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Mark CarriganThe ‘vibes shift’ as a preemptive declaration of hegemonyThis from the consistently excellent John Ganz (highly recommend <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374605445/whentheclockbroke/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">his book</a>) captures something I’ve been struggling to articulate since Trump’s victory. Why has there been such a rush to frame this in hegemonic terms when there was a 1.5% difference in vote share between the two candidates? There’s clearly an elite recomposition underway, with tech capital taking the leadership role for the first time, which is starting to produce substantive outgrowths. Watching JD Vance’s speech I immediately found myself thinking about how Bush era leaders would have talked about issues relating to the oil industry: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64E9O1Gv99o" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64E9O1Gv99o</a><blockquote>The richest people in the world with unprecedented control over the media and communications realign politically and then—coincidentally—there is a “big cultural shift.” Why? “Can’t say for sure, but probably has something to do with how annoying liberals are.” Come the fuck on. They are already putting pressure on the media to soften coverage. It’s not that things are just happening, they are doing things. And the media is already bending or being taken over by regime-friendly oligarchs. It’s not a mystery what’s going on—we can still read about it in the newspaper—so let’s not mystify ourselves.<a href="https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/vibes-cartel" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/vibes-cartel</a></blockquote><blockquote>One last thought. What this insistence on a new order—the vibes—remind me of a lot was the hysterical run-up to the war against Iraq. The sense was created of an unstoppable momentum and there was relentless, insidious sidelining and castigation of critics and dissent. Even if people did not think they were warmongering, they helped the regime’s cause by attacking those who objected as fuddy-duddies, hopelessly out-of-date, and unfashionable. Obviously, we were in a New Era™ after 9/11. Obviously, the administration had the winds of history at its back. It wasn’t conservatives and right-wingers who did a lot of this work, but liberals who rationalized and justified what was a series of absurd lies and ultimately a catastrophe. This is what I was trying to get at when we were moving into a Vichy era: a lot of people are just going to go along to get along. But not all.<a href="https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/vibes-cartel" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/vibes-cartel</a></blockquote><a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/capitalism/" target="_blank">#capitalism</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/digital-elites/" target="_blank">#digitalElites</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/hegemony/" target="_blank">#hegemony</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/jd-vance/" target="_blank">#JDVance</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/john-ganz/" target="_blank">#JohnGanz</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/trump/" target="_blank">#trump</a>

Mark CarriganDigital elites and reactionary modernismFrom Wikipedia: <blockquote>Reactionary modernism is a term first coined by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Herf" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Jeffrey Herf</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionary_modernism?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email#cite_note-1" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">[1]</a> in the 1980s to describe the mixture of “great enthusiasm for modern <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">technology</a> with a rejection of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Enlightenment</a> and the values and institutions of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_democracy" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">liberal democracy</a>” that was characteristic of the German <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_Revolutionary_movement" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Conservative Revolutionary movement</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Nazism</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionary_modernism?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email#cite_note-Herf-2" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">[2]</a> In turn, this ideology of reactionary <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">modernism</a> was closely linked to the original, positive view of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderweg" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Sonderweg</a>, which saw Germany as the great <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Europe" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Central European</a> power, neither of the West nor of the East.</blockquote>From <a href="https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/reading-thiels-op-ed?" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">John Ganz</a> on this <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/a46cb128-1f74-4621-ab0b-242a76583105" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Peter Thiel op-ed</a>:<blockquote>When Thiel writes about a “war on the internet” and “the internet” that had “begun our liberation,” the natural assumption is to assume that he’s speaking figuratively, that this is a metonym or synecdoche meaning “people on the internet.” But let’s say he’s being literal: for Thiel, the internet is a subject, it is doing something and the machines, The Big Machine has agency—it is “agentic,” as the tech people like to say. This is the viewpoint of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">“Dark Enlightenment”</a> and “neo-reaction,” which forms part of Thiel’s intellectual milieu. The belief is that a technological singularity is coming and the elect must work to accelerate it. The state must organize itself like an enterprise for this work to be completed. Progress, which is hampered by democracy, must have an authoritarian state to continue unabated. This is, of course, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionary_modernism" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">reactionary modernism</a>: a belief in technological advances without the sentimental baggage of the Enlightenment.<a href="https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/reading-thiels-op-ed?" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/reading-thiels-op-ed</a></blockquote><a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/accelerationism/" target="_blank">#accelerationism</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/digital-elites/" target="_blank">#digitalElites</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/modernism/" target="_blank">#modernism</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/modernity/" target="_blank">#modernity</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/peter-thiel/" target="_blank">#peterThiel</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/technology/" target="_blank">#technology</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/the-internet/" target="_blank">#theInternet</a>

