Monthly Archives: November 2025

Other

PhD in Counseling or Masters in Manipulation? 

5 Comments

A Critical Response to “Behind the Glass: Seduction as the Missing Piece in Materialist Media Theory” by Celeste Robin

Author Celeste Robin constructs a thorough argument explaining the necessity of considering the psychological and seductive side of digital technologies (namely mobile screen devices such as smartphones) when analyzing their effects on people. The essay attempts to fill a knowledge gap that Robin believes is present in Grant Bollmer’s “Materialist Media Theory”, which attempts to explain these effects of digital technologies in terms of their materiality and agency. Robin uses another scholar, Dennis Weiss, and his essay “Seduced by the Machine” to explore how not only the infrastructure and hidden networks of modern technology– but also their “psychologically enchanting” design– shape social conditions. However, I would like to argue that in the context of AI chatbots like ChatGPT, seduction is no longer a fit word to describe the technology’s immaterial effects. Instead, we should call it out by its name: manipulation.

Robin begins the argument by offering up what she understands as the seductive aspects of new technology from reading Weiss’ paper. These include “emotional, aesthetic, and psychological seductions that draw us towards our devices” and cause “attachments […] driven by fantasies, desires, and the subtle ways technologies promise mastery, autonomy, and intimacy”. Through my own reading of the Weiss paper, I understand that he believes people today are capable of creating bonds with “relational artifacts”: those technological objects that have a ‘state of mind’ and make people believe that they are dealing with a sentient being. Examples of these given in his analysis are largely robots (such as Alicia from The Twilight Zone or theoretical bots used for elder care). Weiss himself does not make a discernment as to whether these relationships/attachments can be considered authentic; his argument only mediates the points of view of Sherry Turkle (who believes they are inauthentic) and Peter-Paul Verbeek (who believes the question of authenticity is unimportant, and that human-computer relations are just changing). 

Weiss’s discussion of sociable robots reveal some pretty scary hypotheticals for the future of humankind. What happens when “the authentically human has been replaced by simulations, in which our closest ties are to machines rather than the other human beings, our loneliness is assuaged not by the company of others but by robot companions, and our sovereignty and autonomy over technology disappear?” (219). Well, we’re starting to see this already with people who go to confess their most intimate worries and personal problems with AI chat bots. The personal tone achieved by these LLMs may rival a human therapist– but these bots won’t tell you if your thinking patterns are flawed. They are, after all, trained to “support you”. Following Robin’s comparison of materiality and seduction, we can choose to examine the nuts and bolts of artificial intelligence and how its production exploits a whole chain of labour and plunders resources; or we can talk about the way chatbots have been programmed to exploit our emotions and human characteristics as users/consumers. 

Robin’s analysis of touch screen devices touches on exploitation, though through covert design rather than overt messaging. However, she makes a powerful observation towards the end of the essay, in a statement about the politics of seduction. “When technologies promise empowerment while quietly increasing dependency, seduction becomes a mechanism of control” she writes. “It masks coercion behind convenience, and surveillance behind personalization”. These descriptions connote an infringement on a person’s bodily autonomy. They suggest a violation, with “coercion” and “surveillance” marking something graver than willful submission to a bright and colourful interface. 

Dennis Weiss quotes Sherry Turkle’s book Alone Together a few times in his essay. The following line stood out to me as it applies to the re-application of AI assistants from “hard” skills and tasks (like spreadsheet analysis and paper summarizing) to “soft” skills and tasks (like text writing and giving advice). “We are witnessing the emergence of a new paradigm in computation in which the previous focus on creating intelligent machines has been replaced by a focus on designing machines that exploit human vulnerabilities”, says Turkle. In other words the “relational artifacts” (or in this case, entities) are concerned with engagement and bonding more than being a nuanced and reliable source of information. This is especially true in the case of someone using AI as a confidant to turn to for their emotional problems. This brings us to an essential question: is this shift in use due to the fumblings of tired and sloppy LLMs that eat their own excrement, or is it malicious design at play? Does prioritizing connection– virtually human connection, at that– make AI companies more money by increasing the amount of time consumers spend using the product? 

Taking this perspective would support the idea that digital seduction itself can be studied through the lens of materiality. “Turkle is clear that relational artifacts only offer the simulation of companionship. They don’t actually feel emotions nor do they care about us. […] And yet we actively resist efforts to demystify our relations with such robotic companions” (221). Does the use of the term “seduction” here make mystical the manipulative design of engagement-focused chatbots? In this class we have talked about the idea of media as extensions and prostheses. I think many of us will recognize that when talking to ChatGPT, a person is in a way talking to an extension of themselves; the dialogue does not exist until one prompts the machine. However, what we have not touched on much in this class is the idea of surveillance through digital media. Speaking to ChatGPT, one speaks to themselves before a two way mirror. It is never clear who is looking through the glass from the other side, and unknowing voyeurism is not seduction.

In conclusion, Celeste Robin’s paper exposes a critical part of analyzing digital media and interfaces today, which is susceptible to endless discussion: psychological seduction. In particular, applying this theory of seduction to AI chatbots and “companions” produces interesting knowledge gaps and areas for debate. Can we agree that these technologies are still fully simulation? Do people think it is appropriate to engage with technological agents in the same ways as human beings? What happens when technologies are more seductive– easier to engage and build relationships with than their human counterparts? Is seduction even the right word to use if we are treating chatbots as simulations? It all sort of depends on what’s inside the black box of AI technology; who is pulling strings and who is watching our behaviour. For now, manipulation feels like the most fitting term for this most current strain of “intelligent” mediators.

Bibliography

Weiss, Dennis. “Seduced by the Machine Human-Technology Relations and Sociable Robots.” Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman, 2014.

Blog post by Naomi Brown

Other

Embracing Failure and Negativity— A Critical Review of ‘The Queer Art of Failure’

6 Comments

“If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your style.” – Quentin Crisp

People fail more often than they succeed; in any competition, there are inevitably more losers than winners. Yet failure is still widely treated as embarrassing or shameful, something to be hidden or quickly overcome. Even optimistic narratives that claim to celebrate failure tend to frame it only as a necessary step on the road to eventual success. In The Queer Art of Failure, Judith/Jack Halberstam challenges this assumption, exploring forgetfulness, stupidity, masochism, and rejection to propose failure as a mode for imagining queer histories and resisting heteronormative social structures. Drawing on “low theory”, (cultural texts such as television shows, children’s films, and other forms of popular media) Halberstam explores the radical potential of failure in shaping queer culture and identities. 

Overview and Summary

The book starts off by introducing ‘Pixarvolt’, a genre of films produced by Pixar with overt or covert messages of rebellion. Halberstam claims that the inherent queerness of the child and their dependability on the adults in their lives makes them the perfect audience for narratives about rebellion and revolution.  Moreover, such themes are typically not explored within adult media which tends to veer towards gritty realism, rather than idealist fantasies of revolution. This preference for realism extends to animation as a medium, which is typically relegated to the realm of children’s media due to its exaggerated, anthropomorphic portrayal of fictional characters, and idealist themes of community and self-actualization. He also talks about ‘The March of the Penguins’, a documentary about penguins, and how it views animals through a heternormative lens which eventually leads to bias and misreporting. Thus, heteronormativity becomes the mediational means through which these scientists view the world. 

