Sad by Design: On Platform Nihilism (Digital Barricades)

Sad by Design: On Platform Nihilism (Digital Barricades)

by Geert Lovink (Author)

Synopsis

Sadness is now a design problem. The highs and lows of melancholy are coded into social media platforms. After all the clicking, browsing, swiping and liking, all we are left with is the flat and empty aftermath of time lost to the app.

Sad by Design offers a critical analysis of the growing social media controversies such as fake news, toxic viral memes and online addiction. The failed search for a grand design has resulted in depoliticised internet studies unable to generate either radical critique or a search for alternatives.

Geert Lovink calls for us to embrace the engineered intimacy of social media, messenger apps and selfies, because boredom is the first stage of overcoming 'platform nihilism'. Then, after the haze, we can organise to disrupt the data extraction industries at their core.

$30.87

Quantity

10 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
Edition: 1
Publisher: Pluto Press
Published: 01 May 2019

ISBN 10: 0745339344
ISBN 13: 9780745339344

Author Bio
Geert Lovink is a media theorist, internet critic and author of Zero Comments (Routledge, 2007), Networks Without a Cause (Polity, 2012), Social Media Abyss (Polity, 2016) and Sad By Design (Pluto, 2019). He founded the Institute of Network Cultures at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and teaches at the European Graduate School.