Understanding virtual worlds is important because “we increasingly live in a world in which opting out of technological systems is more and more difficult and yet participation within those systems pushes us to accept structures we might oppose” (Taylor 2006a:135). - Tom Boellstorff (Coming of Age in Second life: An Anthropologist explores the Virtually Human)
Back in 2020, memewhile.mp3 and I facilitated a discussion with a small group over a Design Baithak, about how the culture of livestreaming was meeting the world of political campaigning. We tried to put together a sense-making exercise deriving from the affordances of a Twitch-like platform and its associated subculture to try to understand how manufactured authenticity was about to become the new wave of algorithmic manipulation. Since then, corporate social media…
