Thursday, September 24, 2020

Seth Abramson reviews The Social Dilemma

Continuing this post, some excerpts from Abramson's review, points I've previously made in online discussions.

19/ It's not a dialectic because you refused the terms of the dialectic: social media company wins or I do. What you did—instead—was cultural judo: metamodernism. You accepted that the social media company was going to do what it does and then chose to use that to your advantage.

21/ In Tristan's view, social media companies are "winning," and it's a *dialectic*, which means the "user" has to be portrayed as unarmed. A victim. Helpless. Abused. That's absurd. In fact, the social media companies have "tools" (plural) and users have "tools" (again, plural).

22/ The first tool the user has is the platform—so *obviously* a tool it's amazing the doc tells us with a straight face it isn't. The user *also* has a meta-tool even more powerful than the tool itself—knowledge of what the social media company wants its platform to be used for.

33/ We should *teach*—yes, for college credit—generative, creative, lawful forms of platform-hacking, gamebreaking, modding, remixing, mashups, misappropriations, intelligent misuse, and (above all) the understanding of how "poetics" enables these digital creative modes and more.

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