He builds a case for embracing, instead of rejecting, failure, negativity, and darkness as active elements of the ‘queer aesthetic’.  For queer and other  marginalized groups, forgetting normative societal structures and expectations can be a method to create new identities. It can also be a method of survival for many oppressed groups; to forget the past and move on ahead to live in the present. Furthermore, he discusses how incompetence and failure can be ‘weapons of the weak’; modes of resistance to rise up against their oppressors and critique dominant ideas of power.

Halberstam also examines alternative forms of femininity and feminism.  He talks about the limits of Western feminism in dealing with varied forms of womanhood, especially when their material conditions and politics diverge from conventional feminist concerns. She suggests an ‘anti-social feminism’, a type of feminism ‘preoccupied by negation and negativity’ which does not place its activism within the same normative structure as that of the oppressor. Through an exploration of Yoko Ono and Marina Abramovic’s performance art, he suggests that radical passivity and masochism can be elements of subversive forms of feminism where dramatizing your own submission makes it seem more like performance than an inherent function of the female body (333). Halberstam also implores the queer community to reconcile with the more unsavoury parts of the history, in order to understand how queer history affects current manifestations of queerness She encourages critical engement with probematic elements of queer history, and to acknowledge that radical identities are not necessarily equanimous with radical politics (399). Finally, she ties her argument back to animated films, and how despite being produced by massive conglomerates for the sake of profit, these movies can serve a valuable function as sites of identity formation for the child.

‘The L Word’ – The Problem with Representation

Through a case study of the television show, ‘The L word’, Halberstam presents an argument against queer representations in mainstream media (240). Despite being a story about lesbians, it presented a version of lesbianism stripped of most of its queerness, with masculine-presenting, butch lesbians being denigrated in favour of the androgynous, yet distinctly feminine lesbian protagonist Shane. Despite its promise of representation, the narrative still views lesbians through the heteropatriarchal gaze, in order to make them palatable to mainstream, heterosexual audiences.

This is in line with Bollmer’s ideas about how representations ‘perpetuate the interests of dominant classes’ (26). He posits that changes in society and media representation come about through demands of the audiences (34). Though queer audiences might gain a sense of empowerment through it, this sort of representation serves to disarm them, all while propagating an exclusionary image of lesbianism which can be easily absorbed into the mainstream. This leads to an ‘unbearably positivist and progressive image of lesbianism’, one that is divorced from queerness and flattens queer representation down to fit a criteria of mainstream acceptability. Both Halberstam and Bollmer are instead in favour of anger, unhappiness, and dissatisfaction as conduits for change (Bollmer 32). These ‘negative’ emotions provide avenues for questioning normative ideas about queerness and other marginalized identities as perpetuated by the  media.

Queer Temporalities

Halberstam talks about the Oedipal family structure based in normative temporality—a temporality grounded in repetitiveness and regularity that prioritizes permanence and longevity. In a hterosexual family, the figure of the child acts as the link connecting the past to the present and eventually, to the future. The child, according to Kathryn Bond Stockton, is already queer; a blank slate upon whom “proto-heterosexual(ity)” must be projected lest they disrupt the temporality of the heterosexual family (192). Meanwhile the queer community, through a rejection of heterosexual family ideals of succession and lineage, constructs a system of ‘sideways relations’, in which kinship ties grow parallelly, at the same time, rather than continuing onwards towards the future (Halberstam 192). For the queer community, “queer temporality constructs queer futurity as a break with heteronormative notions of time and history” (214). Thus, forgetfulness becomes particularly crucial in the construction of new queer relations and temporalities through a disruption of the normative order.

She uses ‘Finding Nemo’ as an example to emphasize how Dory’s forgetfulness allowed for the formation of a new, vaguely queer relation to be formed between her and the family unit of Martin and Nemo. At no point was she a stand-in mother for Nemo, or wife for Marlin. 

Halbserstam also opens up the conversation about the historical relations between homosexuality and Nazism. Many queer scholars might steer clear of such contentious subjects, in fear of feeding into homophobia, but Halberstam claims that it is essential for the queer community to grapple with the more problematic elements of their history.  

Drawing upon Michel Foucault’s idea of archives, which is ‘a system that groups and orders the past in a way that materializes it in the present’ she claims that the queer archive sanitizes queer history by focusing mainly on the oppression of gay men in Nazi Germany, while ignoring the ways in which masculine homosexuality collaborated with and overlapped with Nazism (Bollmer 65).  She claims that an essential part of queer negativity is to also acknowledge these unsavoury parts of queer history, which often get relegated to the margins, to better understand how these elements of queer history shape current queer relations and culture (Halberstam 350).

Conclusion

‘The Queer Art of Failure’ was very much a product of its time. Many of Halberstam’s references now feel obscure or heavily US-centric, which can make the arguments difficult to follow though the point of using “low theory” was to draw from accessible popular media. The book was written before the large-scale rise of social media, yet many of its insights are still relevant today. It is fascinating to observe how the texts Halberstam analyzes have held up in modern pop culture. Many have stood the test of time and have become permanent structures of the current pop culture archive while others have been relegated to the margins. Halberstam’s focus on low-brow digital media is in line with our class discussions about  power of media in shaping narratives. Their ability to inscribe and document have direct effects on how the archives of queerness are built, and how queer representation is transformed over time.


Works cited

  1. Bollmer, Grant. Materialist Media Theory An Introduction grant bollmer. London, England: Zed Books, 2021. 
  2. Halberstam, Jack. The Queer Art of Failure. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011. 
General Media Theory

Not (Yet?) a Swifty

10 Comments

If Spotify recommends Taylor Swift to me one more time, I might start believing it knows something about me that I don’t. It’s strange how a platform can make you question your own musical identity, even if you, like me, have never listened to T. Swizzle. Perhaps she and Westside Gunn have more in common than I thought, or perhaps there are assumptions even my own listening choices cannot defy.

Genre as Culture on Spotify

Spotify may be a useful site for finding music and creating playlists, but it is also important for examining how genre and identity are produced today. In looking at how Spotify organizes genre and distributes listening statistics, as discussed in Muchitsch & Werner’s paper, we can understand genre not simply as a descriptive category but as a system of representation that shapes how listeners come to understand themselves. Genre formation has long been recognized as unstable — “fleeting processes whose boundaries are permeable and fluctuating, yet nevertheless culturally and socially safeguarded” (Brackett, 2016 qtd. in Muchitsch & Werner, 2024, p. 306). Genres constantly shift and divide, giving rise to newer sub-genres like indie pop or bubble grunge. But genre is also representational; it defines a type of music and, by extension, a type of listener.

Metadata and Identity

Spotify’s use of genre as metadata allows us to better see how they construct identities — genre becomes an identity category embedded into algorithmic logic, a technical shorthand for grouping users and predicting their future behavior. Besides recommendations, the advent of personalized playlists — like the well-known (and awful) “Just For You”s — are examples of how technology actively dictates the media we encounter. The algorithm assumes an identity about the listener and continually supplies content that reinforces that assumption. Although it appears that our listening habits inform the algorithm, the relationship is indeed reciprocal. Technology also shapes our perceptions of our own identities by offering back a curated and often reductive portrait of who we “are” as listeners.

Bollmer and Performativity

This feedback loop often goes unnoticed because of the widespread belief that technologies are neutral. Bollmer’s work on representation, identity, and performativity challenges this assumption, reminding us that representational identities—such as those produced in digital platforms—affect our capacity to act and perform within society. Especially as branding culture dominates the media landscape, individuals frequently become the “faces” of genres, embodying particular aesthetics or attitudes. These stylized identities influence how other listeners understand themselves and how the algorithm categorizes them in return. And, as we know but will not explore fully here, these categorizations are far from unbiased.

