April 18, 7pm
Spoonbill Books, 99 Montrose Avenue
Reading + Conversation
repeaterbooks.com/books/filling-the-void/
Filling The Void is a book about how the cultures and psychology of social media use fit within a broader landscape of life under capitalism. Marcus Gilroy-Ware argues that social media use is often a psychological response to the need for pleasure and comfort that results from the stresses of life under postmodern capitalism, rather than being a driver of new behaviors as new technologies are often said to be.
Filling the Void interrogates the role of social media networks, designed for private commercial gain, as part of a de-facto public sphere. Both the decreasing subjective importance of factual media and the ways in which the content of the timeline are quietly manipulated–often using labor in the developing world and secret algorithms–have serious implications for the capacity of social media users to query or challenge the seeming reality offered by the established hegemonic order.
Marcus Gilroy-Ware has been immersing himself in digital media since the age of five. Having lived in the United States, Brazil, and Britain, he now writes, teaches, researches, creates, and codes at the intersection of culture and communication.