“Artificial intelligence is not the answer to organized stupidity” – Johan Sjerpstra. “Please don’t email me unless you’re going to pay me” – Molly Soda. “Late capitalism is like your love life: it looks a lot less bleak through an Instagram filter” – Laurie Penny. “Wonder how many people going on about the necessity of free speech and

01/11 rational debate have blocked and muted trolls?” – Nick Srnicek. “Post-truth is to digital capitalism what pollution is to fossil capitalism – a by- product of operations” – Evgeny Morozov. “I have seen the troll army and it is us” – Erin Gün Sirer.

1. Disillusionment Our disenchantment with the internet is a fact. Geert Lovink Yet again, enlightenment does not bring us liberation but depression. The once fabulous aura that surrounded our beloved apps, blogs, Overcoming and social media has deflated. Swiping, sharing, and liking have begun to feel like soulless Internet routines, empty gestures. We’ve started to unfriend and unfollow, yet we can’t afford to Disillusionment: delete our accounts, as this implies social suicide. If “truth is whatever produces most eyeballs,” as Evgeny Morozov states, a general On the click strike seems like the only option left.1 But since this is not happening, we feel trapped and Principles of console ourselves with memes. đđđđđđđđđđThe multi-truth approach of identity politics, according to Slavoj Žižek, has produced Meme Design a culture of relativism.2 Chomsky’s process of “manufacturing consent” has taken hold completely. As Žižek explains in a British TV interview, the Big Other has vanished.3 There is no BBC World Service anymore, the moderate radio voice that once provided us with balanced opinions and reliable information. Every piece of information is self-promotion, crafted by public- relations managers and spin doctors – and by us users as well (we are our own marketing interns). What’s collapsing right now is the imagination of a better life. It is no longer the “wretched of the earth” who revolt, because they’ve got nothing left to lose, but rather the stagnating middle class and “young professionals,” who face permanent precarity. đđđđđđđđđđAfter hubris come guilt, shame, and remorse. Mass conformity didn’t pay off. The question is how the current discontent will ultimately play out on the level of internet architecture. What is techno-repentance? What

e - f l u x j o r n a # 8 3 — đ G t L v i k O v e r c o m i n g I t D s l u : h P p f M comes after the Exorbitant Detriment? Once the love affair with apps is over and the addiction reveals itself, the mood flips to cold turkey. What some see as a relief is experienced by many as frustration, if not hatred. The online Other cannot possibly be classified any longer as a “friend”: “If people in the outside world scare you, people on the internet will downright terrify you” is a general warning applicable to all websites. The

06.13.17 / 07:01:59 EDT 06.13.17 / 07:02:00 EDT

02/11 A meme posted atđloltheorists.livejournal.com.

A meme featuringđJean Baudrillardđposted atđloltheorists.livejournal.com.đ

06.13.17 / 07:02:00 EDT guilt is produced by the pressure to perform. performer and a celebrity, as long as they believe Users are under constant risk of financial in their dreams and strive to be like Beyoncé and collapse, and once they’re poor, they will be Rihanna, who are inspirations rather than subjected to the post-money economy in which vultures. Such celebrity cases show “how only imaginary entities circulate. After they’re powerless people [demonstrate] their written off, being online is their last refuge. supplication before their masters.”8 Fans are đđđđđđđđđđ“We’re terrofucked.” That’s how Jarett fellow travellers on a journey through life; they

