Critical Response

What Can Image Gen-AI Models Teach Us About Image Perceptions?

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A Critical Response Post to THE IMAGE: REPRESENTATION, REINCARNATION, REPRODUCTION by Matthias von Loebell, Danial Schatz, Django Mavis, and Sydney Wilkins.

By Micah Sébastien Zhang

A few days ago, I have stumbled across a work by some of my peers — Matthias von Loebell, Daniel Schatz, Django Mavis, and Sydney Wilkins — on the class blog, in which they talked about the significance of images in media, and how can the manipulation of images affect people’s perception. The blog article rolled out smoothly as it took us from the early and general form and definition of images at the start, then to the connections between theories, and it all falls back to the general summary of how is their whole thesis point playing out in the modern, contemporary field of world.

The article chose a sociological point of view when comes to the analysis of images and their effects, which is a proper move in my opinion. Similar perspectives and ways of research could never get old as the time and world are shifting forward. What I found particularly agreeing is their opinion on the essence of images, as they quote it as "a visual abstraction." Through this piece of thought, we can fairly arbitrate the concept of image falling within the classical frame of media mediation, in which images serve as a mediation to a summary of thought(s).

However, in this critical response post, I would like to take a step back and make my way to a summit that grants a holistic and figurative perspective on the conception of images, notably through a rather unusual example — text-to-image generative AI models.

How come? The reason why I’m proposing this peculiar perspective approach is that I personally found the technical process of text-to-image generative AI is similar to the humanistic experience of image perception. Yet before we can go into the comparable details of it, we should first understand how do text-to-image generative AI models usually work.

A research guide from the University of Toronto gave us a pretty comprehensive outlook of the technical process, yet for the sake of convenience, a summary will be also provided below. To be technically focused and more concise, I will only focus on the process for diffusion models.

Diffusion model is a common type among image generative AI models; both Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion and OpenAI’s DALL•E are categorized as diffusion models. Inspired from thermodynamic diffusion, the technical process of a diffusion model includes two methods. The first method — forward diffusion — will declutter and scatter (or "diffuse" according to the manual) the pixels of a normal image into random noises. The machine is learning to recreate the image by reconstructing a normal image from a randomized, noisy version. That is, for example, a normal image of an apple will be diffused into randomized noise and given with the "apple" tag, then from the tagged noisy images, the machine will recreate the normal images upon requests from prompts. Each creation of the image comes from the synthesis of noises, and this will result in different image outputs even with the same prompts.

Through this process, we can partly mirror this to a general humanistic perception of images if we consider images as a mediation to higher-level information. The creation of actual, in-real-life images comes from the diffusion of the higher-level knowledge in our brains; those pieces of higher-level knowledges are, in my opinion, properly stored as a culmination of humanistic experiences since one’s birth. Upon perceiving an image, we’re essentially transforming a two-dimensional plane of "diffused noise" (this could be any form of visual representation) as pieces of higher-level knowledges in our brain, yet they could be deviated from the original intention and meaning.

On this note, images are indeed better compared to pure texts. In this example, if I put the word "apple" here, my viewers could have different perceptions to the term: maybe it’s a red apple; maybe it’s a green one; maybe it’s even Apple Inc. that made iPhones. Images can provide a more directional rectification towards transmitting higher-level thoughts and concpets. Nevertheless, it is still incomparable to direct transmissions of higher-level thoughts as it falls within the constraints of diffusion of thoughts.

Going back to the article by my peers, one of their claims is that the values of images are diminishing along with the mass production of them. Quoting from the Frankfurt School thinker Walter Benjamin, their claim is reflecting on his claim that viewing artist labour "as the process by which art is imbued with meaning." Reflecting to my claim in this article, the mass production of images may symbolize technological advancements on means of media production and the media industry itself, yet considering this holistic overview, it may also make the transmission of information into a more chaotic stage where the mass produced images bear incomplete representations of higher-level informations.