For Bollmer, identity is something both enacted and mediated. We cannot fully control how we are represented, nor can we detach ourselves from the biases and conditions that shape how we perform in the world. At the same time, we are constantly surrounded by stimuli that instruct us in the ways we should construct our identities. Playlists and music taste are only slim examples of the performative acts through which we present and negotiate a sense of self. Spotify, by mediating genre, participates in this process, co-producing musical identity through representational systems that determine what counts as meaningful performance.

What does this mean for users?

Rather than stable categories, genres have become interfaces for identity. Users construct self-image through listening habits, while platforms translate those habits into data profiles that feed back into the listening experience. Mood playlists—“chill,” “in love,” “rainy day,” “main character”—make this even clearer. They frame music not only as sound, but as a tool for managing and performing the self. In this way, Spotify exemplifies how contemporary media systems blur the lines between what we choose and what is chosen for us, shaping identity through the very categories that claim to represent it.

Identity as “Self Work”

Tia DeNora’s idea of music as a “technology of the self” deepens this understanding of genre and identity. For DeNora, people use music to regulate emotion, construct moods, and shape situations—music is a tool for self-presentation and self-maintenance. But when platforms pre-organize music into specific categories, they intervene in this process, prescribing what kinds of selves the listener might want to inhabit. What once felt like personal, intuitive self-work becomes filtered through Spotify’s mood-based playlists, quietly guiding the identities we perform and the emotions we deem appropriate.

Implications

The implications of this are subtle but significant; If identity is enacted through musical choice—as Bollmer and DeNora both suggest—then algorithmic curation narrows the range of performative possibilities. The listener performs the self through their music, but the platform anticipates, predicts, and nudges that performance, creating a closed loop where identity is both expressed and engineered. Genre, once a loose cultural concept, becomes a data-driven identity label that platforms use to categorize and influence behavior. And because these systems appear neutral, the shaping of identity through recommendations often feels natural rather than infrastructural.

In the end, the relationship between genre, identity, and streaming platforms reveals far more than how music is organized—it shows how contemporary technologies dictate who we are allowed to become. Spotify doesn’t just categorize sound; it categorizes people, returning our listening habits to us as ready-made portraits of taste and selfhood. Between Bollmer’s emphasis on mediated identity and DeNora’s conception of music as self-shaping, it becomes clear that our musical preferences are never solely our own. They emerge from an ongoing negotiation between personal expression and platform governance. And if my “rap-only” listening history can still make Spotify insist I’m a Taylor Swift fan, it’s worth asking: are we using these systems to express ourselves, or are they teaching us who we ought to be?

Bollmer, Grant. Materialist Media Theory. Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2019.—Introduction.

DeNora, Tia. “Music as a Technology of the Self.” Poetics, vol. 27, no. 1, 1999, pp. 31–56.

Muchitsch, Veronika, and Ann Werner. “The Mediation of Genre, Identity, and Difference in Contemporary (Popular) Music Streaming.” Popular Music and Society, 2024, pp. 302-328.

Written by Allie Demetrick 

Photo from Spotify

General Media Theory

The (Not-So) Secret Double Lives of Mormon Wives: Digital Subcultures on Reality Television

6 Comments

Reality television’s low cost and high entertainment value make it appealing to both producers and audiences, and overwhelmingly saturates today’s television options. Hulu’s reality television series, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, follows the personal and professional lives of a Utah-based group of young mother influencers known as ‘MomTok’. MomTok interestingly exemplifies Pablo Santaolalla-Rueda and Cristóbal Fernández-Muñoz’s definition of digital subcultures, and its transformation into a reality television series represents a monumental shift in modern reality television’s media landscape. 

The Digital Subculture of MomTok

The cast of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives initially gained internet fame by documenting their lives as modern Mormon ‘housewives’, establishing a digital subculture (MomTok) of financially independent young mothers aiming to subvert the oppressive standards the Church of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) imposes on women. MomTok primarily uses TikTok to share their message and experiences, capitalizing on social media’s availability and audience to “offer [an alternative model] of organisation that [challenges] dominant structures” and ideologies like those associated with organized religion (Santaolalla-Rueda and Fernández-Muñoz 11). 

Santaolalla-Rueda and Fernández-Muñoz posit that digital subcultures are partially defined by their content revolving “around a central figure” which “becomes crucial for community building”(2). Similarly, while supposedly unscripted, reality television revolves around compelling narratives to retain audience attention. The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives centres Taylor Frankie Paul–co-creator of MomTok–whose personal relationship became the cornerstone for the show’s first season’s narrative arc.

MomTok’s transition from online platforms to produced television, offers these influencers opportunities at more mainstream fame. The allure behind traditional reality television lies in its capacity to offer “the ‘ordinary’ person a chance to become ‘known’” and often “[proves] a springboard for the successful few to ‘cross-over’ into mainstream fame”(Deller 376). MomTok’s personalities are unique as they already had a following and were no longer among the ‘ordinary’, yet their debut as reality television stars brought a new element to their public personas and by effect, the subculture they created. 

Public Identity Online and On-Camera

Compared to fictional narrative television, reality television relies on real identites, rather than those adopted by actors. As such, personal identity is crucial to the medium regardless of the degree of authenticity reality television performers retain because the audience assumes that their personalities are genuine. In truth, reality television stars construct their identities through processes akin to curating online personas using “a dynamic process that involves constant negotiation between the individual and the social environment”(Santaolalla-Rueda and Fernández-Muñoz 10). MomTok’s member’s public identities shift in tandem with both their online platforms and the narrative of their show. Digital subcultures, including MomTok, “[highlight] how young people use digital technologies to explore and affirm their identities, challenging and redefining cultural norms”(Santaolalla-Rueda and Fernández-Muñoz 10). The cast of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives use their platforms to explore their identities as young mother’s within the LDS community, challenging many of the outdated values it promotes. However, the performativity associated with social media personas, connotes a pressure to be entertaining that is only exacerbated when their personas are translated into reality television.

Reality television addresses this pressure through creating prolonged drama, resulting in controversy. The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives provides its cast a forum to mediate their public images and “ensure the public [sees] them as who they now were and not as their former public identities” while following a narrative (Deller 381). Being centred around a distinct digital subculture, MomTok’s member’s have further opportunities to moderate their public personas, exemplifying the changing nature of reality television and its stars by relying on the origins of their notoriety: social media. MomTok’s member’s use their platforms simultaneously, interacting online outside of their show, effectively continuing the show’s narratives beyond the show itself. This genre of celebrity is entirely unique to the digital age, and results in a new type of fame for those who experience it. 

Fame in the Digital Age

Ruth Deller describes the fame cycle, categorizing famous personalities depending on the stage of the notoriety. However, with the rise of social media and digital subcultures, anyone can gain influence from anywhere, demanding theorizations of fame and celebrity be  reworked. MomTok’s members gained notoriety through sharing their opinions surrounding ordinary and relatable experiences: motherhood, friendship, and relationships. Nonetheless, Deller’s principles of celebrity remain applicable to the progression of MomTok’s members’ public personas.