Kobek sums up the general feeling in his 2016 04/11 are not consumers that purchase a product or novel I Hate the Internet. The guilt and frustration service. According to Kobek, “the poor [are] is both personal and political, on a global scale. doomed to the Internet, a wonderful resource for Throughout the story, set in the gentrified streets watching shitty television, experiencing angst of , computers coordinate the about other people’s salaries.”9 Built by exploitation of “the surplus population into “pointless men,” the net invokes nothing but perpetual servants.” What happens once the trash and hate, leaving the poor empty-handed, realization sinks in that “all the world’s with nothing to sell.10 The poor make money for computers were built by slaves in China” and Facebook. It will never be the other way round. that it is you who is using those same devices? đđđđđđđđđđKobek has been compared with What happens when we’re personally addressed Houellebecq because of the harshness of each as the guilty partners, “suffering the moral writer’s characters. In I Hate the Internet, we outrage of a hypocritical writer who has profited wander through the cynical start-up environment from the spoils of slavery”?4 of Silicon Valley, but Kobek shies away from đđđđđđđđđđThis is the intriguing part of Kobek’s DIY taking us inside. Unlike the cyberpunk novel, we philosophy, which he presents as a science do not enter cyberspace; we don’t swipe through fiction of the present. What if the current profiles or flow through Instagram pictures. This internet economy of the free is the default future is not about an “illusion of the end” (and that’s scenario for the 99 percent? What will happen the main difference from the 1968 generation: we when the concentration of power and money in have the uncanny feeling that something has the hands of the few becomes irreversible and barely started). In this hyperconservative era, we we abandon all hope for the redistribution of no longer confront ourselves with the historical revenues? For Kobek, this is already the case. duty to face the end of the welfare state, Failed traditional money has been replaced by neoliberalism, globalization, the European micro-fame, “the world’s last valid currency,” Union, or other modern institutions. Instead, which is even more subject to oscillations than we’re lured into a perpetual state of retromania, old-fashioned money. “Traditional money [has] because, as the late Mark Fisher pointed out, it ceased to be about an exchange of humiliation is the present that has gone missing (“Make for food and shelter. Traditional money [has] America Dank Again”). become the equivalent of a fantasy world.”5 đđđđđđđđđđPseudo-events have no chronology, no đđđđđđđđđđKobek calls himself a proponent of the “bad development, no beginning or middle, let alone novel,” in contrast to CIA-sponsored literary an end. We’re beyond the terminal process, fiction from the Cold War, called the “good novel” beyond the postmodern patchwork. Everything – a category which continues to exist in the form accelerates. This must be the twenty-first- of Jonathan Franzen, who writes “about people century-style catastrophe that so many films from the American Middle West without much have introduced us to. Still, we remain eumelanin in their epidermises.”6 Bad novels are encapsulated, captured inside cybernetic loops defined here as stories that “[mimic] the that go nowhere, in which meaningless cycles of computer network in its obsession with junk events, series, and seasons pass by. What media, in its irrelevant and jagged presentation happens when the anxiety of information of content,” filled with characters that have a saturation flips into a profound feeling of “deep affection for juvenile literature” such as emptiness? Once we’ve passed this point, the Heinlein, Tolkien, and Rand.7 This all makes you digital neither disappears nor ends. Events wonder in which category Dave Eggers’s novel simply no longer turn into Roman spectacles.

The Circle – an update of Orwell’s 1984 – would e - f l u x j o r n a # 8 3 — đ G t L v i k O v e r c o m i n g I t D s l u : h P p f M Instead, we experience simulacrum as prime fit. Can Eggers’s internet novel about Minority reality. We cannot process such a sudden Report–style measures enforced by a fictitious overproduction of reality. We no long turn on company that’s a cross between and television news thinking that we’re watching a Facebook be classified as the ur–bad novel of film. We’ve moved on. It is not life that has this type? What happens when we can no longer become cinematographic; it is film scenarios and distinguish between utopia and dystopia? their affects that shape the grand designs of our đđđđđđđđđđThe promise of fame deluges people with technological societies. Films anticipated our images of grotesque success. Everyone is a condition, and now we’re situated in the midst of