Mark CarriganTikTok is the next stage in Elon Musk’s cultural machinery of reactionAfter writing <a href="https://markcarrigan.net/2024/11/22/elon-musk-has-not-finished-building-his-cultural-machine/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">this post</a> in November I started getting preoccupied about the possibility of Elon Musk buying TikTok in the case of an American ban. Looks like the talks about this have now started: <blockquote>Chinese officials have reportedly held preliminary talks about a potential option to sell TikTok’s operations in the US to the billionaire <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/elon-musk" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Elon Musk</a>, should the short-video app be unable to avoid an impending ban.Beijing officials prefer that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/tiktok" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">TikTok</a> remains under the control of Chinese parent Bytedance, but have discussed other options including a sale to Musk, Bloomberg reported.<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/13/china-tiktok-sale-elon-musk" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/13/china-tiktok-sale-elon-musk</a></blockquote>Consider what Musk has done to X, which last time I logged in (to delete the account) presented me with an algorithmic timeline largely full of far-right content despite the fact I’m a socialist academic. Now imagine the cultural power which could be wielded by enacting a similar shift on TikTok, given the demographics and the attentional force carried by short-term video. Elon Musk’s AI startup was valued at $50 billion in December. All content on X is now used for training Grok by default, with widespread speculation that the opt out will be removed in the not too distant future. If the next frontier of GAI will be video models (which tbf I’m entirely sceptical of, but I could see how this could be the next hype cycle) then TikTok would be the most incredible source of training data. Furthermore, could it eventually be integrated into X to constitute the ‘everything app’ Musk has long purportedly been fixated on? Even if not the cultural power he’s able to exercise through X + TikTok would be incredible, particularly in a climate where regulatory constraints will be near zero. There are <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2024/11/18/americas-news-influencers/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">marginally more</a> left-wing political influencers on TikTok than right wing ones, but it’s also been a potent mobilising force for far-right movements. If you tweak the algorithm to maximise the visibility of far-right influencers, the organising parameters of a generation disinterested in X would change in the space of a few months. <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/digital-elites/" target="_blank">#digitalElites</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/far-right/" target="_blank">#farRight</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/musk/" target="_blank">#Musk</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/tiktok/" target="_blank">#TikTok</a>

Mark CarriganThere will be 13 billionaires in the Trump administrationIt is the wealthiest administration in American history 👇 does any past administration even come close to this? <blockquote>President-elect <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/alerts/donald-trump" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Donald Trump</a> has assembled the wealthiest presidential administration in modern history, with at least 13 billionaires set to take on government posts.They include a wrestling magnate, a private space pioneer, a New York real estate developer, the heir to a small appliance empire, and the wealthiest man on the planet — with several being donors and close personal friends of the incoming president.In total, the combined net worth of the wealthiest members of his administration could surpass $460 billion, including <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-elon-musk-vivek-ramaswamy-lead-department-government/story?id=115796327" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Department of Government Efficiency</a> co-head Elon Musk — whose net worth of more than $400 billion exceeds the GDP of mid-sized countries.<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-tapped-unprecedented-13-billionaires-top-administration-roles/story?id=116872968" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-tapped-unprecedented-13-billionaires-top-administration-roles/story?id=116872968</a></blockquote><a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/billionaires/" target="_blank">#billionaires</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/digital-elites/" target="_blank">#digitalElites</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/trump/" target="_blank">#trump</a>

