Over at The Baffler, Michael Nicholas writes: “Today, as Italian Americans continue marrying non-Italians, and membership in ethnic/fraternal organizations has declined, social media often facilitates the performance of a shared identity.” He’s talking about stuff like this: Here is a...
Actually, I don’t. But in a recent piece at The Atlantic Katherine Hu wonders if “influencing” is the “new American dream.” Here is a taste: Fifty-four percent of young Americans would become an influencer if given the chance. This statistic, from...
A recent Washington Post piece argues that Gen Z’s “digital footprints” will haunt them. Here is Tatum Hunter: Aly Drake says she used TikTok like a diary. When she felt friendless, she’d make a video about it. When she noticed...
Here is a taste of Atlantic writer Kaitlyn Tiffany’s piece, “Twitter Was the Ultimate Cancellation Machine.” Whatever else it is, Twitter is a place where the average person can subject others to their displeasure. They have been mistreated by Southwest...
I’ve spent some time studying early American Quakers. This religious group featured prominently in my doctrinal dissertation and I once toyed with writing a book about an early 19th-century Quaker farmer. Perhaps Ezra Klein is onto something in his recent...
The latest from Trump’s social media platform: This post is inspired by Digby and David French. Here’s French: Of course not everyone agrees with me, Digby, or French....
The United States Constitution, James Madison argued, only works when people are spread-out geographically. Social media shrinks that distance. Here is a taste of political scientist Danielle Allen’s piece at The Washington Post. When we teach constitutional history, we often...
The Internet and social media is killing it. Here is Sam Leith at The Spectator: Nostalgia depends to a large extent on the ability to misremember. The canonical form of nostalgia, captured in the Portuguese loan-word saudade, is longing for a...
What is Gab? It is a right-wing platform used by right-wing extremists. Consider: The shooter in the October 2018 shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue used Gab to announce his murder of 11 people. In 2020, Gab hosted the accounts of...
Joseph Keegin, the editor of The Point, gives us a lot to think about in this piece at The Chronicle of Higher Education. Here is a taste: As academic humanities departments shed undergraduates and lose both prestige and funding, professors...
This week I joined Current editors Eric Miller and Felicia Wu Song for a conversation on Felicia’s new book Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age. The entire interview is available to Deep Water and Storm...
A little humor for this Tuesday morning:...
I could sure use one. Here is the AP’s Tari Arbel: Twitter tweeted Tuesday that it is indeed working on a way for users to edit their 280-character messages, although it says the project has nothing to do with the fact...
According to the New York University social psychologist and author of The Righteous Mind, social media is the culprit. It is hard to argue with his analysis. Haidt’s article should be read alongside Current editor Felicia Wu Song’s Restless Devices:...
Tim Miller writes for the conservative online magazine The Bulwark. He was the communications director for the 2016 Jeb Bush campaign and spokesperson for the Republican National Committee. Here is a taste of his piece “The Republican Party Is Trump...
Listen to Felicia Wu Song’s interview with Heather Thompson Day at Christianity Today. In addition to her work at Current, she teaches sociology at Westmont College and is the author of Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the...
Over at The Chronicle of Higher Education, Len Gutkin interviews Yale English professor David Bromwich on the state of higher education. The interview comes on the thirtieth anniversary of Bromwich’s Politics by Other Means: Higher Education and Group Thinking. Bromwich...
Jeffrey Lawrence, an English professor at Rutgers, gives us a lot to think about in this piece at The Chronicle of Higher Education. Here is a taste of “Who Owns Your Academic Community”: During the past five years, I have...
Here is Drew Harwell at The Washington Post: Former president Donald Trump, a longtime critic of how Democrats debuted Healthcare.gov, is facing a bungled website launch of his own. His long-promised social network, Truth Social, has been almost entirely inaccessible in...
Congratulations to Felicia Wu Song, Professor of Sociology at Westmont College and Associate Editor of Current on the publication of Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence and Place in the Digital Age (InterVarsity Press). Here is the IVP Press: We’re being...