06.13.17 / 07:02:00 EDT yesteryear’s science fiction. Minority Report is why is it so hard to put together a 2017 upgrade? now a techno-bureaucratic reality, driven by the đđđđđđđđđđThere is a crisis of “participatory culture.” integration of once-separate data streams. Let’s look at the example of danah boyd and how Virtual reality feels like The Matrix. Trump’s she’s deconstructing the “media literacy” reality TV show proved to be a rehearsal. The discourse for which so many had such high logic of the avant-garde is very much alive. The hopes. The cynical reading of the news has last industry to deal with the fake and real overshadowed critical capacities. In the whirlpool is the news industry. Hyperreality 05/11 aftermath of Donald Trump’s election, boyd becomes our everyday situation – regardless of asked if media literacy had backfired.11 Have whether we perceive it as boring or absurd. trolling, clickbait, and fake news undermined the đđđđđđđđđđLet’s look at radical disillusionment as form classic belief in the democratization of news and celebrate the return of its high priest, Jean production? Whereas for the pre-internet baby- Baudrillard. Our social media rage is not just a boom generation media literacy was synonymous medical condition of the few; it is the human with the ability to question sources, deconstruct condition. Will the disenchantment turn into a opinions, and decode ideology, media literacy revolt, as Camus once contemplated? The has now turned into the ability to produce one’s spiritual exhaustion is certainly there own content in the form of responses, blog (#sleepnomore). Empty-handed, we discuss one postings, and social media updates. The shift powerless critique of the database form after from critical consumer to critical producer has another. To put it in spatial terms, cyberspace come with a price: namely, information inflation. has turned out to be a room containing a house (The well-meaning “prosumer” synthesis never containing a city that has collapsed into a flat materialized.) According to boyd, media literacy landscape in which created transparency turns has became synonymous with distrusting media into paranoia. We’re not lost in a labyrinth but sources rather than engaging in fact-based rather thrown out into the open, watched and critique. Instead of examining the evidence of manipulated, with no center of command in experts, it is now enough to cite one’s own sight. personal experience. This has led to a doubt- đđđđđđđđđđThe mille plateaux of tweets, blogs, and centric culture that can only ever be outraged, a Instagram and Facebook postings have created a culture incapable of reasonable debate – a culture of deep confusion. Fragmentation was polarized culture that favors tribalism and self- supposed to enrich us, so why are we now paying segregation. the bill for all its unforeseen consequences? This đđđđđđđđđđThe current situation demands a rethink of was not supposed to happen. Is this the the usual demands of activists and civil-society “difference” we once aimed for? Mainstream players regarding media literary. How can the media play a crucial role in this process of decay. general audience be better informed? Is this an While their legitimacy has faded, their influence accurate diagnosis of the current problem in the is still believed to be significant. This creates an first place? How do we poke holes in the filter atmosphere of permanent ambivalence. Why bubbles? How can “do-it-yourself” be a viable bother? Their role as “clearinghouses” of facts alternative when social media is already and opinion has been undermined for decades by experienced in those terms? And can we still rely growing centrifugal forces in society that no on the emancipatory potential of “talking back to longer accept particular baby-boomer the media” via the familiar social networking sentiments (and interests) as the legitimate apps? How does manipulation work today? Is it consensus. The stunning inability of “the press” still productive to deconstruct the New York to deal with recent changes in society has lead to Times (and its equivalents)? How would we a widespread form of indifference. The explain the workings of the Facebook News Feed theoretical blind spots of successive to its user base? If we want to blame the postmodern generations are too numerous to algorithms, how do we translate their hidden list. The elephant in the room here is Jürgen complexity so that large audiences can Habermas. Many of us still subscribe to his understand them? notion of the bourgeois public sphere as an arena đđđđđđđđđđAn effort at such translation is Cathy where different opinions compete in a rational e - f l u x j o r n a # 8 3 — đ G t L v i k O v e r c o m i n g I t D s l u : h P p f M O’Neil’s Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big dialogue – even if we do not believe in the core Data Increases Inequality and Threatens values of Western society, such as democracy. Democracy, in which she describes how “ill- And who’s the “counterpublic” in this context? conceived mathematical models now The “user-generated content” of 4Chan, Reddit, micromanage the economy, from advertising to and YouTube? What’s the organized answer to all prisons.”12 Her question is how to tame, and this? What would a contemporary version of disarm, dangerous algorithms. These Indymedia look like? And if such a federated mathematical models are not neutral tools. model of “independent media” is so 1999, then However, in everyday life we increasingly