As new media studies scholars, it is important to note down the challenges currently faced by our field of study, yet having new perspectives that challenge pre-constructed perceptions may provide us more beneficial insights to shape our field of study — and sometimes it could mean taking a step back and seeing things as a whole to find general patterns.

Works Consulted

“Research Guides: Artificial Intelligence for Image Research: How Generative AI Models Work.” University of Toronto Libraries, guides.library.utoronto.ca/image-gen-ai. Accessed 29 Nov. 2025.

Von Loebell, Matthias, et al. THE IMAGE: REPRESENTATION, REINCARNATION, REPRODUCTION | Approaches to Writing for Media Studies. 29 Sept. 2025, blogs.ubc.ca/mdia300/archives/115. Accessed 29 Nov. 2025.

Image Acknowledgement

The header image was produced by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash.

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Becoming Cultural Products: Digital Subcultures and the Culture Industry

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A Critical Response to Molly Kingsley’s The (Not-So) Secret Double Lives of Mormon Wives: Digital Subcultures on Reality Television”

Introduction:

In the post The (Not-So) Secret Double Lives of Mormon Wives, media theorist Molly Kingsley examines the intersectionality of reality television, digital subculture, and the commercialization of social media through the niche digital community “MomTok.” This community is centered around a group of young Mormon mothers whose popularity leads to a Hulu series, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Kingsley argues that MomTok demonstrates how digital subcultures often form around central figures who guide the community’s interests and social norms. She discusses how digital subcultures often lose meaning due to being susceptible to external commercial pressures. Although these subcultures often begin as a space of identity and representation, their visibility on digital platforms is easily manipulated by monetization, performativity, and the demands of the culture industry. Kingsley’s argument provides a strong foundation for understanding how the authenticity of social media slowly dissipates due to commoditization. Building on her analysis, I plan to expand this discussion through the theoretical frameworks of Jenna Drenten’s “Curating a Consumption Ideology” and Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s theory of the culture industry. Together, these theories demonstrate that MomTok, Reality Television, and influencers not only participate in systems of commercialization but ultimately become cultural products of the system itself.

Platformization, Performativity, and Consumption Ideology 

Kingsley discusses the performativity of MomTok, highlighting how influencers construct digital identities for public visibility.  This topic becomes more significant when examined through Drenten’s framework of platformization. She describes platformization as the “penetration of infrastructures, economic processes and governmental frameworks of digital platforms in different economic sectors and spheres of life, as well as the reorganization of cultural practices and imaginations around these platforms” (93). This means that digital platforms reshape cultural production by interweaving themselves in social and economic life. Platformization alters how cultural goods are created and monetized. This is made evident by influencers altering their identities to fit within the economic structures of the platform. Within Momtok and “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” influencers commercialize most aspects of their lives. These digital subcultures thrive on mindful curation of their personal branding to maximize platform revenue. This curation encourages audiences to adopt the consumption ideologies ingrained within these platforms. An ideology that normalizes the purchasing products and adopting lifestyles glamorized by influencers, while fueling envy among their audience.

As discussed by Kingsley, reality television intensifies the performativity of influencers. This is evident with the popular MomTok Influencers transitioning from TikTok to Hulu, entering them into a larger, more commodified platform that thrives on drama, conflict, and controversy. Through reality television, these influencers become the cultural product being consumed, as every view, every tweet works to push their careers. This shift allowed the members to reach a wider audience meanwhile further integrating themselves into a capitalistic system that benefits from emotional vulnerability and spectacle. Drenten reminds the audience that social media influencers often overlook the negative outcomes of pushing controversial forms of consumption. As the digital landscape advances controversies, scandals, and dramas have become economic goldmines. Influencers are becoming the very products that social media uses to push capitalist ideals. Their lived experiences are shaped into media commodities whose purpose no longer serves storytelling but rather promotional content aimed to generate monetary value. ​