Mark CarriganHow much time does Elon Musk spend tweeting each day?Taylor Lorenz reports on the long speculated possibility of Elon Musk having sock puppet accounts: <blockquote>Over the weekend, a Twitter Space hosted by right-wing influencer Laura Loomer devolved into chaos when an account named “<a href="https://x.com/AdrianDittmann" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Adrian Dittmann</a>” joined the discussion. The user, who spoke with an eerily familiar voice, relentlessly defended Elon Musk.Immediately people began speculating that the “Adrian Dittmann” account was <a href="https://x.com/P_Kallioniemi/status/1759508718142501096" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">actually just Elon</a>. The account spoke like him, posted like him, and <a href="https://x.com/Warrenbucketz/status/1873038136735150315" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">suspiciously talked about Musk in the first person</a> at one point. This isn’t the first time Musk has been accused of using burner accounts. Earlier this year, it was revealed that he <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/elon-musk-confirms-used-burner-190847581.html" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">had been running another secret account where he role played as his toddler son</a> and engaged with his own posts. People have also been posting theories about Musk’s involvement with “<a href="https://x.com/AdrianDittmann" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Adrian Dittmann</a>” for nearly a year.On Sunday, both Musk and “Adrian” joined a voice chat on X <a href="https://x.com/Solliesthewise/status/1873086012664242365" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">to have a discussion with each other</a>, but the conversation was stilted and didn’t put many people’s suspicions to rest. Elon’s trans daughter Vivian apparently also once <a href="https://x.com/SethAbramson/status/1873492284253335570" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">posted on Threads claiming that Dittmann really is Musk’s alt</a>.<a href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa1081385-565f-4b7c-8ec2-3ddda7fa4478_892x938.png" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://www.usermag.co/p/elon-musks-secret-alt-adrian-dittmann" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.usermag.co/p/elon-musks-secret-alt-adrian-dittmann</a></blockquote>I return to my favourite chart of 2024:<a href="https://markcarrigan.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/image.png" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"></a>This <a href="https://wsj-graphics-dot-wsj.sc.onservo.com/elon-musk-twitter-habit-analysis/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">WSJ analysis</a> tells the story in a different way, though it stops before he really starting to get pilled by Twitter 👇<a href="https://markcarrigan.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/screenshot-2025-01-03-at-09.06.46.png" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://markcarrigan.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/screenshot-2025-01-03-at-09.07.31.png" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"></a>In seven days in August he <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/aug/17/a-week-in-tweets-elon-musk-x" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">tweeted 650 times</a>. In one day during the election he <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/sep/14/elon-musk-tweets-trump-conspiracy" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">posted 145 times</a>. If we assume he is posting all of these, which seems likely but far from certain, what does this mean for his day-to-day experience? If we made the conservative assumption that there’s one minute of distraction prior to a tweet, two minutes of tweeting and then three minutes to return to what you were doing, 145 tweets in a day would be 12 hours of being consumed by Twitter. But of course he’s also reading and many of these tweets are replies. So it can’t be taken atomistically, nor do I really think it only takes 3 minutes to return to what you were doing if you are hooked into the platform to that degree. In fact I suspect we could read the charts above as showing a process through which someone never really returns to what they were doing. It’s a chart showing someone who lives in social media, rather than uses it, to invoke Mark Fisher’s phrase. <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/digital-elites/" target="_blank">#digitalElites</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/elon-musk/" target="_blank">#elonMusk</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/twitter/" target="_blank">#twitter</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/x/" target="_blank">#X</a>

Mark CarriganWhat is Elon Musk’s end game?If Bernie Sanders is right that Elon Musk’s recent intervention marks the point at which America definitely made the transition into oligarchy, what is his end game? Where is it going? What is he hoping to achieve beyond getting ever wealthier? <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79KDKWEOJ1s" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79KDKWEOJ1s</a>As well as teasing at interventions into UK politics in support of Reform, he made an intervention into German politics in support of the AfD: <blockquote>Early this morning, Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1869986946031988780" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">posted on X</a> that “only the AfD can save Germany.” The Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD, is one of Germany’s furthest-right parties, whose jingoistic desires don’t just stop at mass deportations. AfD politicians have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/10/politicians-from-germany-afd-met-extremist-group-to-discuss-deportation-masterplan" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">reportedly discussed “remigration,”</a> the process of deporting nonwhite residents, including naturalized citizens and their descendants. These views are presumably not just finding their way to Trump; they are broadcast to millions of people who log on to X.<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/12/elon-musk-x-congress-shutown/681120/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/12/elon-musk-x-congress-shutown/681120/</a></blockquote>If this graph is an accurate representation of Musk’s own social media activity (and the evidence does suggest that he is authoring his own tweets) I find it hard to understand how he could sustain an engaged and coherent agenda. My own experience of sometimes posting 100+ times per day is that it leaves you feeling fragmented and wired, unable to focus for more than a few seconds at a time. Musk has an infrastructure of cognition and action around him which potentially mitigates those effects, with the accumulating Matthew effects of being the richest and most powerful man in the world meaning that stuff happens in effective and sustained ways even as his psyche potentially unravels. <a href="https://markcarrigan.