1 hr 27 min
The Social Media Addiction Machine - Dr Richard Seymour, PhD The Weekend University
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- Society & Culture
Former social media executives tell us that the system is an addiction-machine. We are users, waiting for our next hit as we like, comment and share. We write to the machine as individuals, but it responds by aggregating our fantasies, desires and frailties into data, and returning them to us as a commodity experience.
This talk will provide an unflinching view into the calamities of digital life: the circus of online trolling, flourishing alt-right subcultures, pervasive corporate surveillance, and the virtual data mines of Facebook and Google where we spend considerable portions of our free time. You’ll learn about the political and psychological effects of our changing relationship with social media, what’s really behind our addiction, and how to set yourself free.
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Richard Seymour is a writer and broadcaster and the author of numerous books about politics, including The Liberal Defence of Murder (Verso, 2008), Against Austerity (2014), Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics (Verso, 2016) and The Twittering Machine (The Indigo Press, 2019). He completed his PhD in sociology at the London School of Economics under the supervision of Paul Gilroy.
In 2005, Seymour’s blog: ‘Lenin’s Tomb’ was named as the 21st most popular blog in the UK, and his writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Jacobin, the London Review of Books, the New York Times and Prospect.
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Links:
- Get our latest psychology lectures emailed to your inbox: http://bit.ly/new-talks
- Check out our next event: http://theweekenduniversity.com/events/
- Richard Seymour’s book: https://amzn.to/2S0XpHL
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The Weekend University’s mission is to make the best minds and ideas in psychology more accessible, so that you can use the knowledge to improve your quality of life.
We release 95% of our content for free and don’t run any ads during the show.
That said, we’d love to expand our reach and get the knowledge shared by our speakers into the hands of more people so they can benefit too.
So, if you’re in the mood for doing a random act of kindness today, and helping others improve their lives in the process, it would make a huge difference if you could take just 30 seconds and leave a short review on your favourite podcast provider - whether that’s iTunes (https://bit.ly/iTunes-podcast-review), Stitcher (https://bit.ly/stitcher-podcast-review) or Spotify (https://bit.ly/spotify-podcast-ratings).
In addition, we’ll pick one review each month and that person will get a free ticket to our monthly online conference, which usually costs £50.
Thanks for your time and I hope you enjoy the show!
Former social media executives tell us that the system is an addiction-machine. We are users, waiting for our next hit as we like, comment and share. We write to the machine as individuals, but it responds by aggregating our fantasies, desires and frailties into data, and returning them to us as a commodity experience.
This talk will provide an unflinching view into the calamities of digital life: the circus of online trolling, flourishing alt-right subcultures, pervasive corporate surveillance, and the virtual data mines of Facebook and Google where we spend considerable portions of our free time. You’ll learn about the political and psychological effects of our changing relationship with social media, what’s really behind our addiction, and how to set yourself free.
---
Richard Seymour is a writer and broadcaster and the author of numerous books about politics, including The Liberal Defence of Murder (Verso, 2008), Against Austerity (2014), Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics (Verso, 2016) and The Twittering Machine (The Indigo Press, 2019). He completed his PhD in sociology at the London School of Economics under the supervision of Paul Gilroy.
In 2005, Seymour’s blog: ‘Lenin’s Tomb’ was named as the 21st most popular blog in the UK, and his writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Jacobin, the London Review of Books, the New York Times and Prospect.
---
Links:
- Get our latest psychology lectures emailed to your inbox: http://bit.ly/new-talks
- Check out our next event: http://theweekenduniversity.com/events/
- Richard Seymour’s book: https://amzn.to/2S0XpHL
---
The Weekend University’s mission is to make the best minds and ideas in psychology more accessible, so that you can use the knowledge to improve your quality of life.
We release 95% of our content for free and don’t run any ads during the show.
That said, we’d love to expand our reach and get the knowledge shared by our speakers into the hands of more people so they can benefit too.
So, if you’re in the mood for doing a random act of kindness today, and helping others improve their lives in the process, it would make a huge difference if you could take just 30 seconds and leave a short review on your favourite podcast provider - whether that’s iTunes (https://bit.ly/iTunes-podcast-review), Stitcher (https://bit.ly/stitcher-podcast-review) or Spotify (https://bit.ly/spotify-podcast-ratings).
In addition, we’ll pick one review each month and that person will get a free ticket to our monthly online conference, which usually costs £50.
Thanks for your time and I hope you enjoy the show!
1 hr 27 min