Severin Matusek

Memetic warfare is not new, but it’s beneficial to contextualise with new zeitgeists to identify new tactics of feed control.

No topic—not the genocidal war and famine in Gaza, not Trumpian authoritarianism—has magnetized bien-pensant attention this year in the way that AI has. Writing on AI thus comes in every mode: muckraking (“Inside the AI Prompts DOGE Used to ‘Munch’ Contracts Related to Veterans’ Health”), scholastic (“Deep Learning’s Governmentality”), polemical... See more

The problem isn’t that the mean has decreased. It’s that the variance has shrunk.

As we train our sights on what we oppose, let’s recall the costs of surrender. When we use generative AI, we consent to the appropriation of our intellectual property by data scrapers. We stuff the pockets of oligarchs with even more money. We abet the acceleration of a social media gyre that everyone admits is making life worse. We accept the... See more

Thus, the expats of our age will be those who move offline, as much as it is those who move abroad. Living offline is the real luxury: something that is only affordable to elites. It is only by getting off our phones that we will ever collectively conquer our learned helplessness.

A social currency is a tokenized asset that represents value within a specific community, often used to incentivize engagement, reward participation, and strengthen brand or community loyalty. It operates similarly to traditional currency but derives its worth from social interactions, reputation, and influence.