06.13.17 / 07:02:00 EDT experience ranking as destiny. Coining the term Others, Jennifer Schuessler writes that “Ms. “Weapons of Math Destruction,” or “WMDs,” Dombek’s own view echoes that of the O’Neil writes: “Promising efficiency and fairness, philosopher René Girard, who argued that our [WMDs] distort higher education, drive-up debt, tendency to see narcissism in parents and spur mass incarceration, pummel the poor at partners is an effort to reassure ourselves that if nearly every juncture, and undermine those we desire are less than ideally responsive democracy.”13 In her account of the jobs she has to us it’s because they are sick, not because we had in numerous algorithm-focused industries, 06/11 are uninteresting.”17 she shows that this software is “not just đđđđđđđđđđBeyond the fear of narcissism, let’s look at constructed from data but from the choices we Trump again, a man who “seems supremely make about which data to pay attention to – and cognizant of the fact that he is always acting. He which to leave out. Those choices are not just moves through life like a man who knows he is about logistics, profits, and efficiency. They are always being observed.” This quote is taken from fundamentally moral.”14 And class-biased, she “The Mind of Donald Trump,” a June 2016 piece in adds: “The privileged are processed by people, The Atlantic written by Dan P. McAdams.18 Here, the masses by machines.”15 Once installed and Trump is described as a “flummoxing” figure, running for a while, these WMDs create their own exhibiting sky-high extroversion combined with reality and justify their own results, a model off-the-charts low agreeableness. He’s portrayed which O’Neil calls self-perpetuating and highly as a dynamo – driven, restless, unable to sit still, destructive. getting by with very little sleep. A cardinal đđđđđđđđđđTechniques such as leaks, fake news, feature of Trump’s acute extroversion is his socialbots, kompromat, and agitprop confuse the relentless reward-seeking. Prompted by the political climate. Disorientation is sufficient; it is activity of dopamine circuits in the brain, highly not longer necessary to, for instance, manipulate extroverted people are driven to pursue positive election outcomes. In this “post-factual era,” emotional experiences. As McAdams writes, we’re left with the instant beliefs of celebrity commentators and media experts. Look at Anger can fuel malice, but it can also Donald Trump’s tweets, an ultimate form of motivate social dominance, stoking a desire media literacy and a perverse flood of self- to win the adoration of others. Anger lies at expression. His personal tweets have become the heart of Trump’s charisma, dominated indistinguishable from policy, state propaganda, by ebullient extroversion, the relentless and info warfare. In this case, power no longer showmanship, and the larger-than-life operates through the pornographic overexposure celebrity, who never thinks twice about the of the hi-res 3-D image. This is not big data, but collateral damage he will leave behind. singular data. Tiny messages with a “tremendous” fallout. At this level, we leave Highly narcissistic people draw attention to behind the realm of both Hollywood glamour and themselves. Repeated and inordinate self- reality TV and enter the real-time realm of reference is a distinguishing feature of their communication-with-consequences, a next-level personality. Over time, people become annoyed, hybrid in which sovereign executive power and if not infuriated, by their self-centeredness. marketing become inseparable. When narcissists begin to disappoint those đđđđđđđđđđWhat does contemporary psychoanalysis whom they once dazzled, their descent can be have to offer? As evidenced in Kristin Dombek’s especially precipitous. There is still truth today in The Selfishness of Others: An Essay on the Fear of the ancient proverb “Pride goeth before the fall.” Narcissism, there is a renaissance of narcissism The world is saturated with a sense of danger as cultural diagnosis. While Dombek avoids and a need for toughness: the world cannot be referencing internet cultures and refrains from trusted. It is a ferocious combatant who fights to selfie and social media complaints, she does win. Are you preoccupied with fantasies that the point to a crucial change in psychoanalytic world is ending because of the selfishness of practice: from therapeutic to quantitative others? McAdams: methods. Today’s narcissism is social and contagious in nature; it consists of traits that e - f l u x j o r n a # 8 3 — đ G t L v i k O v e r c o m i n g I t D s l u : h P p f M Who, really, is Donald Trump? What’s behind “can be measured across large groups of the actor’s mask? I can discern little more people.”16 Generation Me spans the planet. We than narcissistic motivations and a need to move beyond the illness metaphors complementary personal narrative about when discussing Trump, the alt-right, and social winning at any cost. It is as if Trump has media at large. It could be a fatal mistake to invested so much of himself in developing attempt to marginalize (as both diagnostics and and refining his socially dominant role that tactics) the self-absorbed populist right as “sick he has nothing left over to create a patients.” In a review of The Selfishness of meaningful story for his life, or for the

