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

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.