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Janine de Novais's avatar

what I love about the book is that it does something I've been wanting to see someone do for a while, which is connect our existence and our politics to the distorting/shadow/simulacra effect of social media. we now have (thank god) a ton of books about how social media is addicting, polarizing, etc, but not enough about how it doesn't just destroy our critical and communal and social skills so much as distort them into (to use her metaphor) "upside down" versions of themselves. the destruction of something is easier to combat politically, I think, than the distortion or corruption of something. because the people whose empathy and discernment is distorted do not feel they lost empathy and discernment--if that makes sense. and we have not developed a counter for this moment, because We Have Never Been Here (except we have, which is why Naomi Klein digs beyond Raoul Peck and the Swedish author of Exterminate to Du Bois and Aimé Césaire--we have been here before, some of us). and side note as a fan who is a writer, who has been trying to write about this mess, I'm in awe of her willingness and ability to write something that had to be so hard to manage and keep "straight" in her own head as she wrote. Like the vertigo musta been no joke!

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Janine de Novais's avatar

obsessed and so excited she wrote this book!

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