Evgeny Morozov, “Moral panic over fake news hides the real enemy—the digital giants,” The Guardian, January 7, 2017 →.
Designer-researcher Silvio Lorusso, who provided valuable comments on this piece, has noted that a similar relativism has taken over visual culture. This might be the reason why trained, professional graphic designers are the least equipped to produce effective memes. Instead, memes are often associated with underground amateur culture. Meme creation is therefore often described as a mysterious process, for instance in the documentary The Story Of Technoviking, which is about the “first meme” and which discusses meme production in detail. See →.
See →.
Jarett Kobek, I Hate the Internet (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2016), 25.
Ibid., 64.
Ibid., 38.
Ibid., 26, 36.
Ibid., 66.
Ibid., 65.
Ibid., 150.
dana boyd, “Did Media Literacy Backfire?” DML Central, January 12, 2017 →.
Cathy O’Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy (New York: Crown, 2016), 12.
Ibid., 199.
Ibid., 218.
Ibid., 8.
Kristin Dombek, The Selfishness of Others: An Essay on the Fear of Narcissism (New York: FSG Originals, 2016), 75.
Jennifer Schuessler, “‘The Selfishness of Others,’ or I’m O.K.—You’re a Narcissist,” New York Times, July 31, 2016 →.
Dan P. McAdams, “The Mind of Donald Trump,” The Atlantic, June 2016 →.
Tara Burton, “Apocalypse Whatever,” Real Life, December 13, 2016 →.
It’s important to also mention here the work of New York psychohistorian Lloyd de Mause, whose 1984 study Reagan’s America can be an important source of inspiration for us today.
All quotes from email interviews conducted February 13–15, 2017.
Cambridge Analytica is the UK-based big data firm that worked for the Trump campaign. See Hannes Grassegger and Mikael Krogerus, “The Data That Turned the World Upside Down,” Motherboard, January 28, 2017 →.
All Berardi quotes are taken from a lecture he delivered at Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, February 8, 2017, as part of the lecture series “What Is Happening to Our Brain?” organized by Studium Generale Rietveld Academie.