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/image-3.png" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"></a>Or is there an ideological grand strategy as Seth Abramson <a href="https://sethabramson.substack.com/p/the-truth-about-musk-from-his-biographer" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">suggests</a>? Personally I’ve long thought he’s a liberal conspiracy theorist but one of the things which makes him so potent is that his conspiracy theories are largely reality based. Or is this simply a lot of cultural noise being made in order to achieve a regulatory environment suitable for his agenda? The threat to Tesla (which is still the basis of the overwhelming majority of his wealth) from China’s BYD, as well a trade war between the US and China, has necessitate a more violent embrace of the political?Note that I’ve offered three types of explanation here: personal, cultural and structural. The realist insistence will always be that adequate explanation involves each of these three elements. What would that look like in practice? I don’t think I’m the right person to answer that question (sitting at the intersection between tech journalism, cultural political economy and geopolitics etc) but I really hope this becomes an urgent priority for those with the right expertise. Barring a fight to the death between Trump and Musk in which the former is victorious, I’m certain we’re at the start of Elon Musk’s global rise rather than in the middle of it. This is the start of the story, what happened previously was the prologue. <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/digital-elites/" target="_blank">#digitalElites</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/elon-musk/" target="_blank">#elonMusk</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/far-right/" target="_blank">#farRight</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/oligarchy/" target="_blank">#oligarchy</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/populism/" target="_blank">#populism</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/post-neoliberalism/" target="_blank">#postNeoliberalism</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/post-pandemic-civics/" target="_blank">#postPandemicCivics</a>

Mark CarriganElon Musk: First Buddy of the United States<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcTeAinPtkQ" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcTeAinPtkQ</a><a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/digital-elites/" target="_blank">#digitalElites</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/elon-musk/" target="_blank">#elonMusk</a>

Mark CarriganWas Tony Blair the first effective accelerationist?I don’t think it’s quite right as a description but I find it hard not to explore the thought after watching this interview: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSLWR3AbF3c&t=1471s" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSLWR3AbF3c&t=1471s</a>There’s a similar line of thought in <a href="https://www.compactmag.com/article/tony-blair-right-wing-progressive/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">this review by Nathan Pinkoski</a> of Blair’s book on leadership. He describes Blair’s program as a “kind of post-liberal progressive rightism that promises to co-opt the progressive left while crushing the populist right”. Underlying this project is “a commitment to unlimited, unrestrained technological progress, and a belief that this will bring about a better world”. He envisages something like the CEO-king which drives the effective accelerationists: <blockquote>The archetype of the leader as the great persuader or great communicator is passé for him. Instead, Blair takes the neo-reactionary position that the truly effective leader is a CEO-king. Persuasion is for campaign time. After that, he writes, the leader must “metamorphose into the Great CEO.” Democracy (like any regime and any large corporation) is legitimized by what it delivers, but its own procedures work against consistent delivery. The solution is, for Blair, straightforward. Leaders interested in change need to work harder to stay longer in office. They will deliver the results, and those results will win democratic legitimacy. The issue becomes teaching leaders how to prepare for the long haul.<a href="https://www.compactmag.com/article/tony-blair-right-wing-progressive/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.compactmag.com/article/tony-blair-right-wing-progressive/</a></blockquote>Underlying this is an ontological hostility to bureaucracy which is intrinsically inclined to frustrate the CEO-king who seeks to bring about change:<blockquote>Blair’s advice is blunt. The bureaucracies must be bent toward obedience: “All bureaucracies are the same. They’re not conspiracies for one side or another in politics; they’re conspiracies for maintaining the system, and they have a corresponding genius for inertia. They can be utilized and driven but should not be left with the first or final say.”He echoes this view in his treatment of the problem of the deep state, which—somewhat unusually for his class—he acknowledges exists. In democracies, Blair hints, the way for a leader to establish control over recalcitrant intelligence agencies is to threaten them with humiliation. They are averse to doing “anything the media, which adores a conspiracy, might find occasion to sink its teeth into. Their greatest anxiety” is to be caught out in public, to be “summoned in front of inquiries, committees, and commissions and be criticized.”</blockquote>Intriguingly <a href="https://www.compactmag.com/article/tony-blair-right-wing-progressive/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Pinkoski</a> frames this in terms of Blair seeking to intervene in post-2016 inter-elite conflict. I think this prioritises culture over economics in an obviously problematic way, but likewise I increasingly feel <a href="https://markcarrigan.net/2024/10/13/elon-musk-2010-vs-elon-musk-2024/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">left-analysis misses the significance of culture in shaping elite dissensus</a>: <blockquote>While the post-2016 landscape is still a contest between elites and populists, this isn’t the full story. In 2016, the populist diagnosis of Western malaise inspired Brexit and propelled Trump to the White House. At least in the United States, the revolt was successful because it forced elites to question their priors, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/04/opinion/trump-trade-immigration-election.html?ref=compactmag.com" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">provoking</a> intra-elite debates over China, trade, and immigration.The next stage of this intra-elite struggle is a conflict over how we are governed. Progressive elites adore the managerial-therapeutic state that governs most Western countries; it is staffed by members of their class and promotes their values. Right- and left-leaning elites, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Multiculturalism-Politics-Guilt-Towards-Theocracy/dp/0826214177?ref=compactmag.com" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">starry-eyed</a> about diversity and antiracism, used to unite to defend that regime. But in the past few years, something has shifted. Most elite institutions are still aligned against the right—the legacy media, government bureaucracies, the intelligence agencies, the NGO complex, and academia. Yet segments of the business and tech sector broke off from this consensus. They did so in large part because they came to regard the managerial-therapeutic state as unjust, incompetent, and dysfunctional. This is just what the populists have said for years. In 2024, this dissident, right-leaning elite allied openly with the populists to help Trump win again.