And in politics, this type of speculation has become the closest thing to agency for people who feel like they are no longer served by the economy. People speculate on ideas, personalities, etc. Why wouldn’t they? But when this happens, you end up with a system optimized for speed and virality rather than stability or accuracy.
The debate over “is it real or fake” is somewhat ironic, because so much of what we experience as reality even within our own bodies is actually simulation.
What is needed, Citarella’s strategy suggests, is an understanding of a kind of post-internet politics, where, like it or not, online life is embraced as part and parcel of how modern belief systems are formed.
If you try to make your online presence more lore-worthy in order to be legible to these platforms, you could end up falling asleep at thewheel of the algorithm. You might even wake up one morning to find that the fancamyou liked to imagine watching you has suddenly become real.
Early on, a lot of collections felt intentionally off-tone, skewed toward a narrow demographic. My art had already proven to resonate across global cultures and big brands. So we focused on making a collection that was far-reaching and universally loved.
Our information system has split into an endless number of micro communities, from group chats to online fandoms, all learning about news and major events through increasingly bizarre digital formats.
When I polled a group of friends, one person heard the news in the comment section of a bird's Instagram account, another learned of it in a Discord... See more