“Happy Hump Day😜!” “Almost the weekend…😅” “TGIF!🙌🏽” Some might call this ‘smiling through the pain.’ The term “late capitalism” has recently become a particularly popular phrase used to refer to and criticize our modern economy. I interpret Fidelia Lam’s GIFs as a reaction to the overwhelming emphasis on hyper-productivity that…
Late Capitalist GIF Thoughts plays with the digital banality of the GIF format in an attempt to draw attention to the affective impact of late capitalism. The juxtaposition of text and emoji echo the feelings of anxiety and emptiness experienced in a society obsessed with hyper-productivity. The hypnotic repetition of…
Molly O’Donnell’s Spit was published in Issue 12 of Digital America. O’Donnell talked with Digital America about Spit and her other work in Potpourri and Default. O’Donnell delves into the world of ASMR as she discusses the way in which her work in general tackles the topics of gender, sexuality, and identity in context…
When I picked up the latest Microsoft Office suite, I found that it came with a whopping 1TB of storage in OneDrive, Microsoft’s cloud storage service. I was already using it through my Xbox One, of all things (I’m able to save game clips and screenshots that are uploaded to…
Rather than write another commentary on a recent event, or a critique on some new internet privacy issue, I’ve decided to write about a recent “shower thought” that I had a few days ago. It was triggered by a Buzzfeed headline I saw as I’d skimmed through my Facebook timeline:…
As I hunkered down and prepared for the snowstorm that passed through Richmond last night, I decided to head over to a few of my favorite websites to save some articles for offline use in case I was to lose power. Fortunately my apartment complex managed to stay on the…
Do me a favor and think back to the year 2001. The Time Magazine “Person of the Year” was Rudy Giuliani. Lifehouse, Train, Matchbox Twenty, and Lenny Kravitz took four of the first 10 spots on the Billboard Top 100 List (one of the last times that so many rock-ish…
Introduction It wasn’t until the advent of Tinder, the popular casual dating app that launched in 2013, that I could quickly explain Grindr, launched in 2009, and all its clones (Hornet, Scruff, Growler, Jack’d, A4A, Radar) to a non-queer audience. Grindr is a cellular digital space for men with same…
My number one biggest fear is someone else being able to read my mind, but I’d read someone else’s mind in a heartbeat. Scratch that. Let’s rewind for a second. Everyone’s got their thing. Some people fear spiders, or cannibalistic clowns who hang out in sewers. For others it’s heights,…
David Golumbia’s course “Challenging Media Studies” at Virginia Commonwealth University provides a topical survey of issues in current digital media studies. Dr. Golumbia passed out a list of dozens of topics that were possible entry points into the class. Students voted on which topics they wanted to discuss, and each…