</blockquote>He offers what I think is ultimately a charitable reading of Blair as seeking to redeem liberal democracy by equipping the state to bring about substantial change, though one at odds with the short term calculus involved in sustaining a hold on power long enough to do this e.g. <a href="https://markcarrigan.net/2024/07/22/the-political-economy-of-hoplessness/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">when centrists triangulate against the far-right in the interests of electoral pragmatism</a>.<blockquote>To save democracy, his solution is unabashed techno-optimism. Democracy can only regain its output legitimacy by wholeheartedly embracing technological change, especially in the realms of Big Data and artificial intelligence. It is for this reason that the heart of the book is devoted to sketching out all the possibilities unleashing these changes will achieve. Blair writes that if leaders embrace unlimited technological progress, including digital IDs and centralized personal data, they will have more power than ever before to “make change happen.” Populists might have their qualms about this. They might warn about a “police state” (Blair tells them he knows what real police states look like, so they needn’t worry). Populists might complain about the high levels of immigration Blair continues to encourage as necessary for progress. Blair chastises them for their xenophobia, but the populists are ultimately wrong because of their techno-pessimism. They’re akin to the Luddites resisting the Industrial Revolution. Because of that, they’re the enemy. </blockquote><a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/digital-elites/" target="_blank">#digitalElites</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/effective-accelerationism/" target="_blank">#effectiveAccelerationism</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/governance/" target="_blank">#governance</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/post-pandemic-civics/" target="_blank">#postPandemicCivics</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/postneoliberal-civics/" target="_blank">#postneoliberalCivics</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/tony-blair/" target="_blank">#tonyBlair</a>

Mark CarriganFrom Parmy Olson’s Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT and the Race That Will Change the World loc 643:<blockquote>To handle his anxiety, Altman got into meditation, sometimes sitting with his eyes closed and concentrating on just his breath for up to an hour at a time. Over time, he later said, he developed an increasingly diminished sense of self. “One thing I realized through meditation is that there is no self that I can identify with in any way at all,” he told the Art of Accomplishment podcast. “I’ve heard that of a lot of people spending a lot of time thinking about [powerful AI] get to that in a different way too.”</blockquote>To be fair, I’ve <a href="https://www.artofaccomplishment.com/podcast/sam-altman-leading-with-crippling-anxiety-discovering-meditation-and-building-intelligence-with-self-awareness-3" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">read the transcript</a> and he doesn’t describe himself as enlightened. But he does use what I believe are real meditation experiences to construct a public image of himself as spiritually refined: from the talk about “no self”, reports that “I feel incredibly joyful all of the time” through to how you “deeply feel” “nonduality” and distinguishing himself from the strung-out non-enlightened tech bros around him. So while he doesn’t say “I believe I have achieved enlightenment” I think he is quite explicitly saying “I am spiritually refined in a way you are not”, playing off the floating signifiers like “nonduality” and “no self” to leave the extent of that refinement an open question. And yet this man with no self (‘he can find’) spends a lot of time and money preparing for doomsday. From loc 653 in the same book:<blockquote>The idea of death seemed to terrify Altman. He was a self-described prepper and spent a great deal of time and money preparing for a catastrophic global event, like a synthetic virus being released into the world or being attacked by AI. “I try not to think about it too much,” he was quoted as telling a group of start-up founders in his New Yorker profile. “But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.”</blockquote>The description of Altman’s relationship with Paul Graham reminded me of what I’ve read of how Macron cultivated the backing of elderly billionaires in France. The capacity to position yourself as a dutiful discipline to powerful men is a unique skill, even if Paul Graham is younger and less wealthy than Macron’s sponsors. The reality is that, as Olson clearly conveys in an otherwise weirdly hagiographical book, Altman positioned himself at the centre of an innovation network, at exactly the right moment, with increasing returns as his social and financial capital grew. Like a big hungry spider gobbling up the choices morsels that got caught in his web. From loc 621:<blockquote>His place at the top of YC meant he was better positioned than many other venture capitalists to win jackpots like that, getting an intimate view on hundreds of companies who’d already been carefully screened, and in the middle of one of the greatest bull market runs in history. Getting pitched by all those start-ups also helped him see into the future.