Benjamin Woo
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geekworlds.bsky.social
Benjamin Woo
@geekworlds.bsky.social
Assoc. Professor of Communication and Media Studies, Carleton University. Studying comic cons and festivals as interfaces between media industries and fan communities. Reading comics, playing TTRPGs, cooking Chinese food. #CatDad
Reposted by Benjamin Woo
If you are a researcher who happens to know other researchers who study Reddit/use Reddit data, I beg of you to please send them this paper.

dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1...
Remember the Human: A Systematic Review of Ethical Considerations in Reddit Research | Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
Reddit is one of the world's most prominent social media platforms, and also a valuable source of data for internet researchers. However, working with this kind of data also presents novel ethical com...
dl.acm.org
November 11, 2025 at 3:26 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Woo
no amount of state propaganda will ever convince me this man is my enemy
I for one will welcome our Chinese overlords #Beerjacket #China #Tsingtao
November 9, 2025 at 3:05 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Woo
WHAT'S up YouTube, it's your boy Bartleby the Scrivener here, coming at you for another day of the I Would Prefer Not To challenge. Be sure to SMASH that subscribe button and hit that bell so you don't miss a single video. If you saw last week's video, you'll know I am now SLEEPING in the office.
Bartleby the Scrivener logging on for another day of bullshit
November 7, 2025 at 10:54 AM
Reposted by Benjamin Woo
congrats to everyone for thinking this through before signing very big contracts to put it on every student’s device at the school or university you run
OVER A MILLION USERS

DISCUSS SUICIDE WITH CHATGPT

EVERY *WEEK*

what the fuck are we DOING here
Panera’s moderately caffeinated lemonade was loosely associated with 2 deaths before it was taken off market.

This article alone has 4 examples of ChatGPT encouraging young people to commit suicide, and OpenAI’s own public stats estimate over a million users discuss suicide with ChatGPT each week.
November 7, 2025 at 11:24 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Woo
New book ⬇️⬇️⬇️

The Routledge Handbook of Fan Video and Digital Authorship

Edited By Louisa Ellen Stein, Samantha Close

#FanStudies

www.routledge.com/The-Routledg...
The Routledge Handbook of Fan Video and Digital Authorship
This cutting-edge collection explores the histories, aesthetics, and cultural work of fan video across a wide variety of manifestations and genres. Editors Louisa Ellen Stein and Samantha Close have a...
www.routledge.com
October 3, 2025 at 10:49 AM
Perusing the most important resources in the library at the Université Bordeaux Montaigne.
November 7, 2025 at 2:44 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Woo
Next week, I'm heading to the UK to give a workshop for academic staff and students at the University of the Arts London's Comics Research Hub and then keynote this year's Comics Forum conference in Leeds. comicsforum.org/comics-forum...
Comics Forum 2025
13-14 November | Leeds Art Gallery and Central Library (UK) When David Kunzle asserted in his 1973 magnum opus The Early Comic Strip, that it was by definition ‘a mass medium,’ he pointed to comics…
comicsforum.org
November 6, 2025 at 9:45 AM
Reposted by Benjamin Woo
someone got indicted on the basis of “transporting antifa materials” for allegedly transporting a box of ZINES

THEY’RE PROSECUTING PEOPLE FOR DOMESTIC TERRORISM OVER ZINES
Alarming criminalization of green card holder based on "Antifa Materials" - another attempt to silence dissent and target people critical of this administration