Reality Television & The Culture Industry

When examined through the framework of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s The Culture Industry, the commodification of influencers becomes apparent. Horkheimer and Adorno argue that under capitalism, cultural products become standardized commodities designed for mass consumption. They highlight the intersectionality of labor and entertainment, demonstrating how mass media advances structures of power. Instead of creating social change and critical thinking, the culture industry produces mass media that pushes ideologies of consumption and promotes false realities. Although this theory predates social media, it remains relevant with influencer culture and reality tv. This is evident with the influencers of MomTok becoming cultural products. Their identities, family lives, and moral dilemmas are turned into viral content aimed at attracting views and sponsorship. Their lives become packaged and mass-produced for the audience’s consumption, blurring the lines between authenticity and performativity. Although these influencers might seem genuine on screen, their personalities are being manufactured to bring fame and visibility to their shows. This ultimately reduces them to commodities of the entertainment industry. This mirrors the culture industry’s process of creating seemingly unique and innovative content that in reality is shaped by industry norms. In the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, the members are exchanging privacy and agency for profit. The influencers and the audience become embedded in a system that focuses on controversy and consumption over authenticity or critical reflection.

Conclusion

Kingsley’s argument sparked an interesting conversation on the instability of digital subcultures when confronted by capitalism. The shift from MomTok to reality television demonstrates how digital subcultures can be easily exploited by commercialization. What began as a niche community of self-expression discussing Mormonism, femininity, and gender roles easily became a place of controversy. The reality show ultimately worked to undo the curated family-friendly “personas” crafted by the influencers. In favor of shocking, dramatized “personas” that are more profitable to producers and the entertainment industry. 

When viewed through the framework of Drenten, Horkheimer, and Adorno, it’s apparent that these subcultures not only lose meaning but become platforms of pushing ideologies of consumptions. The influencers of Momtok are not merely participating in the culture industry. They are culture products themselves, with their identities being curated, monetized, and mass consumed. Their lives are entertainment commodities that are displayed for the audience’s enjoyment. The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives serves as an example of how digital subcultures work as part of the culture industry, promoting unrealistic desires and controversial ideologies. As Media Studies students, it’s important that we acknowledge the systems at play and learn not to take social media at face value. We must understand that digital platforms can be places of social change and critical thought if used correctly. If we fall victim to commercialization, we can easily lose the core values of these digital communities. Momtok and its journey into reality television demonstrate the intersection of social media, platformization, and the culture industry.

Works Cited

Drenten, Jenna, et al. “Curating a consumption ideology: Platformization and gun influencers on Instagram.” Marketing Theory, vol. 24, no. 1, 10 Oct. 2023, pp. 91–122, https://doi.org/10.1177/14705931231207329. 

Horkheimer , Max, and Theodor Adorno. “The culture industry: Enlightenment as mass deception.” Dialectic of Enlightenment, 31 Dec. 2020, pp. 94–136, https://doi.org/10.1515/9780804788090-007. 

Kingsley, Molly. “The (Not-So) Secret Double Lives of Mormon Wives: Digital Subcultures on Reality Television” UBC Blogs, 22 Nov. 2025, https://blogs.ubc.ca/mdia300/archives/901

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

Written by Aminata Chipembere

Image created by Aminata Chipembere

Book Review, General Media Theory

Investigating ‘Becoming Beside Ourselves’ by B. Rotman

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Introduction and Overview

We are no longer able to deny the post-human; we are, as Rotman reminds us, “natural born cyborgs” (2008, 1). The dawn of this cyborg condition is not recent, nor is it merely the effect of digital culture — it begins with writing itself. For Western thought, the writing of speech has long been alphabetic, forming the “dominant cognitive technology (along with mathematics)” so ingrained in our processes of thinking that it becomes “almost invisible” (2008, 2). In this era of alphabetic saturation, we cannot help but be “described, identified, certified and handled — like a text” (1988, x). Brian Rotman, a multidisciplinary scholar trained across mathematics, semiotics, media theory, and the humanities, situates writing not as a neutral tool but as a technology that has structured Western subjectivity for millennia. Becoming Beside Ourselves is the third book in his trilogy on the semiotics of mathematics and writing, and it brings together his lifelong interest in symbolic systems — mathematical notation, alphabetic inscription, and now digital code — to examine how each medium reorganizes our understanding of the self.