</blockquote>This is why his self-construction is so interesting to me. The obvious parallel is Musk who, as Dave Karpf once put it, possibly constitutes the most dramatic case of survivor bias in human history. If you dimly sense that your wealth and status accrue from the accumulating gains of being at the centre of the right network at the right term (relying in Musk’s case on government contracts and interventions to a degree unparalleled amongst the 21st century class of tech lords) then there’s a psychological and strategic need to construct an image for others (and yourself) as a visionary preoccupied with lofty purposes unlike the banal fixations of the others within your class. <a href="https://markcarrigan.net/2024/10/19/sam-altman-the-billionaire-prepper-who-believes-he-has-achieved-enlightenment/" class="" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://markcarrigan.net/2024/10/19/sam-altman-the-billionaire-prepper-who-believes-he-has-achieved-enlightenment/</a><a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/big-tech/" target="_blank">#bigTech</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/billionaires/" target="_blank">#billionaires</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/digital-elites/" target="_blank">#digitalElites</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/elon-musk/" target="_blank">#elonMusk</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/open-ai/" target="_blank">#openAI</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/parmy-olson/" target="_blank">#ParmyOlson</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/sam-altman/" target="_blank">#samAltman</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/supremacy/" target="_blank">#Supremacy</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/tech-lords/" target="_blank">#techLords</a>

Mark CarriganThe guy who pitches ideas for electric jets to Tony Stark 👇<a href="https://youtu.be/AwK8DZu12H0?si=BtI7I8macvHWChep&t=34" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/AwK8DZu12H0?si=BtI7I8macvHWChep&t=34</a>The guy who giggles at his own fascist cosplaying 👇<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvnY0Na0gJA" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvnY0Na0gJA</a>It’s utterly cringe. I heard this described last week as like someone winning a contest and being invited up on stage: “me? I won?”. But as <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/185438/musk-silicon-valley-tech-embrace-trump" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Jacob Silverman says</a>, Musk is “the most public face of the radicalization of America’s billionaire class”. <blockquote>Musk is not alone. He’s been joined by a raft of tech executives, venture capitalists, Wall Street financiers, and other cantankerous members of the business overclass who together reflect a political realignment that first emerged during the Trump presidency. David Sacks, a venture capitalist and, like Musk, a PayPal alumnus, is a longtime conservative who has become vocally, bitterly anti-Democratic, his <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/168125/david-sacks-elon-musk-peter-thiel" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">ascendancy</a> to the top of the tech-MAGA hierarchy symbolized by a stilted speech he delivered at this year’s Republican National Convention. Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia Capital, <a href="https://x.com/shaunmmaguire/status/1796293774794268747" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">announced</a> a $300,000 donation to Trump in May, and has been stumping hard for the ex-president on X. And this past summer, tech billionaires Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz offered their support for Trump on their podcast, citing Biden’s proposed tax on unrealized capital gains.<a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/185438/musk-silicon-valley-tech-embrace-trump" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://newrepublic.com/article/185438/musk-silicon-valley-tech-embrace-trump</a></blockquote>In the developing discourse around the tech bro fascist turn there’s been a tendency to counterpoise structural and cultural explanations: they are doing it to prevent regulation and a capital gains tax hike or they are doing it because the San Francisco has turned into a weird microclimate incubating elite neurosis. The reality is of course that structural and cultural explanations need to go together, which makes me want to dig into Silverman’s phrase “over the edge” here: <blockquote>What really sent him and his colleagues over the edge was the end of the free-money era: In 2022, the Fed started <a href="https://www.bankrate.com/investing/federal-reserve-impact-on-stocks-crypto-other-investments/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">raising</a> interest rates, and the crypto industry, which had been anchored by multibillion-dollar frauds like FTX and Terra, crashed. As the flood of easy money that had tempered the worst of the Covid-19 economic decline turned into a trickle, the economy became less forgiving to entrepreneurs risking vast quantities of other people’s money on speculative bets. The change could be seen in the seven months in 2022 between when Musk agreed to buy Twitter—and then tried to back out—and when he was sued into consummating the deal. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates four times during that period while Twitter’s stock price fluctuated, making the deal far riskier for Musk (and his lenders) by the time he finally acceded to it. What started as a very expensive troll became a $44 billion albatross.<a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/185438/musk-silicon-valley-tech-embrace-trump" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://newrepublic.com/article/185438/musk-silicon-valley-tech-embrace-trump</a></blockquote>What does it mean to go ‘over the edge’? Tech lords weren’t the only ones to lose their shit (literal definition: lose one’s <a href="https://markcarrigan.net/2023/11/20/what-does-it-mean-to-be-composed/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">composure</a>) under these circumstances. One of the stranger stories of the last couple of years, which fleetingly makes me wish I’d ended up in a media department so I could justify devoting a few months to stuff like this, has been the radicalisation of landlord TikTok. The business model of buy-to-let was predicated upon a macroeconomic environment, leading a vast tranche of deeply mediocre people to congratulate themselves for their business acumen, where in reality they were just being given access to a cash machine created by the state. Once interest rates were hiked the cash machine which they had experienced as an inviolable right no longer functioned, leaving what seems to be a non-trivial number of them fulminating about the ‘great reset’ (though obviously the algorithmic incentives of platforms will play a role in steering this reaction as well). It’s difficult to have the rug pulled out from under your