Release Des and the Prairieland Defendants!
November 6, 2025 at 5:16 AM
Next week, I'm heading to the UK to give a workshop for academic staff and students at the University of the Arts London's Comics Research Hub and then keynote this year's Comics Forum conference in Leeds. comicsforum.org/comics-forum...
Comics Forum 2025
13-14 November | Leeds Art Gallery and Central Library (UK) When David Kunzle asserted in his 1973 magnum opus The Early Comic Strip, that it was by definition ‘a mass medium,’ he pointed to comics…
comicsforum.org
November 6, 2025 at 9:45 AM
Reposted by Benjamin Woo
I hadn’t considered this particular flavor of AI hell and now I’m mad all over again
I spotted this on Mastodon and I find it horrible, not least for the speed with which this has happened.
November 4, 2025 at 3:20 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Woo
It's pretty cool that the US economy is propped up entirely by continuing work on software thats only real functional uses are eroding consensus reality, spreading often politically motivated misinformation, and for various scams like impersonating your grandma and saying she's been kidnapped
October 31, 2025 at 8:11 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Woo
Revising my figures from yesterday’s posts re: restrictions / bans in schools for #comics over the past 4 years, based on @penamerica.bsky.social data.

The trend I reported yesterday remains true, but these numbers are more accurate.

#libcomix #libraries #censorship

1/
October 30, 2025 at 12:38 AM
Reposted by Benjamin Woo
Call for Papers: Companion to International Comics Studies (Intellect Books)
DETAILED CALL: www.intellectbooks.com/asset/2865/c...
Edited by Julia Round, Shambhavi Singh and Eszter Szép
Deadline for proposals: 31 Jan 2026
October 29, 2025 at 8:29 AM
Reposted by Benjamin Woo
right to repair, but for all the relationships and trust you broke while surveilling your friends with your glasses
October 27, 2025 at 7:58 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Woo
Home builders guild debuts partnership with Big Arson.

“The 55 attendees started the morning by reading aloud a mission statement for the new academy that vows to lead the ‘safe, fair’ use of AI and ‘keep the human side of teaching strong.’”
Teachers union debuts AI training partnership with Big Tech
The $23 million effort aims to help teachers boost efficiency, but also prompts concerns
gothamist.com
October 23, 2025 at 6:53 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Woo
🎨 The Conundrum Press MiniComic Bursary for Black and Indigenous Creators is now open for submissions!

(continued...)
October 22, 2025 at 1:28 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Woo
All these people avoiding m-dashes because “AI uses them” simply means that there’s more for me!
October 21, 2025 at 5:01 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Woo
We also just like to pretend it‘s over as if you can’t still get the virus or people aren’t suffering from Long Covid. There have been no memorials. It‘s interesting that TV shows have had main characters with lasting Covid trauma - but usually it‘s medical professionals (Doctor Odyssee, The Pitt).
there’s a thread on reddit right now called “was COVID really that bad?” and it is interesting to read people’s accounts five years out

there seems to be a collective trauma response where people (outside of healthcare workers) don’t remember how many people died

someone called it anticlimactic
October 19, 2025 at 9:20 AM
Reposted by Benjamin Woo
We should avoid giving airborne diseases to each other
Do you have any extremely niche, but serious, ethical stances?
October 18, 2025 at 4:31 AM
Commonwealth countries:
October 18, 2025 at 3:05 PM
How pathetic that the venture capitalists have, in an act of self-deception necessary to justify their parasitic relation to productive labour, convinced themselves that “having an idea” is the same as being creative.
It’s tiresome at this point, but again, their entire pitch is “wouldn’t it be great if there were no such things as talent, craft, and skill,” and what that means is a bland, slop-filled world. www.businessinsider.com/marc-andrees...
October 17, 2025 at 8:33 PM
Badges badges badges badges
October 17, 2025 at 6:25 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Woo
Peak Beaverton right here. Well played.
October 16, 2025 at 5:27 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Woo
Neurologically speaking, there's no such thing as 'useless' subjects or 'rip-off' degrees

Insisting we should only teach useful subjects is like saying science should only do research that gives positive results

If you honestly believe that's how anything works, *your* education was the wasted one
October 15, 2025 at 9:27 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Woo
The NBC Asian America crew regularly covered so many of my films, comics, and books over the years. One of the very few big, mainstream venues to give a damn. This is a kick in the teeth.
October 15, 2025 at 9:45 PM