Rotman argues that the stability of the alphabetic order was shaken in the 19th century, when new media challenged writing’s role as the primary mode of recording and transmission. Photography, he notes, undermined writing’s claim to represent reality; the phonograph “eclipsed” writing’s earlier monopoly on “the inscription and preservation of speech sounds,” leaving alphabetic writing “upstaged” (2008, 2). Today, that dethroning has accelerated. Virtual and networked media push the alphabet to its abstract limit — a binary code of only two letters . Meanwhile, the rise of parallel computing introduces new “modes of thought and self,” new “imaginings of agency,” whose parallelisms emerge from and yet exceed the “intense seriality” of alphabetic writing (2008, 3). 

This restratification of symbolic systems reshapes more than language; it restructures how we perceive, how we interact, and how we understand our own identities. The transformation becomes clearest through the use of the word I. Rotman traces the ‘I’ across three dominant media regimes: from the spoken ‘I’ grounded in gesture, breath, and bodily presence; to the written ‘I’, an incorporeal, forever marker of selfhood; and now to a virtual ‘I’, dispersed across networked, machine, and parallel forms of agency. The contemporary subject is therefore “plural, trans-alphabetic, derived from and spread over multiple sites of agency — a self going parallel: a para-self” (2008, 9).

To follow the movement of ‘I’ through these technological shifts is to see how older conceptions of identity — single, stable, invisible, and unified, like the God-entity or the classical Psyche — are as ghosts sustained by particular media environments. Rotman’s conceptual realization is ultimately an exorcism; by deconstructing the alphabet, he reveals the media conditions that made such ghosts possible, and shows why they may come to not haunt us any further.

Parallel vs. Serial

It is easiest to understand Rotman’s para-self by beginning with the difference he draws between serial and parallel thinking. Serial thought is the form the alphabet trains us into — one letter following another, one line after the next, one thought subordinated to the previous in a linear chain. Writing, even mathematical, demands sequencing. Each unit must wait its turn. The alphabet is not only a medium but a temporal discipline, a practice of regulating thought into ordered succession.

Parallelism, by contrast, is not simply “doing multiple things at once.” It is a fundamentally different mode of processing, one in which states coexist. Rotman frequently invokes the example of quantum superposition to help illustrate the shift; a particle exists in multiple states simultaneously until observation (measurement) collapses it. The para-self operates in a similar fashion — not by replacing seriality, but by layering multiple agencies, identities, and positions at once. Where alphabetic writing demanded commitment to one linear identity, parallelism allows for co-presence, simultaneity, multiplicity.

The virtual ‘I’ emerges from this parallel condition. It is “an invisible, absent writing agency, detached from the voice, unmoored from any time or place of origination, and necessarily invisible and without physical presence” (2008, 118). This invisibility becomes a form of multiplication; the subject disperses across interfaces, platforms, and computational processes. The para-self is not a metaphor but a structural consequence of computing’s parallel logics and the systems that beg us to adapt.

Yet Rotman insists that alphabetic seriality remains buried within parallel architectures. Even the most complex computational systems rely on ordered sequences of ones and zeros. This is why parallelism cannot be fully disentangled from alphabetic logic, because it emerges from it, even as it overwhelms it. What we call digital identity, then, is already the hybrid offspring of both mothers: serial inscription and parallel computation entangled in a new, collective structure of selfhood.

The End of Utterance

To understand the movement from spoken ‘I’ to written ‘I’, Rotman returns to the medium that first displaced the body: writing. In speech, the ‘I’ is inseparable from gesture, breath, presence — it is a “haptic” event. The voice vibrates through air, the speaker’s arms open; gestures anchor meaning in lived human motion. With writing, however, “the body of the speaking ‘I’ is replaced by an incorporeal, floating agency of the text” (2008, 110). The haptic becomes the abstract as the medium replaces the body.