feet. It’s difficult to have conditions which you assumed were necessary revealed to be utterly contingent. If we take Corey Robin’s definition of conservatism as fundamentally a counterrevolutionary impulse, a reflection on the experienced loss of power, there’s reason to think that intensifying social and cultural change (which the last decade has brought in spades) will tend to be a conservatising force. The more power you have, the more sensitive you will be to business becoming harder, even if it’s an objectively ridiculous conclusion to draw. Whereas the petite bourgeoisie might have more substance to their claims, at least a subset of billionaires have become vastly richer while simultaneously becoming more shrill about their oppression. This is made worse by the manner in which the media system which is tied up in those changes has radically accelerated the pace at which cultural reactions are catalysed and disseminated, not least of all through the loops which leave actors bound up in the consequences of their own actions. It’s a strange and potent situation which I suspect we’re only beginning to see the consequences of.<a href="https://markcarrigan.net/2024/10/13/elon-musk-2010-vs-elon-musk-2024/" class="" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://markcarrigan.net/2024/10/13/elon-musk-2010-vs-elon-musk-2024/</a><a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/digital-elites/" target="_blank">#digitalElites</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/elon-musk/" target="_blank">#elonMusk</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/far-right-2/" target="_blank">#farRight</a>

Mark CarriganFrom Billionaire, Nerd, Saviour, King by Anupreeta Das loc 4574:<blockquote>Highway 106 cut through the Alderbrook property, putting its parking lot on the other side of the road. The problem could be solved by rerouting the highway to move the lot to the same side. But that meant the Gates vacation compound, which contained five homes, was going to be split into two. To fix the problem—and avoid the prying eyes of resort visitors curious about the billionaire next door—Gates reportedly paid the State of Washington more than $2 million to have a special tunnel built under the rerouted highway to connect the compound. The project took advantage of a state law that encouraged public-private partnerships, including to “facilitate the safe transport of people or goods via any mode of travel.” It was managed by Watermark, the Gates entity that managed his personal affairs and real estate, and took about four years to complete. Although the state owns it, Watermark has exclusive use of the tunnel because an air space lease gives it right of way. Hidden by a thicket of vegetation, the tunnel is difficult to spot from the highway, but a paved, winding road hidden behind a discreet wrought-iron and wooden gate connects it to the highway. If guests of Alderbrook veer too close to the Gates property, the hotel’s security guards speedily arrive on golf carts to shoo them away.</blockquote>See also the time that it was seriously discussed whether a bridge should be dismantled in order to let Bezos’s massive phallic yacht through. From loc 4168:<blockquote>At more than 417 feet in length, Koru, the luxury schooner custom-made for Bezos, is like the average cruise ship you might see lazily skimming the surface of a river, dotted with dozens of tourists, rather than a private boat. It is so massive that a historic bridge in Rotterdam was almost dismantled to let it through, although local authorities decided against it at the last minute, deeming it too risky from the point of view of public opinion. And as if the skies and oceans weren’t enough, billionaires are increasingly pursuing private efforts to explore and even colonize space and planets and push deep-sea exploration.</blockquote><a href="https://markcarrigan.net/2024/09/24/that-time-bill-gates-paid-the-government-to-build-him-a-secret-tunnel-to-his-vacation-home/" class="" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://markcarrigan.net/2024/09/24/that-time-bill-gates-paid-the-government-to-build-him-a-secret-tunnel-to-his-vacation-home/</a><a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/bill-gates/" target="_blank">#billGates</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/digital-elites/" target="_blank">#digitalElites</a>

Mark CarriganI’ve spent the week wondering this as I <a href="https://markcarrigan.net/2024/09/01/should-other-professional-associations-leave-twitter-x/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">contemplate deleting my Twitter account</a>. There are influential people across every sector who have significant online followings who are reluctant to leave but the logic of this is complex:<ul><li>In part this is the sunk cost fallacy: a declining user base and declining engagement rates mean the utility is continually diminishing. The perceived costs of setting up elsewhere, particularly given the likely absence of a single replacement platform, buttress an unwillingness to abandon the labour they have put in. </li><li>However you still gain reputational currency from having a lot of followers. If I’m honest the main reason I didn’t delete my account last year, when I had a similar attack of revulsion at X, was so I could add to my promotion application that I had around 10k followers. No idea if it helped but I’m sure it didn’t hurt, as part of a narrative of engagement and impact.</li><li>Furthermore it remains for these people “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/07/joe-biden-x-announcement-elon-musk/679184/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">the quickest, least mediated way to inject information into the bloodstream of political and cultural discourse</a>“. For most academics this is fairly trivial but for journos and politicians with hundreds of thousands of followers, this power remains albeit in a diminished form.