06.13.17 / 07:02:00 EDT nation. It is always Donald Trump playing making fun of the petty world of xenophobes isn’t Donald Trump, fighting to win, but never working. What can we do other than coming knowing why. together? Can we expect anything from the designer as lone wolf? How do we organize this What would a philosophy of disbelief look like type of political labor? Do we need even more today? Let’s seek out a secular follow-up to the tools that bring us together? Have you already critique of religion. What is atheism in the used Meetup, Diaspora, DemocracyOS, and information context? The multiplicity of sources 07/11 Loomio? Do we perhaps need a collective dating and points of view, once celebrated as a site for political activism? How can we design, “diversity of opinion,” has now reach a nihilistic and then mobilize, a collective networked desire “zero point” in which the accumulation of that unites us in a “deep diversity”? Is the possible meanings can either lead to critical promise of open, distributed networks going to insights (or even knowledge), or implode into a do the job, or are you look for strong ties – with pool of indifference (possibly resulting in the consequences? disappearance of networks such as , đđđđđđđđđđGenerations have studied the fatal mistakes which thrive on individual expressions, made in the interbellum years, but what are the judgements, and preferences). conclusions, now that we’re entering similar đđđđđđđđđđThese days, institutional dogmas are hidden territory? It’s time to reread Hannah Arendt’s The inside media folklore, hardwired into network Origins of Totalitarianism (in which we find David architectures, steered by algorithms. The mental Rousset’s famous quote: “Normal men do not rejection of authority is now so widespread, and know that everything is possible”). We should has sunken so far into daily routines and also revisit Wilhelm Reich’s Mass Psychology of mentalities, that it’s now irrelevant whether we Fascism, Adorno and Horkheimer, Elias Canetti’s deny, endorse, or deconstruct a particular piece Crowd and Power, and the opus that defined my of information. That’s the tricky aspect of the own intellectual destiny, Klaus Theweleit’s Male current social media disposition. Fantasies. This is a subjective list; there are so đđđđđđđđđđMeme producers have become immune to many other classics in this genre.20 Will these the criticism of third-way liberal moralists. Their authors assist us in discovering the defining firewall of indifference has not yet been hacked. factors of our age? How can we identify these key Ironic deconstruction isn’t doing the job either. issues and then act upon this knowledge? Crucial Says Tara Burton: “Given the ideological anarchy are alternative narratives, which, once they have inherent in shitposting, it tends to defy analysis. been developed and tested, can be condensed Shitposters, who are bound by nothing, set a into memes. As we know, memes can and must rhetorical trap for their enemies, who tend to be be mutated. This means that the overall narrative bound by having an actual point.” Burton will have to be robust (while “agile”). Memes are concludes that “shitposting can’t be refuted; it designed to be jammed, yet the core message can only be repeated.”19 This is simply not the stays the same no matter how radically the age of the Renaissance (Wo)Man. The meme is altered. We can also call this condensed disillusionment is overwhelming. semiotic unit a symbol, although the symbolic aspect of a meme often remains invisible. 2. Defining the Rules of Meme Design đđđđđđđđđđAs soon as we understand resistance as We’re overwhelmed by media events that unfold organized interference, we can start doing in real time. Is this spectacle a smoke screen for counter-mapping, monitoring the silence and more drastic, long-term measures? What’s our bringing out the hysterical realism that has been own plan? The politically correct strategies of hidden for so long. We need to blast lasting holes “civil society” are all well-meaning and target in the self-evident infrastructure of the everyday. important issues, but they seem to operate in a As we have learned from Silicon Valley business parallel universe, unable to respond to the gurus, disruption is enough to bring down vast cynical meme design that is rapidly taking over systems, which really just consist of key sites of power. Are there ways to not just hit meaningless routines. It’s much easier than we back but also be one step ahead? What’s on our think. This also brings closer the possibility of minds? How can we move from data to Dada and e - f l u x j o r n a # 8 3 — đ G t L v i k O v e r c o m i n g I t D s l u : h P p f M revolution – an event that even the most become a twenty-first-century avant-garde, one dogmatic critics of the neoliberal regime ruled that truly understands the technological out ages ago. imperative and shows that “we are the social in đđđđđđđđđđIn preparation for things to come, I asked a social media”? How do we develop, and then few people the perennial question: what is to be scale up, critical concepts and bring together done? I started off with Nick Srnicek, coauthor of politics and aesthetics in a way that speaks to Inventing the Future, who just published a the online millions? Let’s identify the hurdles, treatise called Platform Capitalism. According to knowing that it’s time to act. We know that him, we should start getting into the habit of