This replacement is only effective because the medium simultaneously effaces itself. Writing works when it disappears — when the reader forgets the physical marks on the page and is lost in the illusion of direct meaning. Rotman makes this clear in his analysis of “ghost-effects”; “They are medium-specific… their efficacy as objects of belief and material consequence derive from their unacknowledgement — their effacement — of this very fact” (2008, 113). Writing creates the illusion of a stable, enduring ‘I’ precisely because its own materiality fades from view.

As alphabetic inscription took hold, utterance became disembedded from the body. Writing “allows utterance to live beyond itself, thus inventing the idea of a perpetual, unending future and the reality of an unchanging, interminable covenant” (2008, 122). It is through writing that Western culture came to imagine enduring subjects, eternal contracts, continuous selfhood. Once utterance no longer depends on the speaker, the ‘I’ becomes a symbol instead of an event — an indication of the embodied self without body, without voice.

For media studies students, this moment marks the beginning of mediation as we understand it: the idea that the medium structures the message, the self, and the possibilities of experience long before we are aware of it.

God, Mind, and Infinity

Rotman turns to theology and ancient philosophy to show how writing generated the most influential ghosts of Western culture. Alphabetic inscription made possible the figure of a disembodied, omnipresent, invisible God — a being whose “presence” depended on the written marks that represented Him. As he asks, “How did a manmade array of written marks on a scroll of sewn-together animal skins become a ‘holy’ site, a fetish, for the presence of the eternal invisible God?” (2008, 119). Writing’s abstraction enables belief in invisible agencies. Once words detach from bodies, the divine may inhabit them.

The same process appears in Greek philosophy. The invention of the alphabet coincides with the rise of a non-somatic mental agency — the Mind — imagined as a unified, abstract, ruling entity. As Seaford notes, “both monetary value and the mind are abstractions… a single controlling invisible entity uniting the multiplicity of which in a sense it consists” (2008, 242). The alphabet produces the very idea of a singular interiority, a coherent psyche, a stable and commanding ‘I’.

Writing is not just “speech at a distance”, but “speech outside the human” (2008, 129). It is virtual in the sense that it removes utterance from people altogether. The God-entity and the classical psyche are therefore not timeless human intuitions but media-effects: ghosts generated by a technology whose power lies precisely in its invisibility.

By the time we arrive at digital media, these ghosts persist, but can no longer remain comfortable in their symbolic, alphabetic shells. 

The Virtual ‘I’ and the Para-Self

With the digital, the alphabet is pushed beyond its limits. Binary computation reduces writing to its minimal form — two characters — while parallel processing multiplies the agencies acting through and upon the subject. The virtual ‘I’ is no longer grounded in a single position. It is distributed across platforms, accounts, passwords, archives, histories, and data reports. It is acted upon by algorithms, automated processes, and network effects. The self today becomes an ensemble of collective memories, thoughts, and experiences.

Rotman’s para-self phrases this condition as a subject “beside itself”, simultaneously embodied and disembodied, local and networked, serial and parallel. It mirrors superposition — multiple potential states coexisting until interrupted by interaction. Media students encounter this every day in online identity play, algorithmically curated feeds, multi-windowed workflows, and the tension between one’s “real,” “virtual,” and “performed” selves.

The ghosts of God, Mind, and singular Identity do not disappear; they become unstable. The alphabet that once sustained them persists as binary foundations, but the computational environment overwhelms its old stabilizing powers. In this landscape, the ‘I’ is no longer an anchor, it is a node.

End Notes and Advents for Further Study

Rotman’s work opens numerous paths for further inquiry in media studies besides the topics he explores in his other works. As media students, we can use Rotman’s grounding in the logic of philosophy and mathematics to continue exploring the relationship between alphabetic seriality and digital computation, particularly through analyzing Kittler, Hayles, and Chun, among others. However, we can also use Rotman’s notions about the para-self to study how platform and digital identities form and are explored on contemporary media platforms (like social media). We can even go further back and revisit gesture, voice, and affect in a world increasingly oriented towards screens and disembodied interactions. 

