Interesting review here of Antisocial by Andrew Marantz. Surely one of the vicious books of the season.
So now Andrew Marantz tacked to a new course, and homed in on an irresistibly rancid subject: the viral meme as the seducer and assassin of youth. In Antisocial, he illustrates this notion through two extended case studies. One of them is factual, with actual, verifiable people; the other is so cliché-ridden and evasive that I initially took it to be a fictional composite. The “real” example is an intellectually omnivorous male person who worked in Web development, made podcasts, and gradually migrated from libertarian politics to the Far Right. The other example tells about a young woman in her 20s who was supposedly exposed to racialist politics through her boyfriend, and soon tumbled headlong into the Right-wing rabbithole.
So now Andrew Marantz tacked to a new course, and homed in on an irresistibly rancid subject: the viral meme as the seducer and assassin of youth. In Antisocial, he illustrates this notion through two extended case studies. One of them is factual, with actual, verifiable people; the other is so cliché-ridden and evasive that I initially took it to be a fictional composite. The “real” example is an intellectually omnivorous male person who worked in Web development, made podcasts, and gradually migrated from libertarian politics to the Far Right. The other example tells about a young woman in her 20s who was supposedly exposed to racialist politics through her boyfriend, and soon tumbled headlong into the Right-wing rabbithole.