06.13.17 / 07:02:00 EDT blocking users on social media. “The basic idea memes, etc. There is a narrative to Trump on social media also holds for broader issues of and the rising far right, for instance. And public debate: how to refuse voices that are it’s a seductive narrative for some people, purposefully attacking the basis of reasonable which then gets expressed in various forms. debate?”21 Eva Illouz, author of Why Love Hurts The left is, mostly, missing that narrative. and Cold Intimacies, argues that we need to start We need to get to the heart of the matter, with the question of how to design truth: rather than attempting to deal with

08/11 symptoms. There is all this effort to block The problem is that they fight with lies. “fake news,” but no one questions why the They have no moral limits. Immoral fighters public has a new demand for these stories, have an advantage because they are not or why they don’t have the critical capacity constrained. We would have to counteract to spot them. Just changing some with truth, but truth is binding and newsfeed algorithms doesn’t seem constraining, so the question is, how do you adequate. make truth as powerful or more powerful than lies, which have the advantage of Memes are the perfect way to enter a story – but being invented quickly and tailored to meet which story? The cry for new narratives coincides your needs? with calls to go “beyond the fragments,” as expressed by Jodi Dean in her 2016 book Crowds A possible answer lies in the refusal to deal with and Party. Can memes play a role in the memes as isolated digital objects that can be centripetal social forces that bring us together? reassembled randomly. We should not start at Dean: the very end and get stuck on the Know Your Meme pages. Srnicek: It will be a good experiment to see if meme wars can be effective in undermining the We need new stories, and that’s different right (that is, making them appear from just thinking about counter-memes or unappealing and undesirable to potential stopping the flow of information. It’s a supporters). The challenge is creating different temporality effectively, but a new bubble-breaking memes since most memes narrative then provides the basis for more tend to circulate within bubbles of people immediate responses via social media, who already agree. But even if your memes

The Billbord Liberation Frontđhas, in the spirit of culture jamming,đbeen "improving" outdoor advertising since 1977. Prior campaigns have targeted ads by Exxon, R. J. Reynolds, and Apple Computers.