All of these endeavour to explain how we as humans have transformed — evolved and contorted — around the advent of new technologies that have demanded more and more of ourselves. In order to keep up, we must constantly break the mold of what previously identified us as humans. Perhaps by revisiting the past, as Rotman suggests, we can learn an inkling of how we soar, afraid and yet determined, towards a future masked by fog and phantoms.

Rotman, Brian. Becoming Beside Ourselves: The Alphabet, Ghosts, and Distributed Human Being. Duke University Press, 2008.

Writing and visuals by Allie Demetrick

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Performative Males vs. Performative Media

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The word performative circulates widely in our current society. It appears in online discourse, political commentary, and everyday conversations, often used to criticize shallow or insincere behaviour. In its common definition, the Oxford English Dictionary describes performative as: “Of action, speech, behaviour, etc.: done or expressed for the sake of appearance, especially to impress others or to improve one’s own image, typically with the implication of insincere intent or superficial impact.” This meaning focuses on the surface, and insinuates something staged, hollow, and self-serving. This meaning has become even more visible through contemporary memes, especially the “performative male” trend spreading through contemporary social media. These videos mock exaggerated male displays of tailored “feminine” habits, suggesting that certain gendered behaviours exist mainly as performances for a desired audience. However, when introduced in media studies through Bollmer’s Materialist Media Theory, the concept of performance takes on a very different meaning. Instead of describing behaviour done “for show,” Bollmer argues that media perform the world, and have a direct effect on our thoughts, behaviours, and actions. Rather than focusing on the intention, he examines how media shapes what becomes possible in experience and in social life (Bollmer, 2019, pp. 7–14). This contrast opens an important space for media theory, by proving that words do not carry stable meanings across contexts. When a term like performative crosses between popular culture and theory, it lands differently and shifts in significance. By examining these shifts, we gain a clearer understanding of how media produce, condition, and intervene in human action. Under this framework, performativity is not about appearances, but about material consequences.

What does it mean to be performative?

The Oxford Dictionary definition frames performative as a critique. When we say someone’s activism, fashion sense, or interests are “performative,” we imply their behaviour and identity revolves around self-branding for the purpose of impressing others. The same applies to social media: a post can be performative if it signals virtue or outrage without genuine commitment. This meaning depends on intentionality – a performative gesture is insincere because the actor intends to cultivate an appearance rather than effect real change. Bollmer challenges this intention-based thinking by arguing that we should analyze media not by what they represent, but by what they do. The main idea is that media produce realities through their operation. They play an active role in behaviour, identity, and social structures at the level of matter, code, infrastructure, and embodiment (Bollmer, 2019, pp. 20–24). This reframing connects to other theorists like Verbeek, who argues that technologies mediate human perception and action by amplifying some possibilities while reducing others (Verbeek, 2006, pp. 364–370). For Verbeek, the “intentions” of technology are embedded not in user consciousness but in the object’s inherent design, allowing them to guide and shape experience. Media perform through the affordances they create, the choices they structure, and the values they materialize. Taken together, Bollmer and Verbeek move us away from the idea that meaning is determined by the human user. Instead, they argue that true meaning emerges from interactions between humans and media environments. The performative concept becomes a tool that reveals how media act in the world and how they participate in shared life.

“Performative Male”: A Case Study

The recent caricature of the “Performative Male” offers a helpful cultural contrast. These memes exaggerate male behaviour by depicting specific tasks – drinking matcha, reading feminist literature, carrying Labubus – as elaborate displays of effort and identity. A “performative male” performs actions or participates in cultures mostly inhabited by women in an attempt to create a relatable energy. The joke lies in the clear theatrics of this performance:  obviously none of these behaviours are exclusive to women, but a man walking around in public with a barely-touched matcha, a Labubu clipped to his thrifted Carthharts, and Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex in a screen-printed tote bag mimics a peacock performing a mating dance. This meme reflects the Oxford Dictionary’s meaning. The performative male’s labour is exaggerated for the sake of appearance, and his entire identity becomes a performance piece. The humour works because the behaviour signals attention-seeking rather than genuine action. In this sense, the meme critiques performative masculinity and the inflated self-presentation that digital culture rewards. 

