Sad By Design - On Platform Nihilism

Sadness is now a design problem. The highs and lows of melancholy are coded into social media platforms. After all the clicking, browsing, swiping and liking, all we are left with is the flat and empty aftermath of time lost to the app.

Sad by Design offers a critical analysis of the growing social media controversies such as fake news, toxic viral memes and online addiction. The failed search for a grand design has resulted in depoliticised internet studies unable to generate either radical critique or a search for alternatives.

Geert Lovink calls for us to embrace the engineered intimacy of social media, messenger apps and selfies, because boredom is the first stage of overcoming 'platform nihilism'. Then, after the haze, we can organise to disrupt the data extraction industries at their core.

About the author

Geert Lovink is a media theorist, internet critic and author of Zero Comments (Routledge, 2007), Networks Without a Cause (Polity, 2012), Social Media Abyss (Polity, 2016) and Sad By Design (Pluto, 2019). He founded the Institute of Network Cultures at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and teaches at the European Graduate School.

Summary

We live in a time of engineered intimacy, toxic memes and online addiction. Can we ever break free?

Product details

• Authors: Geert Lovink, Lovink Geert
• Publisher: Pluto
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.05.2019
• EAN: 9780745339351
• ISBN: 978-0-7453-3935-1
• No. of pages: 192
• Series: Digital Barricades; Digital Barricades
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political science and political education; Media Studies, Social Theory, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Disease & Health Issues, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Communication Studies, SCIENCE / Philosophy & Social Aspects, TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / Social Aspects, Impact of science & technology on society, Media studies: internet, digital media and society, Impact of science and technology on society, COMPUTERS / Internet / Social Media