Severin Matusek

If a technology has emancipatory potential, it is not the would-be feudal lords who will realize it: It is the community of power-users, the weirdos and dreamers—working together—who will bring it to fruition.

Philip Rieff’s The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966) theorizes how modern societies undergo cultural transformation through moments of “engineered symbolic release”—structured breaks from normative social controls that absorb disruptive impulses rather than confront them. Every culture, Rieff argues, functions by organizing moral demands into... See more

Dank memes, deep-fried memes, shitposting, feralposting, goblin mode, doomscrolling, or whatever insinuates seemingly senseless online content consumption were all essentially describing brainrot. The term, however, is iconic because it marks a significant turning point. It aptly describes the beginning of our biological coalescence with the... See more

About values and the selfAll of this makes people question who they want to be. There’s a need that’s not being answered in economic terms or about status. It’s about belonging, being seen, recognised.

In Lanier’s telling, this digital landscape shifted once the success of Google’s ad program revealed that you could make a lot of money on user-generated creative output, which led to the rise of social-media companies such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Initially, these companies emphasized their simple, elegant-looking interfaces and their... See more

Military strategy and diplomacy all became subordinate to social media dynamics. But he is moving on as if war is only a weekend thing.

Community gallery: at the top of our Discord we host our community gallery in which we showcase visual art by our community. At the time of writing, we are featuring the art of community member Leticia Ferraz.