However, from Bollmer’s perspective, the meme itself reveals a deeper layer of performativity. It shows how platforms like TikTok and Instagram actively shape behaviour – content creators learn to exaggerate, dramatize, and stylize actions because the platform’s algorithm rewards visibility, clarity, and engagement bait. The meme becomes a product of platform performativity, and displays how media systems encourage and incentivize specific forms of conduct. The meme becomes an example of performativity not because the individual man is insincere, but because social media platforms’ architecture performs social expectations. Media environments materialize what counts as visible or valuable behaviour.

Performative in Media Creation

Understanding performative through both the Oxford Dictionary and Bollmer’s definitions enriches our media theory toolkit. The Oxford Dictionary’s definition helps us analyze cultural performance, signalling, and authenticity, whereas Bollmer’s definition helps us analyze how systems act, intervene, and materialize social relations. Together, they give us a multifaceted view of how meaning moves between people, technologies, and infrastructures. The concept also teaches us that media theory is not just about interpretation, it’s about tracing consequences. When we understand media as performative, we recognize that they are active participants in shaping human experience and are capable of producing emotions, habits, and forms of life – not just images or videos. In a digital landscape dominated by AI, algorithmic feeds, and platform-driven identities, this shift in understanding becomes essential. We can no longer ask only what media say, we must ask what media do.

Citations

Bollmer, G. (2019). Materialist media theory: An introduction. Bloomsbury Academic.

Oxford English Dictionary. (n.d.). Performative. In OED Online. Oxford University Press. https://www.oed.com

Verbeek, P.-P. (2006). Materializing morality: Design ethics and technological mediation. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 31(3), 361–380. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243905285847

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Corresponding With Ideas: Making, Writing & Charlie Kaufman

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Central to Tim Ingold’s Making is the notion that “making is a correspondence between maker and material;” that creation is not a matter of imposing your will on the world, but to engage with it; that in the unique properties of every material exists a sort of agency that, in correspondence with your own, shapes the final work. This material may be a piece of clay, a paintbrush, an axe, a violin, matter. But, as I will argue in this paper, this relationship of correspondence may be more universal than applying only to matter; that the material we correspond with may be an idea.

The art form of writing, an abstraction of story, thought, and ideas alloyed only by language, is where we see most clearly this correspondence between maker and idea. Perhaps no writer is better a manifestation of Ingold’s principle of making responsively, reflexively, and in correspondence with than Charlie Kaufman. In his 2011 BAFTA lecture on screenwriting, he wrote: “A screenplay is an exploration. It’s about the thing you don’t know. It’s a step into the abyss. It necessarily starts somewhere, anywhere; there is a starting point but the rest is undetermined, It is a secret, even from you. There’s no template for a screenplay, or there shouldn’t be.” Kaufman, screenwriter of such surreal and labyrinthine narratives as Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, is known for his complex, layered, and often relatable work. Perhaps the iconic and idiosyncratic nature of his projects are thanks to a specific process, one that does not begin with predetermination but with exploration, one that rejects a pre-composed design, and privileges the ideas he works with as shaping the final work. If you’ve read Ingold’s Making, this approach should sound familiar.

