A masterful dissection of our networked era by the acclaimed author of Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics
In surrealist artist Paul Klee’s The Twittering Machine, the bird-song of a diabolical machine acts as bait to lure humankind into a pit of damnation. Political writer and broadcaster Richard Seymour argues that this is a chilling metaphor for relationship with social media.
Former social media executives tell us that the system is an addiction-machine. Like drug addicts, we are users, waiting for our next hit as we like, comment and share. We write to the machine as individuals, but it responds by aggregating our fantasies, desires and frailties into data, and returning them to us as a commodity experience. Through journalism, psychoanalytic reflection and interviews with users, developers, security experts and others, Seymour probes the human side of this machine, asking what we’re getting out of it, and what we’re getting into.
Praise
‘Richard Seymour has a brilliant mind and a compelling style. Everything he writes is worth reading.’
—Gary Younge, Editor-at-Large, Guardian
‘One of our most astute political analysts.’
—China Miéville, author of October: The Story of the Russian Revolution
‘A brilliant and provocative reassessment of a technology that has become apparently indispensable to modern life.’
—Daniel Trilling, editor of New Humanist and author of Lights in the Distance
‘If you really want to set yourself free you should read a book – preferably this one.’
—Observer, Book of the Week
‘A thrilling demonstration of what [resistance] can look like … everyone should read it.’
—Guardian
‘Clever, and alarming … a first tentative vision of what a neo-luddite response to our predicament might look like.’
—Spectator
‘Seymour’s compulsively argued book may just be the intervention we all need.’
—Tatler.com
Katherine Angel for The White Review, 22nd December 2020: ‘Books of the Year’
Jacobin Weekends, 12th December 2020: ‘Woke Biden Cabinet, Indian Strikes, & Social Media Industry w/ Richard Seymour’
LA Review of Books Podcast, 23rd October 2020: ‘Friending Thanatos: Richard Seymour’s The Twittering Machine’
Cristina D’Amico for Rabble, 16th January 2020: ‘Opting out of ‘digital serfdom”
Owen Hatherley for Tribune, 12th January 2020: ‘Interview with Richard Seymour’
Politics Theory Other, 1st January 2020: ‘PTO Books of the year’
Oliver Eagleton for New Left Review, 17th December 2019: ‘Mind-forged Manacles?’
Rowan Fortune for Medium, 29th November 2019: ‘Utopia & Dystopia: Online Capitalism’
Richard Seymour for New Statesman, 27th November 2019: ‘We are witnessing the end of the “Twitter Revolution”’
Mark Murphy for Rs21, 16th November 2019: ‘Review: The Twittering Machine’
Katrina Forrester for New Statesman, 13th November 2019: ‘Best books of the year 2019’
David Capener for The Irish Times, 9th November 2019: ‘Brief review of The Twittering Machine by Richard Seymour’
Richard Seymour for Financial Times, 4th November 2019: ‘How addictive social media fuels online abuse’
Richard Seymour for Guardian, 28th October 2019: ‘The right’s use of trolling is so predictable, why do we keep falling for it?’
David Streitfeld for The Times Literary Supplement, 22nd October 2019: ‘Don’t @ us: The problem with tweeting’
John Baglow for The Literary Review of Canada, 21st October 2019: ‘The Great Escape: Can we break out of our social media addiction?’
Richard Seymour for New Humanist, 14th October 2019: ‘Willing servants’
Louise Proyect for CounterPunch, 4th October 2019: ‘The Politics of Trolling’
Ian Parker for Socialist Resistance, 27th September 2019: ‘Left Hooked on Twitter’
Kiera O’Brien for The Bookseller, 2nd September 2019: ‘Books in the Media’
Emma Jacobs for Financial Times, 30th August 2019: ‘The Twittering Machine — our role in the online horror story’
Richard Seymour for Guardian, 23rd August 2019: ‘The machine always wins: what drives our addiction to social media’ (extract from The Twittering Machine)
Francesca Carington for Tatler, 21st August 2019: ‘The Best Late Summer Reads’
Will Davies for The Guardian, 8th August 2019: ‘Book of the Week’
Daniel Hahn for The Spectator, 3 August 2019: ‘The unseen enemy’
Richard Seymour for Intelligence Squared Podcast, October 2019: ‘The Social Media Addiction-Machine, with Richard Seymour and Jamie Bartlett’
Richard Seymour for Horror Vanguard Podcas, October 2019t: ‘HV Interviews Richard Seymour Author of The Twittering Machine’
Richard Seymour for New Books in Critical Theory Podcast, December 2020: ‘Richard Seymour, “The Twittering Machine” (Verso, 2020)
Richard Seymour for Intelligence Squared Podcast, July 2021: ‘The Truth about Fake News, with Marcus Gilroy-Ware and Richard Seymour
Richard Seymour for Zer0 Books and Repeater Media Podcast, April 2022: ‘The Lacanian Left, Self-Help, and the Family feat. Richard Seymour’
Richard Seymour for The Weekend University Podcast, July 2022: ‘The Social Media Addiction Machine – Dr Richard Seymour, PhD’
Richard Seymour for Novara Media, December 2022: ‘Downstream: Twitter’s Toxic Downfall w/ Richard Seymour’
Richard Seymour for The Guardian, 22nd November: ‘Elon Musk never cared if Twitter was a business failure – he wants a political win’