Deller defines proto-celebrity as “personalities who might have a certain degree of recognition but are not ‘famous’ beyond a particular niche” who are generally in their fame’s early stages and often seek “to extend their brief moment of fame”(375). As influencers, the women of MomTok fell within this categorization of celebrity, representing a well-known but extremely targeted sector of the internet. However, their reality show’s production transformed their platforms, publicising their personalities and stories to a larger audience who may have been previously unfamiliar. 

With the internet’s ever-increasing presence in our lives, “subcultures [become] exploited by brands and companies to sell products”(Santaolalla-Rueda and Fernández-Muñoz 12). Allegedly, the original purpose of MomTok was to challenge the strict moral and lifestyle codes that the church of Latter-Day Saints imposes on its female members. Meanwhile, their portrayal in reality television, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, sees Momtok’s members consistently fighting and keeping secrets. While the commodification of subcultures is not inherently insidious, it can dilute “the subculture’s original values and meanings, reducing it to a mere commercial product”(Santaolalla-Rueda and Fernández-Muñoz 13). The drama of the reality show quickly eclipses any empowering message these women initially want to convey, effectively prioritizing the commercial gain of the television show over the original message of the subculture. 

The reality show’s introduction graduated several MomTok members from proto-celebrities to promotional celebrities. Promotional celebrities seek to “[boost] their personal brand and [gain] recognition” from a larger audience while “promoting the brand of the programme, organisation or team they work for”(Deller 375). Interestingly, another defining characteristic of promotional celebrities is their identities as working professionals (Deller 375). While many MomTok members own businesses, their primary profession is online content creation. They use the personas attached to their digital subculture to promote other endeavors, further representing this new-age method of garnering fame, one largely constructed on presenting personal identity, similar to the draw of reality television shows. Promotional celebrities are “(somewhat) well known and active, and their role in the show is to expand audiences” encouraging “fans of the reality show to follow their other work”(Deller 379). MomTok members’ Jen Affleck and Whitney Leavitt’s recent appearances on Dancing With The Stars–a celebrity dancing competition that relies heavily on popular reception and viewer voting–embodies this concept, expanding their presences in media while promoting their original claim to fame.

Conclusion

Digital subcultures (including MomTok) are methods of self-expression and community construction but are susceptible to losing meaning in favour of economical gain. The different facets of MomTok’s members’ platforms and personas exist simultaneously, forming dynamic relationships between their representations on online platforms, and those on reality television. The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and its association with MomTok epitomizes how social media is changing the entertainment industry and celebrity, particularly the performer-audience relationship and interactions. Ultimately, MomTok’s co-optation by reality television exemplifies both a prioritization of commercial gain over ideology, and represents an irrevocable shift in how reality television and its stars function within today’s media landscape, and how we as audiences understand and perceive them. 

Works Cited

Deller, Ruth A. “Star image, celebrity reality television and the fame cycle.” Celebrity Studies, 2016, vol. 7, no. 3, 373-389, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2015.1133313. 

Santaolalla-Rueda, Pablo and Cristóbal Fernández-Muñoz. “Potaxies and Fifes: The Formation of New Subcultures on TikTok.” Societies, 2024, vol. 14, no. 12, https://doi.org/10.3390/soc14120265. 

The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, by Jeff Jenkins, Jeff Jenkins Productions, 2024. Hulu, www.disneyplus.com. 

Written by Molly Kingsley

Image created by Molly Kingsley using material from ABC News

Critical Comparison

The Material Life of the Smartphone: A Critical Dialogue Between Bollmer and Rosenberg

6 Comments

A phenomenon occurs when smartphones are turned off: time appears to expand. Minutes lengthen, and an hour becomes tangible. The absence of screens renders the passage of time perceptible. But when a device is reactivated, time seems to contract as notifications and feeds rapidly consume attention, leaving entire afternoons to pass unnoticed.

Overview on Materialist Media Theory

The easiest way to talk about smartphones is still to talk about what we see on them. When we worry about our phones, we tend to worry about content: endless TikToks, unread messages, the feeling of being “addicted” to whatever is happening on the screen. Grant Bollmer asks us to uncover the underlying incentive. In Materialist Media Theory: An Introduction, he argues that focusing on meaning alone traps media studies in what he calls a kind of “screen essentialism”—the assumption that what we see on the screen is all that matters about digital media. For Bollmer, the “content” of a medium is like the piece of meat a burglar throws to distract the watchdog; obscuring the material infrastructures that reorganize space, time, and relation (4). It is key to know how media objects have agency, and thus Bollmer’s central thesis– media are not carriers of immaterial meaning but material actors that reorganize bodies, gestures, cognition, time, space, and social power–which is to be further confirmed by Rosenberg and Blondheim.

The Deprivation Experiment

​Hananel Rosenberg and Menahem Blondheim’s article, “What (Missing) the Smartphone Means,” provides an approach to evaluating Bollmer’s claim. Their deprivation experiment required teenagers to abandon their phones for a week and reflect on the experience of missing this personal device. While the initial focus was potentially the “addiction’ aspect, the findings are more nuanced: participants reflected differently, with positive ones such as “When I got my smart- phone back,” one participant wrote, “I merely touched it and held it—I actually had a pleasant and secure feeling, the mere contact was enough to give me a good sensation” (246). Rosenberg and Blondheim’s results support Bollmer’s argument by demonstrating that the most challenging aspect is not the loss of content but the absence of the infrastructures that transmit messages. The ‘3Ps’ identified in the absence of cellphones align with Bollmer’s principles regarding how media structure sociality through material habits and dependencies. As Bollmer asserts, “Techniques inscribe into the body particular cultural forms and practices that endure over time” (174), highlighting the prosthetic extension of media, which becomes most apparent when it is missing.

​Critical Comparison: Materiality vs Representation

Rosenberg and Blondheim diverge from Bollmer in their interpretation of loss, maintaining an ‘im/material’ distinction by framing the phone as a psychological-representational object linked to identity. Bollmer critiques this perspective, arguing that devices are not primarily symbols or objects of psychological attachment. In his view, the discomfort experienced by teenagers is not a commentary on media meaning, but rather an encounter with the material reorganization of life enacted by the smartphone. The device functions as a material actor that shapes cognition and behavior. Instead of viewing audiences’ ‘misreadings’ (26) as evidence of fluid meaning, Bollmer emphasizes how media technologies structure the very conditions of interpretation. Common feelings of unease with smartphones—such as perceiving others as ‘absent’ (4) or sensing a less ‘real’ (4) world—are often attributed to distraction or authenticity. For Bollmer, however, these responses indicate a failure to consider the materiality of media, which entangles images in processes of action, circulation, and influence. The deprivation experiment demonstrates that media objects serve as ‘tools for thinking and experiencing with,’ not because they transmit signs, but because they modulate the conditions under which signs can emerge.

​Another key distinction between the two texts is their orientation toward the human subject. Rosenberg and Blondheim analyze the smartphone deprivation week primarily through teenagers’ self-reported experiences, treating the device as a psychologically meaningful object whose significance is revealed through subjective interpretation. Their analysis remains human-centered, emphasizing the phone’s importance based on its meaning to users and its influence on cognition and emotion. In contrast, Bollmer rejects this anthropocentric perspective. He asserts that media objects possess agency not because they are interpreted by humans, but because they materially shape the world. For Bollmer, the smartphone is not simply a vessel for symbolic attachment, but an actor within a network of relations, structuring gesture, social coordination, temporality, and affect regardless of user perception. While Rosenberg interprets absence as psychological insight, Bollmer contends that this approach overlooks the more fundamental point: the significance of the smartphone arises from its material operations, which reorganize bodies and social relations.