</li><li>Finally I think a lot of these ‘power users’ are addicted to the platform, speaking as someone who I guess is basically a recovering Twitter addict. They think in tweets, they crave the dopamine hit of virality and they need an adequate substitute before they can kick the habit. </li><li>There’s still a ‘wait and see’ mentality of people disengaging but being unwilling to actually delete the account. </li></ul>These reasons create a coordination problem. As long as there are a critical mass of influential users within a given sector, the costs of leaving are non-trivial. But the further Twitter travels along the path of turning into Gab or Parler means the social capital embedded in accounts decreases in value. There will come a point where there’s a reputational hit involved in remaining on Twitter and, if the great unravelling of the network comes, it will rapidly accelerate. But it’s disturbing how far Musk can go without this unravelling taking place. I’m less convinced than I was that the platform will fold financially, given that Musk does seem to be on track with subsuming it into the GenAI bubble. The real test will be if the bursting of the GenAI bubble goes hand-in-hand with a wider winter for the tech sector (let alone the global economy) in which case the impossible maths underpinning its commercialisation might finally kill it, particularly if the court cases prove onerous and consequentially timed. But there’s a realistic prospect that a hard core of ~200m daily active users remain, legitimated by a small digital elite of mega-influential accounts, fuelling the continued development of xAI on a platform which otherwise becomes a genuinely mainstream version of Gab or Parler. In other words I think it will either (a) fold, (b) become something even more horrific than it as present, an affectivity engine through which the far-right fuels the GAI-infused stack or (c) gradually unravel into semi-relevance while being kept afloat through Musk’s vanity. If (a) or (c) then any gains from remaining are inevitably short-term and possibly illusory when considered in terms of opportunity costs regarding time/energy invested (b) there’s a moral responsibility to get away from the platform and stop fuelling the development of this complex. So wtf haven’t I deleted my account yet!?<a href="https://markcarrigan.net/2024/09/07/why-hasnt-twitter-x-died-yet/" class="" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://markcarrigan.net/2024/09/07/why-hasnt-twitter-x-died-yet/</a><a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/digital-elites/" target="_blank">#digitalElites</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/far-right/" target="_blank">#farRight</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/generative-ai/" target="_blank">#generativeAI</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/platforms/" target="_blank">#platforms</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/twitter/" target="_blank">#twitter</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/x/" target="_blank">#X</a>

Mark CarriganWhile I see the value in exploring the ideological infrastructure supporting the authoritarian turn amongst digital elites, I think Dave Karpf is <a href="https://www.techpolicy.press/the-little-tech-agenda-is-just-selfserving-nonsense/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">right to argue</a> that the material driver is a pushback by venture capitalists, whose interests are not identical with big tech, against increasing regulation of the sector: <blockquote>This, by the way, is the main reason why so much of Silicon Valley has decided to embrace the candidacy of former President Donald Trump. It isn’t that tech leaders necessarily love incompetent authoritarians. It isn’t because they believe any of his promises. It’s that they have spent 3.5 years facing Lina Khan at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and they cannot handle answering to a competent regulator anymore.The <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/davekarpf.bsky.social/post/3kv7cupoqim2y" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">FTC published a spicy memo</a> last month, warning AI companies not to misrepresent what their services are or can do.“Your therapy bots aren’t licensed psychologists, your AI girlfriends are neither girls nor friends, your griefbots have no soul, and your AI copilots are not gods. We’ve warned companies about making false or unsubstantiated claims about AI or algorithms. And we’ve followed up with actions, including recent cases against WealthPress, DK Automation, Automaters AI, and CRI Genetics. We’ve also repeatedly advised companies – with reference to past cases – not to use automated tools to mislead people about what they’re seeing, hearing, or reading.”This is what the “Little Tech Agenda” is fighting against. They are opposed to having an FTC that prevents outright fraud. But if the government actually protects consumers, a16z’s investment portfolio may take a big hit. This is why many VCs would much prefer autocracy to accountability<a href="https://www.techpolicy.press/the-little-tech-agenda-is-just-selfserving-nonsense/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.techpolicy.press/the-little-tech-agenda-is-just-selfserving-nonsense/</a></blockquote><a href="https://markcarrigan.net/2024/07/16/why-digital-elites-are-embracing-trump/" class="" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://markcarrigan.net/2024/07/16/why-digital-elites-are-embracing-trump/</a><a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/big-tech/" target="_blank">#bigTech</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/dave-karpf/" target="_blank">#daveKarpf</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/digital-elites/" target="_blank">#digitalElites</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/platform-capitalism/" target="_blank">#platformCapitalism</a>

Mark CarriganI’m not entirely convinced by what Darian Leader is saying here in Jouissance: Sexuality, Suffering and Satisfaction but I like it nonetheless. From loc 1174:<blockquote>The father of the horde jealously guards a mass of data, purloined or taken by some kind of force from the public. And from this monopoly, acts of theft or illegitimate trade take place, allowing data to be sold and traded in the marketplace. Men like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are shown less as jealously guarding a harem of women than as amassing data on consumers, data which they can then exploit and enjoy. Data itself has come to substantialise what we are separated from and what can be stolen from us, thus giving it a sexual value.</blockquote><a href="https://markcarrigan.net/2024/05/20/a-lacanian-reading-of-digital-elites/" class="" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://markcarrigan.net/2024/05/20/a-lacanian-reading-of-digital-elites/</a><a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/darian-leader/" target="_blank">#darianLeader</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/data/" target="_blank">#data</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/digital-elites/" target="_blank">#digitalElites</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://markcarrigan.net/tag/platform-capitalism/" target="_blank">#platformCapitalism</a>

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