Social Media
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Weekly Geekery
Rewriting Barbie. Unlocking your Internet password. Unlocking your soul. Trolls then and now. Science of your spit. Who runs the web? This is your face on Facebook.
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On Social Capital and Staying Hidden
Meander to Hazlitt for Linda Besner’s recent reading of Alfred Hermida’s Tell Everyone: Why We Share and Why it Matters. Besner’s critique is particularly concerned with the role of anonymity in a new, social-media-dominated landscape: Social media, in other words,…
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Weekly Geekery
The Internet hates women. Emily Gould’s e-book start up. The rich and powerful find revenge. What’s worse: Your thoughts or getting shocked? Twitter is still better for conversations than dinner with your family.
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Weekly Geekery
Are video games the new social commentary? Are we ready to give them the weight of other media? The Internet is fomenting another revolution. Librarians: bespectacled superheroes for your rights. Growing a library. A book written pre-Internet, sheds light on…
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Distractions and the Art of Creation
Alexandra Wuest, writing at HTMLGIANT, looks at the distinction between procrastination and the useful distraction that is a necessary part of the creative act: Somewhere between the initial conception of an idea and the completion of the project exists a…
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The Science of Why You Can’t Read Good Literature
Writer Michael Harris discusses digital distraction and reading War and Peace at Salon: But there’s a religious certainty required in order to devote yourself to one thing while cutting off the rest of the world. We don’t know that the…
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Weekly Geekery
Social media, journalism, Ferguson, and challenging power. The Internet cannot have nice things. We’re all horses. So, where’s our Black Beauty? The nature of creativity. You guys, you guys, Buzzfeed isn’t the devil. Honestly. Is that robot a better writer than…
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Thinking About Tweeting About Working on My Novel
Artist Cory Arcangel recently curated a collection of tweets containing the phrase “working on my novel” to produce a book of the same name. The New Yorker’s Mark O’Connell wonders why—why he did it, why they tweeted it, and why…
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The Self-Promotional Balancing Act
When does sending an email blast about an upcoming event become spam? Writers are as much publicists as they are authors, and social media hasn’t made things any easier. Over at Beyond the Margins, Randy Susan Meyers explores how much is…
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Weekly Geekery
Examining the troubled origins of our search for technological utopia. Autocorrect is our favorite fall guy for texting errors, but it’s also the reason you can text. What is worth saving from your digital legacy? Don’t resist, just welcome our…
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Party of One
Social media is a cruel machine, propelled by our desire to keep up appearances and affirmed by a strange, voyeuristic capital of likes and favorites. While Facebook can at times feel like a digital cocktail party devoid of any significant…
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Face-Off: Facebook vs. Reality
Facebook connects people every damn day. It’s just not how I personally want to connect. I trust that I’ll still wind up with valuable, lasting connections without the aid of online networking, and not waste so much steam in the…