Fandom, powered by nostalgia, is gigantic, uncloseted and, unfortunately, argumentative. It's so powerful it has driven creators away from their creations. How do we control that rabid drive to "own" someone else's works?
Ironically, the very thing many have lamented as chief atomizer of humankind, social media, has proven to be indispensable for bringing us together — and for bringing me solace while, like Boccaccio's women in Decameron, I wait out the pandemic in the hills of Abruzzo.
We are afraid of time, and so like Leonard in Memento, we kill it, compulsively and indiscriminately.
#Powertothepeople! The humble hashtag has given power to the powerless, thus helping to engage citizenship and cultural belonging. Enjoy this excerpt of #HashtagActivism, courtesy of MIT Press, written by influential members of hashtag activism networks.
Culture and media critic Kate Eichhorn's The End of Forgetting explores how relentlessly documenting young lives allows little room for the unfettered joys of imaginative freedom and perpetuates a seemingly endless state of childhood.
Jaron Lanier says we should delete our social media accounts, yet it's not social media per se, but the way in which it presently exists, that Lanier is concerned about. But Lanier is overlooking a critical factor in our social media addiction.
To say young people's identities are tied up in social media would be a failure to recognize that the digital is now intrinsically part of the real, as evidenced in the documentary, Social Animals.
Drnaso's Sabrina explores how isolation, both psychic and social, fuels the evolution of tragedy into social paranoia and a dehumanized narrative of fraud.
Shannon Purser discusses her debut role in film, Sierra Burgess Is a Loser, catfishing, and the unrealistic expectations imposed on today's youth.
David Patrikarakos has written an engaging narrative that covers the activities and surroundings of eight 21st century social media crusaders.
Rather than moralize, critique, or make grandiose statements about "digital natives", writer-director-wunderkind Bo Burnham brilliantly visualizes what it means to live in a world in which social media is omnipresent.
Like an alchemist, Taylor Swift turns stray thoughts and abject emotions into global cultural touchstones—and into piles and piles of cold, hard cash. What do her fans get out of it?
Bo Burnham's big-hearted, emotional tidal wave of a movie shows how the look-at-me / leave-me-alone contradictions of adolescence, powered by social media, are cranked up to 11.
Against the constant distaste for and dismay about social media, Videocracy gives readers a series of anecdotes that connect YouTube to the goodness of being human.
Lee McIntyre's 'Post-Truth' is a history lesson and a call to action asking liberals to defend the concept of objective truth. But is it the best approach to the problem?
The DIY strategies and indie allegiances of recent alternative comedians reveal the spirit of punk to be alive and kicking beyond the music world.
These important documentaries about online abuse and the works of Terrence McNally attempt to illuminate empathy and social awareness at a time when it is being woefully ignored.
How do we overcome the human tendency to resist verifiable reality? Lee McIntyre takes this on in this installment of MIT's Essential Knowledge series.
The next film from Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer director Maxim Pozdorovkin treats us to Russian propaganda about the United States.
University campuses are seething. But telling people to get along with each other is not the answer.
Anchored by an unflinching cinéma vérité style and a powerful lead performance by Margita Gosheva, Glory (Slava) thrives as a grave parable on the social media economy's corrupting influences against ethics and morality.
Multi-tasking on your smart phone consumes too many resources, including memory, and can cause the system to "choke". Imagine what it does to your brain.
To those who would deny the Google burger because it's messy, I say, get a napkin and get over it.
© 1999-2020 PopMatters.com. All rights reserved.
PopMatters is wholly independent, women-owned and operated.
