Ben Litherland
@benlitherland.bsky.social
Popular culture and politics.
Sometimes academic who writes about those things.
Co-hosts Ill Effects, good podcast about bad media influence https://open.spotify.com/show/0QotQZhgYQOsjCvGMefNjl?si=zRsbRad6SZO
Sometimes academic who writes about those things.
Co-hosts Ill Effects, good podcast about bad media influence https://open.spotify.com/show/0QotQZhgYQOsjCvGMefNjl?si=zRsbRad6SZO
Pinned
Ben Litherland
@benlitherland.bsky.social
· Apr 22
“Screen Time” Must Die!
open.spotify.com
Listen to series 2 of Ill Effects, our podcast exploring the past and present of media influence and effects.
An ongoing list of episode.
Episode one: Screen Time Must Die!
An ongoing list of episode.
Episode one: Screen Time Must Die!
Reposted by Ben Litherland
You can also check out Benjamin Litherland’s podcast about it: open.spotify.com/episode/16jI...
@benlitherland.bsky.social
@benlitherland.bsky.social
November 6, 2025 at 1:04 PM
You can also check out Benjamin Litherland’s podcast about it: open.spotify.com/episode/16jI...
@benlitherland.bsky.social
@benlitherland.bsky.social
Reposted by Ben Litherland
Have you read our 28.6 issue yet?
Follow the thread to know more about the articles 🧵
Follow the thread to know more about the articles 🧵
November 6, 2025 at 1:00 PM
Have you read our 28.6 issue yet?
Follow the thread to know more about the articles 🧵
Follow the thread to know more about the articles 🧵
My article assessing some of the overly celebratory discourses about the positive effects of media now has an issue number. 🙂
This paper identifies a powerful discourse that popular culture is beneficial and makes us ‘smarter’, ‘better’, ‘faster’ or ‘kinder’, examining its politics in the online press.
Read the full article here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
@benlitherland.bsky.social
Read the full article here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
@benlitherland.bsky.social
November 6, 2025 at 1:04 PM
My article assessing some of the overly celebratory discourses about the positive effects of media now has an issue number. 🙂
Reposted by Ben Litherland
There seriously needs to be a study about how the everyday life friction of increased grift and enshittification in every aspect of life weighs on people’s institutional trust and what effects they may have on political attitudes and participation.
The whole of the internet is now run on the things that would have not made it past your email junk filter 20 years ago.
Meta earns $3.5 billion every six months from showing Faceboon and Instagram users 15 billion “higher legal risk” scam ad impressions a day, internal documents state.
That haul vastly exceeds how much the company expects regulators
To fine it for running scam ads.
www.reuters.com/investigatio...
That haul vastly exceeds how much the company expects regulators
To fine it for running scam ads.
www.reuters.com/investigatio...
November 6, 2025 at 12:34 PM
There seriously needs to be a study about how the everyday life friction of increased grift and enshittification in every aspect of life weighs on people’s institutional trust and what effects they may have on political attitudes and participation.
The whole of the internet is now run on the things that would have not made it past your email junk filter 20 years ago.
Meta earns $3.5 billion every six months from showing Faceboon and Instagram users 15 billion “higher legal risk” scam ad impressions a day, internal documents state.
That haul vastly exceeds how much the company expects regulators
To fine it for running scam ads.
www.reuters.com/investigatio...
That haul vastly exceeds how much the company expects regulators
To fine it for running scam ads.
www.reuters.com/investigatio...
www.reuters.com
November 6, 2025 at 12:10 PM
The whole of the internet is now run on the things that would have not made it past your email junk filter 20 years ago.
Can someone come and collect Psychology, they're trying to do sociotechnology again.
November 4, 2025 at 9:46 AM
Can someone come and collect Psychology, they're trying to do sociotechnology again.
This is grim at the best of times, but a writer full of so much humanity and soul and wisdom and a product of a very particular society and history. Just horrific.