06.13.17 / 07:02:00 EDT don’t break bubbles they can still be effective if they inspire the left. Bernie I also asked Matt Goerzen, who’s doing meme Sanders’ Dank Meme Stash was a fantastic research with Coleman, about the sought-after source of fun and inspiration during the US recipe for a successful meme: election. The alt-right memes are so successful due Alex Galloway isn’t sure “culture jamming” is as to their bottom up, populist nature. I’ve successful a tactic today as it was in the 1990s. 09/11 come to understand image board memes as “Memes seem to be operating almost entirely a toolset that can be put to different uses, under what we used to call ideology. The power but only where they fit the job at hand. and interest that memes have is entirely due to Memes can be effectively weaponized, as in their status as ideological machines, which shitposting on Twitter, a form of cognitive doesn’t mean they are useless, debased, etc. – denial-of-service attack, to use Rand on the contrary, it demonstrates how complex Waltzman’s term. But they’re most powerful and powerful they are.” Johannes Grenzfurthner as a site of identification, coalescing the from the Viennese art collective Monochrom values of the individuals who identify with adds: “You need a lot of user/follower/creator- them through thematic sentiment. power to really create outreach. 4Chan only became the breeding ground of super-memes According to Goerzen, a significant portion of alt- because of their sheer endless pool of Darwinian righters devoted their memetic labors to Bernie non-archival users, some of them online for while he was still in the running. Goerzen noticed almost the entire day – and that for years.” that there was almost no attempt to meme for Grenzfurthner also reminds us that creating Hillary: political memes is a PR approach to internet culture: It’s worth wondering why that is. My understanding is that memes are sort of a People sniff out PR very fast. And in the end vessel or coordinating point for it can turn against you and your campaign. I organization, but without themes they are understand the need to create easily largely lacking in ideological value. They are shareable counter-info-memes, but that’s like a vocabulary, and need to be animated pretty much already happening. A ton of and organized by an imperative or narrative. good images are already circulating in the The trajectory of Pepe is very instructive in specific bubbles. But how to get out of the this regard, and I believe it is telling that bubble? You can’t penetrate conservative the Bernie memes that were getting going bubbles with liberal content. Your content utilized Wojak. Pepe and Wojak are like yin has to be so obscure and mysterious that and yang – where Pepe is rash, manic, it’s not working as a propaganda tool provocative, devious, extroverted, Wojak is anymore. Or will just be used for ridicule. deliberative, depressive, reserved, empathetic, and introverted. When Bernie According to free software thinker and was eliminated the positive identifications Anonymous historian Gabriele Coleman, we enabled through Wojak were stalled, while simply cannot afford not to use memes: the positive identifications enabled through Pepe to Trump gained extra momentum, as When the alt-right was gaining ground and many of the chan Bernie supporters were various journalists were horrified that enraged by the foul play they deemed images and emotions could “tug” at people responsible for his disqualification – and sway them politically, I was equally essentially Pepifying them. This is just one horrified that they were so naive and example, but the point is this: I believe the negative about emotions and visual culture. effective way to weaponize memes for Yes, progressives and leftists must include ideological purposes is to steer ones memes and humor in their arsenal to fight already popular and meaningful for a

back at some quarters of the right and to e - f l u x j o r n a # 8 3 — đ G t L v i k O v e r c o m i n g I t D s l u : h P p f M contested demographic. This aligns with steer some portion of the Internet-crazed the “redirect method” that attempts to youth toward the left. Without it, we will counter violent extremism circles. The idea lose a huge base of people. Whether this of designing or topdowning memes (or can be designed through a group effort or “forcememing” in the parlance of must bubble up from below is a whole other imageboard culture) is a pretty challenging question. My sense is that it would be more task. Many of the government types I’ve effective coming from a subcultural base spoken with in elucidating these questions rather than an elite art vanguard. over the past months have ideas about how

06.13.17 / 07:02:00 EDT this can be done, but it involves pretty vast Geert Lovinkđis a Dutch media theorist, internet critic, resources, and more resembles the sort of and author of Uncanny Networks (2002), Dark Fiber work done by Cambridge Analytica than (2002), My First Recession (2003), Zero Comments (2007), Networks Without a Cause (2012), and Social anyone in the imageboard or alt-right Media Abyss (2016). In 2004 he founded the Institute of cultural orbit.22 Network Cultures at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. This centerđorganizes conferences, Apart from the need for a narrative, there’s the publications, and research networks such as Video Vortex (online video), Unlike Us (alternatives in social issue of acceleration. Should alternative memes 10/11 media), Critical Point of View (Wikipedia), Society of circulate at the same speed as the overall the Query (the culture of search), MoneyLab (internet- internet? Are we running out of time? How about based revenue models in the arts). Recent projects slow memes? What if “real time” is itself part of deal with digital publishing and the future of art the problem? According to Franco Berardi, we criticism. He also teaches at the European Graduate need a new rhythm of elaboration; we need to School (Saas-Fee/Malta), where he supervises PhD students. slow down sequentiality, heal from acceleration, and find a new tempo of movement. This cannot be realized through further acceleration. Real- time communication already ruins our bodies, our minds. According to Berardi, the digital realm is leading to “decorpetization,” creating a “bodiless brain.” The infosphere is one giant nervous stimulation. What we need, before we can even start telling the New Narrative, is a “reconfiguration of mental elaboration.”23 đđđđđđđđđđ× e - f l u x j o r n a # 8 3 — đ G t L v i k O v e r c o m i n g I t D s l u : h P p f M