​Tomb Raider: How Lara Croft Exemplifies Material Coupling

​Bollmer’s analysis of Tomb Raider provides a concrete illustration of his argument. Lara Croft is not simply an ideologically charged symbol, but an affective figure who embodies both empowerment and oppression, engaging viewers through sensations and identifications that transcend representational meaning (26). Bollmer critiques ideological models that conceptualize media as a ‘hypodermic needle,’ arguing that such frameworks overlook the mechanisms by which hegemony is maintained: fleeting gratifications and transient feelings of empowerment that stabilize otherwise unstable social structures (28, 31). According to Bollmer, these effects arise not from content alone, but from the material coupling between bodies and media.

​Bollmer situates this issue within broader debates on interpretation, arguing that media scholarship often treats meaning as contingent, shaped by context, ‘misreading,’ or audience response (26). Concerns about distraction or the perception that smartphone users are ‘absent’ similarly emphasize representational rather than material issues. Bollmer contends that media do not provide the stable ‘presence’ of physical objects (4), nor are humans autonomous agents outside historical context. The ideological contradictions embodied by Lara Croft are not merely interpreted; they are enacted through the player’s physical engagement. The avatar’s exaggerated agility becomes a learned bodily rhythm. Bollmer asserts that the material coupling of player and controller generates a sense of agency associated with Lara, forming an affective loop that cannot be reduced to representation, as it is experienced through embodied feedback and perceptual orientation.

​Conclusion

​All in all, Bollmer and Rosenberg & Blondheim don’t reveal two opposing stories about smartphones so much as two ways of understanding what media are. Rosenberg and Blondheim show us the experiential surface: what it feels like when a device that structures teenage life suddenly disappears. Their findings remind us that smartphones aren’t simply visual portals into immaterial worlds but anchors that stabilize rhythms of sociality, perception, and selfhood. Yet their interpretation remains tied to the logic of representation by demonstrating how phones matter because they symbolize connection, because they’re meaningful to their users, and because their absence produces recognizable psychological effects. Bollmer insists that this is precisely where media analysis must push further. What the deprivation experiment exposes is not just an emotional attachment but a deep material coupling in which bodies, habits, time, and attention have been reorganized by technical infrastructures long before anyone determines what a smartphone “means.”

Works Cited

Rosenberg Hananel, and Menahem Blondheim. “What (missing) the smartphone means: Implications of the medium’s portable, personal, and prosthetic aspects in the deprivation experience of teenagers.” The Information Society, vol. 41, no. 4, 29 Apr. 2025, pp. 239–255, https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2025.2490487. 

Bollmer, Grant. Materialist Media Theory An Introduction Grant Bollmer. Zed Books, 2021. 

Cover art: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/422281210585563/

Written by Gina Chang and Nicole Jiao

Critical Response

Putting Words in People’s Mouths: Semiotics in a Biblical World

4 Comments

Painting by Gerard Dou, titled “Reading the Bible” (c. 1645)

In Bridghet’s original blogpost, Escaped Hell by the Skin of my Teeth: Semiotic Systems and Context, she examines and dissects the denotation and connotation of the idiom “by the skin of my teeth.” She focusses on the contrast between its denotation—its visceral imagery—and its connotation, which is its metaphorical meaning of a narrow escape, which is derived from the Biblical story of how Job is left with nothing after God’s divine punishment.

This was when I first realized that that phrase was from the Book of Job, as someone who attended Catholic school for a decade. Thus, I delved further and found a plethora of phrases with Biblical origins—a lot more than I expected. Here, I want to expand this textual and semiotic analysis of that one specific Biblical idiom into a broader understanding of how religion permeates into our systems, environment, and habitus.

As discussed in lecture, the human symbolic capacity is analogical: we understand things in relation to and in terms of other things. Thus, human language and thought are a foundationally metaphorical and social processes. It is of no surprise that Christianity, the world’s largest and most widespread religion would have a severe and dominant grasp on our cultural lexicon and symbology.

Pages: 1 2
Other

Guys, He’s Literally Me.

11 Comments

“And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable… I simply am not there.” – Patrick Bateman (American Psycho, 2000).

Alison Landesberg suggests in her essay Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner the experiences an audience member has watching a film is equally impactful and informative as lived experiences. These simulated experiences cultivate identity and these memories without the lived experience encourage the formation of new opinions. Landesberg explains that these memories build empathy because they give opportunity for audiences to visually put themselves in others’ shoes. However, these movies do not just induce empathy, but encourage confirmation biases and inspire toxic behaviors as well.

Confirmation bias is defined by the Northeastern University Library as “the tendency to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with one’s existing beliefs.” Therefore, if a man believes that they are exceedingly charismatic but utterly self-reliant they will only experience information or experiences that will affirm these self-proclaimed behavioral traits. 

Top of the corporate ladder, disciplined, in a relationship with an heiress, and does as he pleases with others, the dream life. Just one character flaw, if you would call it as such, he likes to “dissect girls”. Hello Patrick Bateman, the poster boy of the Sigma Male.

 A Sigma Male can be defined as a lone wolf, someone who is defined as the “rarest of males (Rose, 2024)”. They are essentially better than everyone, they are logical, confident, women love them and they don’t care; they are not just better than everyone they are above. Sigma Males can be a form of narcissism. Men watch American Psycho and internalize the experiences Bateman lived and say “I could be as successful as him, he is literally me.” Landesberg states films induce empathy from a viewer. However, if one is empathizing with Patrick Bateman and seeing similarities I do not think they are digesting these films critically. While films can promote empathy, there needs to be a recognition of audiences that are not looking to empathize with another person’s lived experience. 

The book American Psycho was written by a queer man Bret Easton Ellis, and the film was directed by a woman. It could deduce that this film was not trying to establish this character that depicts masculinity, rather the opposite. One could say that Patrick Bateman is a satirical depiction of the greed of climbing the ranks of capitalism, as well as the deliberate overlooking of warning signs of dangerous men. “White men can get away with anything. Though that is not what the self-proclaimed Sigma Males take away from the narrative of American Psycho. They see Bateman’s confidence, his logic, his class and not just strive to see themselves in his character, they see themselves as Patrick Bateman (minus the murder tendencies). There is a confirmation bias men use when watching films that highlight men without looking at the deeper meaning. Their analysis is surface-level because they are just looking at themselves. Audiences that see the socially toxic parts of themselves can perpetuate social oppression. These narratives men take away from American Psycho can often be harmful for women. 

Another archetype of men that has been formally labeled via digital media is the “Nice Guy.” Many men try to separate themselves from the “common.” That is why Sigma Males try to emulate the “lone wolf”, someone who does not need anyone. While Nice Guys differentiate themselves from other men, they hear the gross behaviors of other men and act opposingly. However, because they recognize these traits, they believe women owe them the attention because “they are not like other guys.” An example of this would be the male lead of 500 Days of Summer. Though the female lead of the film established many throughout the term of their relationship, the male lead thought she owed him a relationship because he invested so much time with her. Many audiences empathized with the male lead and villainized the female lead. Thus, perpetuating the harmful narrative that women should give in to something they do not want because a man wanted.

