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!
I enjoyed this. My main takeaway is that doing social research in the mid-20th C must have been wild. Is it reliable? Don't know! Is it ethical? Who cares! Does it look like a right laugh? Potentially, let's gooooo.
NEW: When Propecy Fails is one of the most famous social psychology books of all time, a look at a small group of UFO believers when the “spacemen” failed to land. I wrote about a new study from an independent researcher who says the book is not what it seems. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
It’s one of the most influential social psychology studies ever. Was it all a lie?
A classic book on UFO believers and their "cognitive dissonance" after aliens failed to land is called into question.
www.motherjones.com
November 25, 2025 at 1:36 PM
I enjoyed this. My main takeaway is that doing social research in the mid-20th C must have been wild. Is it reliable? Don't know! Is it ethical? Who cares! Does it look like a right laugh? Potentially, let's gooooo.
Forget AI, the fact they knowingly broke search in order to put more adverts in front of you, and that you can see this happening every time you use it, is one of the most maddening things to have happened to the internet in recent years.
Google at its peak was basically the best information retrieval system in human history and they and every competitor decided going from there to “you didn’t want answers you wanted half-assed auto-complete 80%-wrong hallucinations” in a few years was the right idea
November 25, 2025 at 12:10 PM
Forget AI, the fact they knowingly broke search in order to put more adverts in front of you, and that you can see this happening every time you use it, is one of the most maddening things to have happened to the internet in recent years.
Jesus fucking Christ.
November 22, 2025 at 12:59 PM
Jesus fucking Christ.
Terrible "I told you so" moment, but I was involved in Sussex student protests c. 2011. Fees were the backdrop, but also campus specific frustrations about shutting the crèche, shunting uni staff like cleaners on to private contracts.
And I’ll tell you what else: it’d be nice if anyone now recognising they have absolutely fucked it for two decades would at least drop a little “I’m sorry” for e.g. the student protesters of 2011, who they spoke about like they were orcs, zombies and morons even though they were entirely correct.
November 22, 2025 at 10:43 AM
Terrible "I told you so" moment, but I was involved in Sussex student protests c. 2011. Fees were the backdrop, but also campus specific frustrations about shutting the crèche, shunting uni staff like cleaners on to private contracts.
I do think with Me Too society sort of reached a brief moment of realisation at how baked in sexual misconduct was to almost everything, and panicked at how difficult it would be to undo.
November 20, 2025 at 12:57 PM
I do think with Me Too society sort of reached a brief moment of realisation at how baked in sexual misconduct was to almost everything, and panicked at how difficult it would be to undo.
I do wonder if this is the logical end point of corporate-controlled participatory culture.
November 18, 2025 at 12:46 PM
I do wonder if this is the logical end point of corporate-controlled participatory culture.
Moral hazard (x1000) is the only thing in the AI business plan that makes any sort of sense at this point.
WSJ: “.. If the AI market blows up, the blast radius would be wide, hitting not only Wall Street firms, but also pensions, mutual and exchange-traded funds and individual investors, because of how debt is often sliced and resold across the financial landscape.”
@wsj.com
www.wsj.com/finance/inve...
@wsj.com
www.wsj.com/finance/inve...
November 18, 2025 at 12:02 PM
Moral hazard (x1000) is the only thing in the AI business plan that makes any sort of sense at this point.
Reposted by Ben Litherland
women are always saying “lord grant me the confidence of a mediocre man.” ok well he did. now what. is the world a better place? look at what you’ve wrought.
Olivia Nuzzi's 'American Canto': Read the Exclusive Excerpt
She flamed out and she faded away. 'Vanity Fair'’s West Coast Editor returns to the written word to survey scorched earth.
www.vanityfair.com
November 17, 2025 at 3:46 PM
women are always saying “lord grant me the confidence of a mediocre man.” ok well he did. now what. is the world a better place? look at what you’ve wrought.
I am only saying pronouncing the show Pluribus with the One.
November 16, 2025 at 12:56 PM
I am only saying pronouncing the show Pluribus with the One.
Saw someone use "woke" to describe a new bakery near me because they serve matcha. I never thought I'd miss the days of "politically correct", "health and safety", and "hipster" but they look like a rich political-cultural lexicon these days.
November 14, 2025 at 12:26 PM
Saw someone use "woke" to describe a new bakery near me because they serve matcha. I never thought I'd miss the days of "politically correct", "health and safety", and "hipster" but they look like a rich political-cultural lexicon these days.
Reposted by Ben Litherland
Well, it's a little clearer now why billionaires are so invested in technology that produces better written emails.
November 12, 2025 at 10:23 PM
Well, it's a little clearer now why billionaires are so invested in technology that produces better written emails.
Wouldn't it be super awkward if there was a decade long conspiracy theory underpinning all Western public life that a secret cabal of powerful nonces covering up sexual abuse and that Donald Trump's sole purpose in life was to stop that.
November 12, 2025 at 10:12 PM
Wouldn't it be super awkward if there was a decade long conspiracy theory underpinning all Western public life that a secret cabal of powerful nonces covering up sexual abuse and that Donald Trump's sole purpose in life was to stop that.
I know there are a billion people making this point, but the entire global stock market is currently being held up by the promises of Sam Altman and Elon Musk. And those promises are lightyears away from the reality of the tech that all of us are being forced to use.
November 12, 2025 at 10:50 AM
I know there are a billion people making this point, but the entire global stock market is currently being held up by the promises of Sam Altman and Elon Musk. And those promises are lightyears away from the reality of the tech that all of us are being forced to use.
It would be the most Labour 2025 thing to do to oust Starmer and replace him with an even more boring and reactionary piece of shit.
November 12, 2025 at 10:07 AM
It would be the most Labour 2025 thing to do to oust Starmer and replace him with an even more boring and reactionary piece of shit.
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.