James Baldwin parceled out into AI-selected therapeutic memes, stylized via a typewriter interface: the “people-centered” AI future made possible through $500M in philanthropic funding. Without such technological advancement, we’d have no other means of accessing Baldwin quotations!
Can the James Baldwin Typebot Tell Us the Meaning of Life?
www.nytimes.com
November 2, 2025 at 9:53 PM
This is grim at the best of times, but a writer full of so much humanity and soul and wisdom and a product of a very particular society and history. Just horrific.
Every single interview in this piece.
November 1, 2025 at 9:23 AM
Every single interview in this piece.
Can't think of a more relevant tweet for this prick.
November 1, 2025 at 8:20 AM
Can't think of a more relevant tweet for this prick.
Watching a Rolling Stones concert and Mick Jagger is wearing a shirt with a swastika on and apologised if the show is low energy because they were up all night fucking. I guess they don't make them like they used to, but in a good way?
November 1, 2025 at 8:17 AM
Watching a Rolling Stones concert and Mick Jagger is wearing a shirt with a swastika on and apologised if the show is low energy because they were up all night fucking. I guess they don't make them like they used to, but in a good way?
I appreciated the discussion about the phrase "pregnant barefoot in the kitchen" on @annieknk.bsky.social's new pod. I do the cooking and I'm clumsy and regularly spill hot food on my slippers, and cooking barefoot always seemed like a serious health and safety concern regardless of ideology.
October 31, 2025 at 2:28 PM
I appreciated the discussion about the phrase "pregnant barefoot in the kitchen" on @annieknk.bsky.social's new pod. I do the cooking and I'm clumsy and regularly spill hot food on my slippers, and cooking barefoot always seemed like a serious health and safety concern regardless of ideology.
I watched this yesterday, and think the dynamic of younger woman who runs community stuff with empathy and kindness, downtrodden younger people annoyed with racist family members, and angry old man showing you YouTube clips and predicting civil war very accurately captures UK demographics.
The Welsh town that saw off Nigel Farage | Anywhere but Westminster
YouTube video by The Guardian
youtu.be
October 30, 2025 at 10:24 AM
I watched this yesterday, and think the dynamic of younger woman who runs community stuff with empathy and kindness, downtrodden younger people annoyed with racist family members, and angry old man showing you YouTube clips and predicting civil war very accurately captures UK demographics.
There's certain parts of the discipline where having a political-science degree might make it harder to understand that, actually.
“You don’t need a political-science degree to understand why having wealthy individuals cutting secret checks to the president to pay the military is a bad idea,” @dgraham.bsky.social argues in The Atlantic Daily.
A Donor-Funded Army Wouldn’t Just Be Illegal—It Would be Dangerous
You don’t need a political-science degree to understand why wealthy individuals cutting secret checks to the president to pay the military is a bad idea.
bit.ly
October 28, 2025 at 9:32 PM
There's certain parts of the discipline where having a political-science degree might make it harder to understand that, actually.
I do wonder if this sort of reporting about "AI psychosis" is as much about how OpenAI wants you to think about the power of chatgpt than any meaningful, widespread relationship users have with the software.
OpenAI Says Hundreds of Thousands of ChatGPT Users May Show Signs of Manic or Psychotic Crisis Every Week
OpenAI says hundreds of thousands of ChatGPT users may show signs of manic or psychotic crisis every week.
www.wired.com
October 28, 2025 at 4:51 PM
I do wonder if this sort of reporting about "AI psychosis" is as much about how OpenAI wants you to think about the power of chatgpt than any meaningful, widespread relationship users have with the software.
Just skimmed an article from 2013 on social media that opens with the story about Time naming You as person of the year, what a blast from the past.
October 28, 2025 at 4:11 PM
Just skimmed an article from 2013 on social media that opens with the story about Time naming You as person of the year, what a blast from the past.
Remember when the American right lost their shit about confederate statues being removed and all of a sudden historical preservation was the most important thing in global politics.
By proceeding with the demolition of the White House East Wing before seeking approval from federal agencies for a new ballroom, President Donald Trump forced the issue. It's a strategy known as "stake-driving."
