Online Culture Is the Whole Culture

There was a time, just before the pandemic, when folks would say “Twitter isn’t real life” as a means of dismissing the horrors of social media. This was a cope, a way to ignore the worst political and cultural actors who now dominate our psychic landscape. Now those people are in charge and they’ve manifested Twitter into real life in a way previously thought impossible.

The White House is posting Stardew Valley memes about whole milk. A Customs and Border Patrol official is asking people if they’re triggered when they respond with empathy to the murder of a woman. Laura Loomer, one of the most online gargoyles to ever live, is a serious policy player in administration. The Secretary of War has a video game tattoo.

How did we get here? Michael Senters, a PhD candidate at Virginia Tech, is here to explain how online culture became the culture.

It’s all for the posts
A YouTuber comes to town
What, exactly, does it mean to be terminally online?
The right goes all in on identity politics
The pandemic drove us all crazy
Turns out the post-modernists were correct
Posting yourself into a different form or reality
Survival tips for the extremely online
Depraved art and Hearts of Iron IV
Deus Vult?
Video games as propaganda
We should have been harder on the online Nazis
John Romero will make you his bitch
A brief history of Something Awful
Fighting the performance regime

How Fraud Swamped Minnesota’s Social Services System on Tim Walz’s Watch

Six Prosecutors Quit Over Push to Investigate ICE Shooting Victim’s Widow

Do you have stairs in your house?

Fuck You And Die: An Oral History of Something Awful

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