A Legacy Media Executive and a Historian of Ideas walk into a pub.
Says the Legacy Media Executive:
"..Thank Goddess for X, seemingly no one is complaining about our
editorialising these days, it's almost as if they like it, this White
Man World of Liberal Fata Morganas we keep serving them up with Pharma
Capital ad money backing....".
Mumbles the Historian of Ideas, half to them-self:
"...Yea, that's the pendulum at play. When the (socalled) liberal elite
feels threatened by people power, "they" put on a fascist mask to make
you come crawling back to daddy, begging for good old fashioned colonial
capitalism and stacked supermarket shelves...".
.....
....
...
..
.
On 10/16/24 09:34, Allan Siegel via nettime-l wrote:
Hello Nettime
Thanks Pit Schultz for your very relevant posting. To further move the
discussion forward:
Focusing singularly on the problematic nature of one particular *social
media* platform, whether X or any of the other obscene monopolies, skews
the dimensions of a critical ongoing discourse. And, deters us from
reconfiguring the dynamics of this critical political horizon.
The residual and reductive branding of these grotesquely commodified
forms of communication as ‘social media’ conflates the inherent
ideological models of media monopolies with more diverse media practices
and evolving multi-dimensional social spaces: many of which are seeking
to develop distinctive economic paradigms.
As Simon tells us, “Social media have corrupted social space in so many
ways, leading us to the toxic situation we find ourselves in.” This
corruption takes the form of of an insidious type of colonialism in
which the extraction of all forms of data becomes an intrinsic building
block of corporate wealth; as many other commentators have told us:
branded ‘social media’ enables various processes of data extraction
simultaneously engineering various individual and collective forms of
exploitation.
Not surprisingly, human ingenuity and political necessity have subverted
elements within this ‘social media’ landscape into ephemeral, but
nevertheless, empowering social spaces that have enabled, globally,
numerous political actions and progressive social activities.
But, while these ongoing subversions and hackings, as tactical
interventions, provide visibility to political movements, social
injustices, and also disseminate otherwise vast amounts of critical
information, their enduring political impact remains negligible.
Collectively we are using matches to melt a neoliberal iceberg. We need
to imagine and articulate sustainable political structures and social
spaces: a collectively reflective ideological landscape. An ideological
landscape that addresses deteriorating societal and environmental
infrastructures and the injustices infecting people’s lives. This
ideological landscape is by no means monolithic but rather a visionary
and practical framework that inspires *tactical and strategic* political
processes in which media enables and compliments organised political
activities.
allan
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