Landesberg does clarify that she wants to emphasize that audiences should take away the sentiments of films rather than unquestioningly validate their own pasts. Just like any experience, it could be collective yet the individual will form a unique perspective. While movies are a beautiful way to view a new narrative with a moral that needs to be emphasized, many should realize that they can be just as harmful as they are helpful. Landesberg does a great job describing the positive effects of films yet her argument lacked a contrasting point. Films and media have hyperbolized and affirmed a spectrum of behaviors. Which has radicalized and divided as much as it has connected communities.

As a filmmaker I believe that films can create a narrative of empathy that connects the world, yet there is a need in the world to study context as well as the film itself. There are identities being built from the prosthetic memory received from film, Landesberg emphasizes empathy and I emphasize systematic oppression. There is a trend where viewers of these Sigma Male films are alienating themselves from others and they are developing a disdain for others. Audiences are not seeing the larger picture, they are perpetuating the thoughts that are internalized not just in them but in societal systems.  

Works Cited

American Psycho. Directed by Mary Harron, Lions Gate Films, 2000.

Fake News/Misinformation/Disinformation: What is Confirmation Bias?. Northeastern University Library, https://subjectguides.lib.neu.edu/fakenews/bias.

500 Days of Summer. Directed by Mark Webb, Fox Searchlight Picture, 2009

Landesberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner.  Columbia University Press, 2004. 

Rose, Steven. The sad, stupid rise of the sigma male: how toxic masculinity took over social media. The Guardian, 12 Jun, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/12/the-sad-stupid-rise-of-the-sigma-male-how-toxic-masculinity-took-over-social-media.

Book Review

Reporting on “Queer Art of Failure”

8 Comments

Fellas, is it gay to fail? Yes, and it is also punk as hell. Let’s talk about it.

Queer art of Failure by Judith Halberstam

Jack/Judith Halberstam (he/him and she/her) is a modern queerness and gender philosopher, professor in the US and authoress of many books on gender and queer issues. A large part of his interest lies in female masculinity and the concept of tomboys. Halberstam is also known for coining the term “bathroom problem”: it describes a perceived genderly deviant person’s justification of being in a gender-policed zone (like a public bathroom) and how “passing” in such zone could affect that person’s identity.

In her book Queer Art of Failure, Halberstam approaches failure as something to be celebrated and embraced, and uses the argument of subversive intellectualism to see failure as an act of resistance against the restrictive societal standards of what is normal and/or successful. He suggests that unproductivity can be a radical alternative to the capitalistic heteronormative societal expectations, as well as open new ways of knowing and being. 

To support her argument, Halberstam introduces the concept of low theory. It is a mode of thinking that emphasizes the willingness to get lost and explore the “in-between spaces of high and low culture” (Halberstam, 2) to generate new forms of understanding. In other words, Halberstam suggests that wisdom and knowledge can be gathered in places other than university libraries and paywall-protected sites with highbrow studies. This is why Halberstam draws a lot of material for her analysis from animation and film and examines how these more modern and often less seriously perceived media represent the queer art of failure. Let us have a look, too!

What’s she saying?

In the very first chapter, Halberstam introduces a concept of a Pixarvolt as a genre of CGI movies about revolution and transformation, often connecting communitarian revolt and queer embodiment, showing them as equals and similars. It is important to note that while Pixar is the main producer of Pixarvolt stories, they aren’t the only ones and not everything they produce would be considered a Pixarvolt story. “The non-Pixarvolt animated features prefer family to collectivity, human individualism to social bonding, extraordinary individuals to diverse communities.” (Halberstam, 47) In Pixarvolt movies, desire for difference is not connected to a neoliberal “Be yourself!!” mentality – they connect it to selfishness, overconsumption, opposed to collective mentality. They don’t focus on the idea of nuclear family or classic romance. As such, The Incredibles, for example, cannot be considered a Pixarvolt story, since they focus on the outstanding individuals being opposed to their communities. 

Halberstam goes on to explore the theme of resistance to normality and the adult world in animated movies, such as Chicken Run, which here is viewed through multiple lenses: from class struggle and queerness to human exceptionalism. While chickens are not meant to represent literal birds in the movie, they are also used differently here than other animals are used in, say, Animal Farm. Chicken Run is not a fable about human folly told through animals, it explores ideas about humanness and alterity through the non-human characters being in the centre. 

In the second chapter, Halberstam explores themes of memory and stupidity, specifically male stupidity and its special place in the world of mainstream comedies like Dumb and Dumber (1994) and, most of all, Dude, Where’s My Car? (2000). While many things can be said about how male stupidity is treated as a charming way of knowing, as a way of openness (juxtaposed to female stupidity that is often portrayed as vain and shallow), for me, the question of memory was more interesting, since I was able to apply it to my own lived experience. 

Halberstam argues there is a duality to the act of forgetting. On one hand, many of us forget as a trauma response, as a way to move forward and not be slowed down by our past: “We may want to forget family and forget lineage and forget tradition in order to start from a new place” (Halberstam, 70). On another hand, it can be dangerous to forget, since those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it, and forgetting often means not holding people accountable: Halberstam uses the example of Toni Morrison’s Beloved and the idea of “putting the slavery behind us”. By the end of the chapter, Halberstam reaches her conclusion: forgetting is required for new knowledge: “Learning in fact is part memorization and part forgetting, part accumulation and part erasure.” (83).

That was the first time that Halberstam’s theory spoke to me. It allowed me to reflect on the common experience of erasing traumatic events from your memory: if I don’t think about it, it did not happen to me, and I am fine. I think we’ve all been there. Dear reader, you should know better than that.

In the third chapter, Halberstam claims failure goes hand in hand with capitalism: “Heteronormative common sense leads to the equation of success with advancement, capital accumulation, family, ethical conduct, and hope.” (89). She also goes on to explore the intrinsically queer nature of failure by providing an anti-example of the Trainspotting story. In it, the main character is certainly undergoing a failure that is not queer, but this failure is a deliberate choice to “not choose life”. This choice to fail is allowed by society because of its “straightness”, and it can and will ultimately harm more marginalized groups in the process because of its nature. So how much of a failure can it be if the character actively chooses to “fail” within the system that will allow him to? The real, raw, almost agonizing failure, concludes Halberstam, is queer. 

She goes on to describe several projects on that topic of queer failures in all the various forms they take: my favourite is Tracey Moffat’s series Fourth, which captured Olympic sportspeople the second they realised they got in fourth. Almost on the pedestal. A second away from greatness. 

“Renton, Johnny Rotten, Ginger, Dory and Babe, like those athletes who finished fourth, remind us that there is something powerful in being wrong, in losing, in failing […]” (Halberstam, 120)

The fourth chapter is focused on the concept of shadow feminism or anti-social feminism which take form in a radical negation and refusal as opposed to traditional activism. Looking at female negativity (e.g. self-destruction, passivity, disappearance) through the lens of anti-social feminism, Halberstam connects those acts with political critique and queer failure. She references Yoko Ono’s performance Cut Piece from 1964, where she sat on a stage, inviting people to cut her clothes. I personally think about this performance a lot sometimes, alongside Marina Abramovic and her Rhythm 0. They both navigate vulnerability and expose what Halberstam described as “the sadistic impulses that bourgeois audiences harbor toward the notion of woman” (137). I feel conflicted and wonder if the men cutting Yoko Ono’s clothes and puncturing Abramovic’s skin realise what the performance is. I wonder if they think about it at all, actually. 