“Allow yourself the freedom to change as you discover, allow your screenplay to grow and change as you work on it. You will discover things as you work. You must not put these things aside, even if they’re inconvenient.” Here, Kaufman encourages the writer to change their initial ‘design’ for a screenplay as they are making it. If you’ve ever written anything substantial, you might have shifted gears after a discovery during research, been inspired by an idea from another work that shaped your own, or noticed that a phrase or an argument didn’t sound quite right when put into words, despite your initial intent. Just as a sculptor looks for certain clays and pigments and shapes them to their liking, a writer goes out into the world and learns the truth about certain ideas, concepts, and things, either through deliberate research or human experience, and weaves them together into an argument or a story. Then, like the sculptor reacts to the texture, weight and strength of the clay and adjusts their work accordingly, the writer shapes their story according to the concepts and ideas they’ve learned and encountered. Your writing doesn’t come straight from your head to paper. At some time or another, you got all your ideas from somewhere, and they shape your work as much as you do. You aren’t interacting with physical matter, or collaborating with another person, but there’s clearly something affecting your work here that isn’t you. This secret collaborator, then, may be the agency of ideas, concepts, things; the truths of the world that are a secret to you, but that you can go out and discover. Justice, redemption, war, infinity, the Vietnamese punk scene, our inner desires, father-daughter relationships, what it’s like to live as a janitor, these are the materials of a writer. These are what films, and books, and stories are about. Just as a sculptor makes with clay, a writer makes with these concepts. And just as a seamstress cannot pull a thread so far that it snaps, a writer cannot betray the truth of an idea. 

But, you may object, you can make an idea in your story or essay or lecture to be whatever you want – objects however, do push back against you, literally; they have physical limits. If you don’t correspond to their agency they will actually shatter, melt, break. It’s true, this is a noteworthy distinction. Consider, however, a story about the idea of romantic relationships – one about a guy that gets into a relationship and is therefore freed from all sadness. This story has ignored the truth about romantic relationships; that they have flaws, that they aren’t all there is to life, that they are not, truly, a cure for sadness. Contained within the idea of relationships is that naked truth about ourselves that we’ve all likely experienced. And in making with it, in putting it into your story, that truth exerts a sort of agency in your work. The writer does have the choice to ignore it, just like the carpenter has the choice to ignore the tensile strength of cedar, but just as that lazy carpenter’s house will crumble sometime or another, that writer’s work, in Charlie Kaufman’s eyes, will become forgotten, irrelevant and inapplicable to our human experience, because it is not true to their experience. It is not true to what they really think if they really sat with it, or who they really are. As Kaufman puts it: “I think you need to be willing to be naked when you do anything creatively in film or any other form, that’s really what you have to do because otherwise it’s very hard to separate it from marketing.”

Of course, truth, famously, is subjective. But there are many writers who have written work that is not true to themselves; not because they really have a different view on what the truth of the matter is, but because they’ve ignored it – because the story would not have been as exciting or marketable or formulaic if they had taken the time to think about how things really are. Kaufman argues that “…we’ve been conned into thinking there is a pre-established form. Like any big business, the film business believes in mass production. It’s cheaper and more efficient as a business model.” He quotes Harold pinter in saying “A writer’s life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity… you find no shelter, no protection, unless you lie. In which case, of course, you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician.” We can think of  a formulaic screenplay that ignores the truth of human experience much like a politician’s promises, a cheap mass-produced blender or a prefabricated house – sooner or later, it will have to be replaced. Shlocky, formulaic novels and lazily written, straight-to-DVD movies can be entertaining for a while but they don’t tend to be remembered like works that really tried to sit with an idea, find the universal human truth in it and see what they could truly make with it. Just like materials, ideas can last a long time, can continue to be relatable, insightful and truthful to our lives as humans, if we acknowledge their agency; if we try to understand how they really work instead of how we think they should, if we experiment with them, put them together in new ways and wait honestly to see how they correspond with each other and ourselves. In other words, whether the maker is corresponding with materials or ideas, they must make with the truth of the matter.

Ingold, Tim. “Making: Archaeology, Art & Architecture.” Routledge, 2013.

Kaufman, Charlie. “Screenwriter’s Lecture: Charlie Kaufman” BAFTA, 2011.

Pinter, Harold. “Nobel Prize Lecture” The Nobel Foundation, 2008.

Written by Daniel Schatz.

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PhD in Counseling or Masters in Manipulation? 

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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

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

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“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

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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

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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

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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

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