How Trump Demolished the White House East Wing
By putting the demolition of the East Wing before the necessary approvals for his ballroom, President Donald Trump borrowed a tactic known as “stake-driving” to force an outcome.
bloom.bg
October 26, 2025 at 4:39 PM
Remember when the American right lost their shit about confederate statues being removed and all of a sudden historical preservation was the most important thing in global politics.
Someone has dumped a fascinating and provocative conceptual art piece at the bottom of my street.
October 23, 2025 at 4:27 PM
Someone has dumped a fascinating and provocative conceptual art piece at the bottom of my street.
I can't think of a more depressing cultural future than the one tech-Hollywood wants us to have. Fiddling with the library of 20th C creative works with AI for the rest of time. Jesus.
October 23, 2025 at 10:44 AM
I can't think of a more depressing cultural future than the one tech-Hollywood wants us to have. Fiddling with the library of 20th C creative works with AI for the rest of time. Jesus.
Reposted by Ben Litherland
Realising that Kemi Badenoch, a woman who claims she's extremely busy and loves detail, put out a statement denying that she'd read her own parties draft mass deportations bill and slowly going mad.
October 22, 2025 at 8:31 PM
Realising that Kemi Badenoch, a woman who claims she's extremely busy and loves detail, put out a statement denying that she'd read her own parties draft mass deportations bill and slowly going mad.
I suppose the Manchester Pride shit show is the counterweight argument to a lot of the "Manchester miracle" discourse knocking about. Beloved cultural institution run into the ground due to commercialisation, greed, and pathological desire for growth at all costs.
October 22, 2025 at 6:05 PM
I suppose the Manchester Pride shit show is the counterweight argument to a lot of the "Manchester miracle" discourse knocking about. Beloved cultural institution run into the ground due to commercialisation, greed, and pathological desire for growth at all costs.
The politics are rancid, but misses the point that Reform/Farage are only popular because they get to be "anti-immigration" without ever really spelling out what that means. They're an empty signifier that a thousand positions can be projected.
Here Lam explicitly sets out her proposal - which is official Conservative Party policy - to deport long-standing legal permanent residents who have *ever* claimed any benefit, including the state pension or child benefit (even if the child is British), or who earn less than £39K.
October 22, 2025 at 10:17 AM
The politics are rancid, but misses the point that Reform/Farage are only popular because they get to be "anti-immigration" without ever really spelling out what that means. They're an empty signifier that a thousand positions can be projected.
I am desperate to hear further details about this man's political biography. Libertarian (drugs) in college. Pacifist around the Iraq war. Communist around Occupy Wall Street. Nazi ????? Liberal again.
i actually don’t think the “average” american millennial man had a nazi phase. it’s not some boys will be boys shit. this makes me side eye you and your friend group, sounds like a personal problem
October 21, 2025 at 4:32 PM
I am desperate to hear further details about this man's political biography. Libertarian (drugs) in college. Pacifist around the Iraq war. Communist around Occupy Wall Street. Nazi ????? Liberal again.
This sums up how academia has operated for my whole career (and presumably a fair bit before that). Goodhart's law + universities responding to policy in obvious ways before government goes "no, not like that". Well like what then?
If the government don't want us to behave like this then rather than having a bureaucracy whose job is to constantly monitor (and I agree with OP this is inevitably gonna just lead to nonsense metric chasing since that's always how that works out) they could just not create these incentives 🤷
October 21, 2025 at 7:49 AM
This sums up how academia has operated for my whole career (and presumably a fair bit before that). Goodhart's law + universities responding to policy in obvious ways before government goes "no, not like that". Well like what then?
I can't remember if I properly promoted this before I went on pat leave, so if not here is our chat on Tate, the manosphere, and "influence".
Andrew Tate and the Problem with Men
open.spotify.com
October 21, 2025 at 7:41 AM
I can't remember if I properly promoted this before I went on pat leave, so if not here is our chat on Tate, the manosphere, and "influence".