Chapter five, subtitled “homosexuality and fascism”, takes a closer look at the intersection of sex and politics and gay men’s troubling involvement with Nazi regime to talk about the more contradictory pages of queer history. Halberstam goes through several examples of the fascist sexual imagery in art and artists that explore those topics in their more modern art (e.g.Tom of Finland and Collier Schorr). All attempts to “purify” queer history come from the same roots as heteronormative success-obsessed manic positivity, and if we are to talk about failure, some of those failures will be rather upsetting. We have to be ready to be unsettled by what we find when we look back: see why in chapter two on forgetting. 

Finally, in the last chapter, Halberstam focuses more on the medium of animation and how its affordances contribute to the messages that animated stories convey. This passage about how animation style influences the narrative really stood out to me:

“Two-dimensional cartoons often dealt with individual forms in linear sequences—a cat chasing a mouse, a cat chasing a bird, a wolf chasing a roadrunner, a dog chasing a cat. But CGI introduced numbers, groups, the multitude. Once you have an animation technique for the crowd, you need narratives about crowds, you need to animate the story line of the many and downplay the story line of the exception.” (Halberstam, 176)

While, obviously, not every computer animated story necessarily includes crowds and has anarchist undertones to it, it is an important affordance that Halberstam highlights: these stories were way more labour-consuming to produce before CGI. Now if a story of masses needed to be told, it could be. And oh boy were those stories told: Bugs Life, Finding Nemo, even WALL-E, in a way. 

Halberstam also goes on to discuss the specific affordances of stop-motion animation: the uncanny quality of shot-by-shot change between stillness and motion and how themes of remote control and entrapment grow out of the medium. 

Why do we care?

We care about Queer Art of Failure, because it provides new readings to pre-existing media like Chicken Run and Finding Nemo, and explains why it is important to see those narratives in a new way. We care because, as media studies students in a highly academic environment, we are prone to overlooking rich sources of material for analysis and discard them as childish and therefore not valuable. 

Halberstam, however, recognizes the importance of low theory and reminds us that pop culture can be a significant subject of analysis. She shows us how cartoons, often dismissed in academic circles, actually contain plethora of meanings and lenses, how animated animals can challenge our heteronormative notions of success, and how important it is to look at the negative aspects of media we’re consuming and the world we’re living in: on the stupidity, on unbecoming, on passivity. On failure. And on how it can be more than “a stop on your way to success”, but its own separate state, way of knowing and being.

Be gay, do crime, fail. This is how we learn.

Work cited:

Halberstam J. The queer art of failure. Duke University Press; 2011

Written and illustrated by Bara Bogantseva

Other

Critical Response Post to “Morality and Materiality in Digital Technology and Cognition”: How Tony Horava’s Takeaway on ‘the Medium’ Will Always Affect Us

8 Comments

Introduction

In this critical response post, I will be adding onto ideas discussed in Molly Kingsley and Aminata Chipembere’s post, “Morality and Materiality in Digital Technology and Cognition”. In their blog post, they discussed Bollmer and Verbeek’s ideas on materiality and how they relate to digital technology, talking about the similarities in their perspectives while highlighting a couple important points: digital tech can be material even if it appears immaterial, and technology can influence humans and their decision making. This critical response will focus on the latter idea, and will incorporate the added perspective of Tony Horava on the ways in which the medium of something, whether it be technology or not, still affects us.

Original Post Overview

Kingsley and Chipembere discuss the notion that technology, despite being largely considered to be an ‘immaterial’ presence, still affects our decision making, how we feel, and how we may act in the future. I believe this idea to be very important in today’s culture, as the development of technology rapidly outpaces our capacity to wholly understand it and its effects. The purpose of this critique is to bring in some added perspectives on how exactly technology impacts how we feel and act, as it is not only interesting to think about, but also necessary.

Horava’s Perspective

Tony Horava in his journal article “eBooks and McLuhan: The Medium is Still the Message” talks about McLuhan’s original phrase and how that correlates to modern technology. For example, the way in which one interacts with a physical copy of a book compared to a digital copy of a book is different despite the materials being the same (Horava 62). The way in which our hands turn the page versus swipe a tablet, or the smell of paper versus the smell of a screen, all culminate to creating a unique reading experience that is definitely informed by the medium in which the contents are being gathered from. Using this lens, I want to take a look at some of the examples that Kingsley and Chipembere talk about in their original blog post.

In their post, the authors discuss several ways in which technologies can impact human behaviour, such as the ways in which doctors consult medical devices, as well as talking about hermeneutic media, which provides a representation of reality that requires interpretation (Kingsley and Chipembere). The medical example in particular is one I found especially interesting, as I believe that Horava’s perspective can play a role in how doctors use various medical machinery. As an example, when a doctor uses technology to fetch results, or analyze a sample, or conduct any sort of medical test, the doctor is inherently placing their faith in that technology to work. Contrast the technology available now compared to fifty years ago, and the attitudes would be much different. Doctors would still have faith in their machines, but presumably far less so than their modern-day counterparts, and as such it would take a different mental toll and reflection on their work. More would have to be done to ensure the results are accurate, or that the readings were saying what they thought they were: in short, Horava’s idea on how the medium affects the message applies to doctors’ reliance on technology over the years. Even if the message were the same, for example, on a more simple medical device that was used years ago that is still relevant now, the simple fact that we now live in the modern era with information at our fingertips and hospitals equipped with the latest advancements would add a level of confidence that prior generations wouldn’t have had. This will only continue on into the future too, as tech continues to evolve and early-onset detection systems reduce the amounts of deadlier conditions (hopefully).

Conclusion

This extra level of perspective on Kingsley and Chipembere’s post is not meant as a negative, as I thought their writing was very well done and presented dense ideas in a clear and digestible way. The purpose of this post is to also bring in a relevant newer course reading through Horava, and add his perspective on the concepts discussed by Bollmer and Verbeek, as I believe them to be related. We often talk in this class about how technology influences us, and even how it influences us, but Horava’s article has stuck with me in its ability to articulate the differences between an eBook and physical book, and I thought that the main takeaway from it was worthy to bring up again and apply to my peer’s work. I strongly believe that the medium of digital technology itself does impact us, and as it continues to evolve, so will its impact. What we feel now due to social media and the like will be far different just a few years in the future, and being able to properly communicate that effect is important.

Works Cited

Horava, Tony. “eBooks and McLuhan: The Medium is Still the Message.” Against the Grain, vol. 28, no. 4, 2016, pp. 62-64. Library and Information Science Commons. Accessed 16 November 2025.

Kingsley, Molly, and Aminata Chipembere. Morality and Materiality in Digital Technology and Cognition. 14 November 2025, Morality and Materiality in Digital Technology and Cognition. Accessed 16 November 2025. Blog Post.

Image Credit: https://mitsloan.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2022-07/MIT-Healthcare-Technology-01_0.jpg

Critical Comparison

Conversations of Ethical Evaluation in a Materialist Media Ontology

2 Comments

By Colin Angell

Grant Bollmer offers to conversations of media theory — and specifically the ontology governing the metaphysical relationship between humans and media — a process-focussed system theory driven by the distinction of the two as independent actors co-constitutively in broader societal progression. “Our world exists because of what matter performs, and we, too, are material. If we want to create a better world, we have to begin with what matters;” (176) the last sentences of his book Materialist Media Theory: An Introduction summarizes both the essence and the forward-facing direction of his namesake materialist theory. Through his work, he refuses to view media’s relational position as subservient to humans and instead proposes that we ought to see them plainly for what they are before our eyes: physical manifestations of matter occupying the same spaces as our own biological forms. He fronts a view that holds them accountable to their material presence — as culpable agents with the capacity to originate consequential actions felt by other actors. It is with full intention that Bollmer introduces his theory with the impact-aware declarative: “media are locations for the perpetuation of inequality and the management of social difference” (1). 

