We just reached episode 21 of Doomscroll. I thought I might use this opportunity to speak with the core community and lay out some of the strategy that guides this project. A few people have told me that this could be a mistake— but I think the most powerful conspiracies today are the ones that exist out in the open. So here goes:political YouTube map Some years ago, I began to study and theorize the political phenomena that was taking place over social media. The early origins of this work began with the long form essay Politigram & the Post-left that was first published in 2018.If you’re in NYC — join me next Sunday, May 11th at 3pm for the Do Not Research book launch at 161 Water Street. Event is free and open to the public.As an artist and writer of the post-internet generation, I’ve spent the past decade in discussions around trendcasting, technology and culture. In the early 2010s, my peer group focused on a political critique of social media. Consensus opinion saw these digital networks as a liberatory and democratic force but I saw them as the implementation of deeply libertarian ideas. More on this later.In December of 2018, I wrote an article about TikTok and Gen Z for Artsy. Through my research, I had been familiar with the app for many months. As TikTok reached #1 on the app store, InfoWars’ Paul Joseph Watson made a video, The Cultural Significance of TikTok, that awkwardly retrofit my text as a seeming endorsement of his far right agenda. (No exaggeration, literally minutes of the video are just him reading my article.) Today, the video has over 1.2 million views on YouTube. In response, I wrote the long form piece Irony Politics & Gen Z that first lays out a theory of online politicization. Young people’s journey often begins as a tacit engagement with edgy memes that later develops into real world political commitments. Most notably, this essay argued that the declining quality of American life, combined with the alignment of progressive Democrats, m