Such a tragic outcome for this young man - and what a wonderful expose of the hideous enjoyment of digital (and, one suspects, actual 'real-world') mobbing. The essay puts me in mind of of a remark made by Adam Phillips, I think in his essay on "The Manicuring of Jacques Lacan"; it strikes me as highly pertinent to this young academic's plight: "How complicated can we allow someone to be before we stop trusting them?" In the age of algorithmically-enhanced mob-'jouissance', it would seem that the answer is, "Not in the slightest degree." Thank you for a wonderful and moving essay, Dr. Evans.
The title of Adam Phillips's essay does indeed seem apt. Digital persecution is itself a form of manicuring by mutilation: an ambiguous and complicated person is reduced to a few inconsistencies, those inconsistencies are made to signify an essence, and that manufactured essence is then declared unworthy of trust. Phillips's question exposes the scarcely acknowledged premise of the mob: that contradiction is evidence of fraud, rather than one of the ordinary conditions of being a person.
Thank you Peter. That Phillips line is extraordinarily apt. Perhaps one of the cruellest features of the digital mob is precisely its intolerance of complication: a human being must become a type, and once the type has been established, everything that follows can be enjoyed as confirmation. “Algorithmically-enhanced mob jouissance” is exactly right.
Such a tragic outcome for this young man - and what a wonderful expose of the hideous enjoyment of digital (and, one suspects, actual 'real-world') mobbing. The essay puts me in mind of of a remark made by Adam Phillips, I think in his essay on "The Manicuring of Jacques Lacan"; it strikes me as highly pertinent to this young academic's plight: "How complicated can we allow someone to be before we stop trusting them?" In the age of algorithmically-enhanced mob-'jouissance', it would seem that the answer is, "Not in the slightest degree." Thank you for a wonderful and moving essay, Dr. Evans.
The title of Adam Phillips's essay does indeed seem apt. Digital persecution is itself a form of manicuring by mutilation: an ambiguous and complicated person is reduced to a few inconsistencies, those inconsistencies are made to signify an essence, and that manufactured essence is then declared unworthy of trust. Phillips's question exposes the scarcely acknowledged premise of the mob: that contradiction is evidence of fraud, rather than one of the ordinary conditions of being a person.
Thank you Peter. That Phillips line is extraordinarily apt. Perhaps one of the cruellest features of the digital mob is precisely its intolerance of complication: a human being must become a type, and once the type has been established, everything that follows can be enjoyed as confirmation. “Algorithmically-enhanced mob jouissance” is exactly right.