06.13.17 / 07:02:00 EDT đđđđđđ1 Jennifer Schuessler, “‘The Evgeny Morozov, “Moral panic Selfishness of Others,’ or I’m over fake news hides the real O.K. – You’re a Narcissist,” New enemy – the digital giants,” The York Times, July 31, 2016 Guardian, January 7, 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2016 https://www.theguardian.com/ /08/01/books/review-the-self commentisfree/2017/jan/08/bl ishness-of-others-or-im-ok-y aming-fake-news-not-the-answ oure-a-narcissist.html?_r=0. er-democracy-crisis. đđđđđđ18 đđđđđđ2 Dan P. McAdams, “The Mind of

Designer-researcher Silvio Donald Trump,” The Atlantic, 11/11 Lorusso, who provided valuable June 2016 comments on this piece, has https://www.theatlantic.com/ noted that a similar relativism magazine/archive/2016/06/the - has taken over visual culture. mind-of-donald-trump/480771 /. This might be the reason why trained, professional graphic đđđđđđ19 designers are the least equipped Tara Burton, “Apocalypse to produce effective memes. Whatever,” Real Life, December Instead, memes are often 13, 2016 associated with underground http://reallifemag.com/apoca amateur culture. Meme creation lypse-whatever/. is therefore often described as a mysterious process, for instance đđđđđđ20 in the documentary The Story Of It’s important to also mention Technoviking, which is about the here the work of New York “first meme” and which psychohistorian Lloyd de Mause, discusses meme production in whose 1984 study Reagan’s detail. See America can be an important http://documentaryheaven.com source of inspiration for us /story-of-technoviking/. today.

đđđđđđ3 đđđđđđ21 See All quotes from email interviews https://www.youtube.com/watc conducted February 13–15, h?v=ByKXcIPi7MI. 2017.

đđđđđđ4 đđđđđđ22 Jarett Kobek, I Hate the Internet Cambridge Analytica is the UK- (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2016), based big data firm that worked 25. for the Trump campaign. See Hannes Grassegger and Mikael đđđđđđ5 Krogerus, “The Data That Turned Ibid., 64. the World Upside Down,” Motherboard, January 28, 2017 đđđđđđ6 https://motherboard.vice.com Ibid., 38. /en_us/article/how-our-likes - helped-trump-win. đđđđđđ7 Ibid., 26, 36. đđđđđđ23 All Berardi quotes are taken đđđđđđ8 from a lecture he delivered at Ibid., 66. Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, February 8, 2017, as part of the đđđđđđ9 lecture series “What Is Ibid., 65. Happening to Our Brain?” organized by Studium Generale đđđđđđ10 Rietveld Academie. Ibid., 150.

đđđđđđ11 dana boyd, “Did Media Literacy Backfire?” DML Central, January 12, 2017 http://dmlcentral.net/media- literacy-backfire/.

đđđđđđ12 Cathy O’Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy (New York: Crown, 2016), 12.

đđđđđđ13 Ibid., 199.

đđđđđđ14 e - f l u x j o r n a # 8 3 — đ G t L v i k O v e r c o m i n g I t D s l u : h P p f M Ibid., 218.

đđđđđđ15 Ibid., 8.

đđđđđđ16 Kristin Dombek, The Selfishness of Others: An Essay on the Fear of Narcissism (New York: FSG Originals, 2016), 75.

đđđđđđ17

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