Kanye West’s Fandom Navigates the Crisis
Fans are struggling with how to separate Kanye West’s groundbreaking artistry from his troubling descent into white nationalism and hate speech.
Internet
Spiritual Sonic Expression: An Interview with Surya Botofasina
Surya Botofasina’s new LP is a reflection on the Ashram where he was raised, which was founded by jazz legend Alice Coltrane. It is an exhilarating journey.
Language Is a Virus, and People Could Die
The COVID pandemic seemed to accelerate the spread of new viral media, but viruses mutate, pop culture replicates, and everything’s a cover song.
Books/Comics/Culture/Featured: Top of Home Page/Features/History/Internet/Media/Politics/PopMatters Picks/Reviews/Technology
The Art of Psychological Warfare
From marketing manipulation to all-out psychological warfare, Stories Are Weapons clarifies how our world – and worldview – is seldom our own.
What Wilco’s ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’ Got Right About Music Streaming
Wilco’s net-streaming experiment with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was part of the utopian promise for technology’s future, and it worked.
Gol o Bolbol Go Viral: Iranian Protest Songs in the Age of Social Media
Iranian protest songs like “Soltane Ghalbha”, which lyrically invoke “structures of feeling” connected to the loss and grief of a loved one, achieve an encoded additional layer of resistance when paired with the specific images and stories of lost young Iranians.
‘Tokens’ Pays Attention to the Moneyish Side of Things
Tokens is about all those things that are moneyish—monetary-like exchanges that are tracked and programmable, shady and social, hard coded and beyond borders.
People Like This? Metallica’s Crossover Contribution to Reaction Videos
Watching Chris&RheasiaTv’s reaction video to Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” illustrates the power of these crossover connections.
Only the Surveilling Technology Is New ‘The Listeners’ Contends
In The Listeners, scholar Brian Hochman narrates a history of surveillance in the United States by means of technological cunning up to 2001.
You Better Be Quick When It’s Time to BeReal
Although most social media sites are marked by abundance and expansiveness, BeReal operates on scarcity. Its gamification lies in the almighty two-minute window.
The Russo-Ukraine War Is a Mediated War – Not Just a War on the Media
How the Russo-Ukraine War generated a media dimension of its own and how it linked the myths of the past century to the challenges of our own.