In What Is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari propose that “philosophy is the art of forming, inventing, and fabricating concepts.” Should the users who promiscuously invent terms on TikTok be understood as philosophers, then, rather than purveyors of “tryhard slang” and “trendbait” — to cite two terms Rebecca Jennings coins
Call them “immediacy style” or “auto-theoretical”, or whatever other coinage one can summon, perhaps these posts, these snippets of participation, of noticing and wrestling with the deluge of contemporary culture is all there really is? The flood that necessitates algorithmic sorting and filtering and has us operating as fleshy datafication subprocesses, also overwhelms academia, after all? Either way, these are the posts I look forward to most.
This might not be the way you want to go with these ideas but your description (especially in conclusion) of a fragmentation of thought and attention reminded me of conversations I’ve had with female, working-class, and/or minority academics, in which ‘the book’ appears as a now-impossible project only achievable by those with the resources (material, emotional, temporal, mental, etc) to step out of the flow of demands and distractions, and then focus at sufficient length. In other words, the world has now organised itself in such a way that the extension of thought across units of time longer than a few days or weeks is a function of privilege - and those of us without privilege, finding ourselves on the outside (even when we occupy positions ostensibly on the inside), do with that what we can.
So maybe what I’m sensing in your piece is that ‘too late capitalism’ (with its constant crises, vast inequalities and rising supremacism) has put a massive pram in the hallways of all those who feel the effects of those forces immediately upon them, all who have (now) been made subaltern.
Your work, consistently brilliant, gives me hope that what comes out of that situation can be the most compelling and necessary forms of thinking - not despite but because of that situation.
There’s a strange new trend among youthful humans wherein they're almost seeking to create a legacy for themselves with viral content, creating new terms their friends and wider community use. What’s unfortunate is that they’re doing all this before they really know who they are — who it is they’re making a legacy, a name, for. So we’re caught up in the frenzy of their creations, wondering how we can filter it for what might be remotely useful. Is any of it useful?
I find myself wondering if all these thoughts should be captured in the still or moving frame, or in the written word. Some things aren’t worth preserving, and I find it unlikely that ideas or terms created by the frenetic energy one must have to appeal to TikTok's algorithm are worthwhile. We certainly won’t return to them in a year's time, or even a week, to think deeply about the topics, because we’re already on to the next video within a minute or two. There’s no time for reflection — no encouragement in the design of the app or the standards that its communities create.
I've been thinking a lot about what you assumed as "autotheory" and everything you wrote about your own experience is very similar to mine. I'm also an academic writing a non-academic newsletter about things I come across in my research and often feel like I'm doing this because I can't develop arguments outside of myself and my own experience, which is pretty frustrating tbh. But what I'm trying to convince myself is that newsletter, as its own medium, is a technique we can use as part of the process of formulating a thought or concept or theory etc. Newsletters enable our writing to be ephemeral (it's just deleting the e-mail) but also archived (inbox or our newsletter's feed). And I feel like the way it does it conditions us to process the beginning of our thoughts, instead of the complete (or illusion of complete) that other written mediums like books, essays etc. usually "ask" of us.
Anyway, I actually have a lot to talk about everything you wrote about TikTok and coinages. I'm a discourse analyst, and all you said made me think a lot about the production conditions (I'm roughly translating it into English, I'm a native Portuguese speaker, so I'm not always sure what are the technical terms called in English) of discourse on the internet. While reading you, I kept asking myself: have you ever read Regis Debray? He's not very well accepted in a lot of academic circles, but he has an interesting proposition to analise why some concepts/ ideas/ theories get so well circulated that expand and gather other areas of study. I think that a lot of the dynamics of coining a concept on-line has to do of how the datasphere gained traction historically and how it works nowadays. But this comment is already huge, so I'ma stop myself here.
Please, keep posting anyway. Your process of thinking really helps my own :)
Thanks Rob for another thought-provoking "piece". Haven't read the Kornbluh but wasn't Daniel Bell writing about the eclipse of distance and simultaneity a long time ago? And the idea of just going with the flow, a network of flows, seems very familiar (since #everything is dated everything is dated).
