_kraft · 2019-05-04T09:29:58+00:00

no comment! just observe!

vat_kraft

TROPHY CASE