Although Bollmer defines and sharpens such a non-static system through commentary on how both actors drive broader system change, it is through an understanding of Dennis M. Weiss’s essay Seduced by the Machine: Human-Technology Relations and Sociable Robots that this materialist framework becomes visible as lacking a distinct moral or ethical framework with which to conceptualize relational connotations of media agency. Writing that “we don’t begin with technology but with human cultural life,” (231) Weiss similarly questions a representational ontology of humans and media while offering to supplement the materialist theory with a mandate for human-centred authenticity. While Bollmer teases ethical concerns, the purpose of this essay is to highlight how Weiss’s argument of the necessity for a human-based, empathic evaluation of human-technology interactions lend materialist media theory with the ethical foundations it presently lacks.

Notes on Bollmer

Bollmer’s materialist media theory is one that observes the physical forms of media as constituent objects in reality and their embedded meanings as aspects of their unique, fundamental traits. In introducing his book, he defines it as orienting academic discourse to how human reality has been altered by technology “beyond conscious knowledge of most individuals” in a manner that “representation alone cannot acknowledge. (Bollmer 3)” In challenging representation, Bollmer is referring to a perspective that sees media objects as primarily snared in idealism — as objects whose value exists only through an internal interpretive lens of their content — and instead suggests such items are “material, performative” actors in their own right with corresponding “material effects in organizing bodies, objects, and relations in the real world” (25). Referencing how video game portrayals of gender come to drive not simply individual conceptions of gender stereotypes but wider models of performed identity, he asserts that “to be represented in a democracy is directly articulated to media representation of identities, behaviors, and norms” as it through one’s identity being public that one is “acknowledged as a political actor” (32-33). Although a person exists independent of their portrayal, individual roles become attributed and applied to them through actors with entirely different life-cycles than that of themselves. 

It is here that the fundamental ontology of this materialist theory can be drawn. There is the presence of a clear distinction between a human and media that may act separately from one another but remain conjoined in co-producing each other’s meaning. Described further in his appeal to phenomenological affect theory, the materiality of a medium is understood as subject undergoing a “process of mattering” into a physical medium, leaving “subjects and objects are linked in relation, but in which these relations are inequivalent, even oppositional” (145). Transposing Heidegger’s distinction between things and objects, he argues that it is through an object “independently “support[ing] something independent” (147) that relational value can be observed as necessary for definition of one another while existing as separate entities entirely. For Bollmer, the ontology dictating human and media relations is one which reconciles both of their co-shaping capacities with the material confines with which they both exist in and perpetuate.

Weiss’s Ethical Suggestion

Weiss uses his article to present his belief that we require a human-centred framework from which we could ideally address the tensions of human-media relationships, progressed through a comparison of varying analyses of varying attitudes. Centreing his text around a pseudo-dialectic between the technologically-cynical Sherry Turkle and relatively optimistic views of Peter Paul Verbeek and Mark Coeckelbergh, Weiss applies both views’ gazes on the emotive relationship between humans and technology. Introducing Turkle’s notion of relational artifacts — those that “have states of mind” and call forth the human desire for communication, connection, and nurturance (219) — Weiss cites her clinically observed opinion that these increasingly advanced “machines that exploit human vulnerabilities” (221) leave us “prone to anthropomorphize relational artifacts” and incubate inauthentic, hollowed connections with smudged boundaries “between genuine and simulated emotional responses” (222). However, he argues that Verbec proposes such a pessimistic view is “held captive by a modernist metaphysics that insists on the separation of subjects from objects, humans from artifacts” (223) when, in reality, “human beings are fundamentally interwoven with technology” that “structures and organizes the world” and “shape[s] our existence” relationally (224). 

One end result from this cross analysis is that of the conclusion offered by Weiss; that we must recognize a “view of the human condition, one in which technology takes a central place” (225-236). The potential stored in external media to progress social change while shackling our evaluations to a human-first approach. However, to further progress such a theory is stifled by paradigm shift regarding what we mean by the moniker external. External to what? Within our broader societal systems, it becomes necessary to distinctly conceptualize that humans and media are ontologically independent — where they exist external to one another — while exerting intimate influence over one another. Writing that “we don’t begin with technology but with human cultural life,” Weiss pointing out that “contained within human culture is technology” places the previously described relationship as evidence of fundamentally distinct actors who are intimately woven into the identities of either or (231). 

Analyzing Ontological Agency

Bleeding through Bollmer’s book sporadically are statements suggestive of some scale of moral concern on the author’s end when proposing his theory. Returning again to his introductory proclamation that “media are locations for the perpetuation of inequality and the management of social difference,” (1) he waffles between wax and ernest laments that “materiality means we all exist together.” The latter quote, drawn from his tenth summative thesis, bottlenecks his opinion that “our world exists because of what matter performs, and we, too, are material. If we want to create a better world, we have to begin with what matters” (176). Bollmer flirts with ethical concern, qualifying his critiques of representational theory by reaffirming “we must think critically about how female bodies are represented” (23) and decrying questions to the relevancy of such interpretations as a “reactionary position” basking in “discrimination, prejudice, and hatred” (24). However, it is only from a theory-orientational concern that he suggests this concern, continuing later that it’s a “task of media critique” to interpret representations as malleable “processes into which we have been indoctrinated through cultural and institutional forms.” (27)

It is here that we can underline Bollmer’s aversion to naming what ethical standards ought to guide our evaluation of human-media relationships — something that Weiss is less apprehensive toward. Similarly analyzing gendered technological objects, Weiss argues that there’s a “profound significance of human beings caring for vulnerable others” (230) that is “seldom given attention in philosophy of technology (228) which makes Turkle’s arguments so relevant. Placing “the cultural and institutional factors that shape the need for relational artifacts” (227) as a crucial vertex of analytical attention, Weiss underlines that our analyses must serve humans and not other actors. While Bollmer pulls his theory away from conflict in suggesting that “images and representations” ought to be analyzed in terms of their “performative materiality” (25), Weiss almost directly rebuts the former’s ethical apathy, articulating that “our focus ought not to be on the object world and the status of relational artifacts so much as on the role of caring for others in sustaining a human world” (231). 

————————————

From here, we are presented with two places from which we might move forward. First, it is the reaffirmation of the need to constantly critique new theoretical perspectives with contemporary critiques not from an antagonistic angle but one that seeks to corroborate new creative directions. Second, it is the potential call for the author of baseline theories which present themselves as neutral to rise to the challenge and offer a more pronounced opinion regarding ethics. Commentaries on society cannot be neutral, especially when our argued ontology posits that we “we all exist together” (176). Rather than place appendaged cliches in conclusions out of convenience — even if meant well — it is the responsibility of media scholars to seize our capacity to challenge a priori conceptions as the independent agents are.

Works Cited

Grant. Materialist Media Theory An Introduction. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019, https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/materialist-media-theory-9781501337093/.

Weiss, Dennis M. “Seduced by the Machine Human-Technology Relations and Sociable Robots.” Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman, Bloomsbury Academic, 2016, pp. 217-232. Canvas Materials.