Call them “immediacy style” or “auto-theoretical”, or whatever other coinage one can summon, perhaps these posts, these snippets of participation, of noticing and wrestling with the deluge of contemporary culture is all there really is? The flood that necessitates algorithmic sorting and filtering and has us operating as fleshy datafication subprocesses, also overwhelms academia, after all? Either way, these are the posts I look forward to most.
Oddly you’ve validated my own internal monologue with yours. Having a less foggier (sic) day now. 💡
As ever, a wonderful, thought-provoking piece.
This might not be the way you want to go with these ideas but your description (especially in conclusion) of a fragmentation of thought and attention reminded me of conversations I’ve had with female, working-class, and/or minority academics, in which ‘the book’ appears as a now-impossible project only achievable by those with the resources (material, emotional, temporal, mental, etc) to step out of the flow of demands and distractions, and then focus at sufficient length. In other words, the world has now organised itself in such a way that the extension of thought across units of time longer than a few days or weeks is a function of privilege - and those of us without privilege, finding ourselves on the outside (even when we occupy positions ostensibly on the inside), do with that what we can.
So maybe what I’m sensing in your piece is that ‘too late capitalism’ (with its constant crises, vast inequalities and rising supremacism) has put a massive pram in the hallways of all those who feel the effects of those forces immediately upon them, all who have (now) been made subaltern.
Your work, consistently brilliant, gives me hope that what comes out of that situation can be the most compelling and necessary forms of thinking - not despite but because of that situation.
There’s a strange new trend among youthful humans wherein they're almost seeking to create a legacy for themselves with viral content, creating new terms their friends and wider community use. What’s unfortunate is that they’re doing all this before they really know who they are — who it is they’re making a legacy, a name, for. So we’re caught up in the frenzy of their creations, wondering how we can filter it for what might be remotely useful. Is any of it useful?
I find myself wondering if all these thoughts should be captured in the still or moving frame, or in the written word. Some things aren’t worth preserving, and I find it unlikely that ideas or terms created by the frenetic energy one must have to appeal to TikTok's algorithm are worthwhile. We certainly won’t return to them in a year's time, or even a week, to think deeply about the topics, because we’re already on to the next video within a minute or two. There’s no time for reflection — no encouragement in the design of the app or the standards that its communities create.
I've been thinking a lot about what you assumed as "autotheory" and everything you wrote about your own experience is very similar to mine. I'm also an academic writing a non-academic newsletter about things I come across in my research and often feel like I'm doing this because I can't develop arguments outside of myself and my own experience, which is pretty frustrating tbh. But what I'm trying to convince myself is that newsletter, as its own medium, is a technique we can use as part of the process of formulating a thought or concept or theory etc. Newsletters enable our writing to be ephemeral (it's just deleting the e-mail) but also archived (inbox or our newsletter's feed). And I feel like the way it does it conditions us to process the beginning of our thoughts, instead of the complete (or illusion of complete) that other written mediums like books, essays etc. usually "ask" of us.
Anyway, I actually have a lot to talk about everything you wrote about TikTok and coinages. I'm a discourse analyst, and all you said made me think a lot about the production conditions (I'm roughly translating it into English, I'm a native Portuguese speaker, so I'm not always sure what are the technical terms called in English) of discourse on the internet. While reading you, I kept asking myself: have you ever read Regis Debray? He's not very well accepted in a lot of academic circles, but he has an interesting proposition to analise why some concepts/ ideas/ theories get so well circulated that expand and gather other areas of study. I think that a lot of the dynamics of coining a concept on-line has to do of how the datasphere gained traction historically and how it works nowadays. But this comment is already huge, so I'ma stop myself here.
Please, keep posting anyway. Your process of thinking really helps my own :)
Thanks Rob for another thought-provoking "piece". Haven't read the Kornbluh but wasn't Daniel Bell writing about the eclipse of distance and simultaneity a long time ago? And the idea of just going with the flow, a network of flows, seems very familiar (since #everything is dated everything is dated).
Telling it like it is what it is. My new motto.