Matt Seybold
@mattseybold.bsky.social
American Vandal Pod | Prof of AmLit & Twain Studies + Director of Media Studies, Elmira College | Resident Scholar @MarkTwain.bsky.social | Political Economy of Mass Media
TheAmericanVandal.substack.com
MattSeybold.com
buymeacoffee.com/americanvandalpod
TheAmericanVandal.substack.com
MattSeybold.com
buymeacoffee.com/americanvandalpod
Pinned
Matt Seybold
@mattseybold.bsky.social
· Jun 20
Against Technofeudal Education
Pillars For Protecting Our "Core Infrastructure" From OpenAI
theamericanvandal.substack.com
“The logical conclusion of a technofeudal oligarchy combining forces with an authoritarian political movement is compulsory enrollment in the security state’s platform architecture of surveillance, indoctrination, and behavioral modification.”
My dad, Don Seybold, has died.
Made jazz radio across six decades; jazz presenter & agent; at 60, started teaching jazz history.
So charismatic, he excelled at sales, politics, seduction, storytelling.
He used it to promote other people’s art.
Life tested his ethics many times. He always passed.
Made jazz radio across six decades; jazz presenter & agent; at 60, started teaching jazz history.
So charismatic, he excelled at sales, politics, seduction, storytelling.
He used it to promote other people’s art.
Life tested his ethics many times. He always passed.
November 26, 2025 at 4:30 PM
My dad, Don Seybold, has died.
Made jazz radio across six decades; jazz presenter & agent; at 60, started teaching jazz history.
So charismatic, he excelled at sales, politics, seduction, storytelling.
He used it to promote other people’s art.
Life tested his ethics many times. He always passed.
Made jazz radio across six decades; jazz presenter & agent; at 60, started teaching jazz history.
So charismatic, he excelled at sales, politics, seduction, storytelling.
He used it to promote other people’s art.
Life tested his ethics many times. He always passed.
Reposted by Matt Seybold
Chicago!
1 week from today!
InterCcECT miniseminar w @mattseybold.bsky.social on technofeudalism, neofeudalism, periodization,+whether anything is new in the contemporary mode of accumulation.
to start an InterCcECT satellite in your town ping for the handbook!
interccect.com/2025/11/02/s...
1 week from today!
InterCcECT miniseminar w @mattseybold.bsky.social on technofeudalism, neofeudalism, periodization,+whether anything is new in the contemporary mode of accumulation.
to start an InterCcECT satellite in your town ping for the handbook!
interccect.com/2025/11/02/s...
Serfs Up
Is too-late capitalism evolving a new mode of production? A new mode of accumulation? Or just a new political and ideological dispensation of the main forces and relations that have defined moderni…
interccect.com
November 26, 2025 at 3:18 PM
Chicago!
1 week from today!
InterCcECT miniseminar w @mattseybold.bsky.social on technofeudalism, neofeudalism, periodization,+whether anything is new in the contemporary mode of accumulation.
to start an InterCcECT satellite in your town ping for the handbook!
interccect.com/2025/11/02/s...
1 week from today!
InterCcECT miniseminar w @mattseybold.bsky.social on technofeudalism, neofeudalism, periodization,+whether anything is new in the contemporary mode of accumulation.
to start an InterCcECT satellite in your town ping for the handbook!
interccect.com/2025/11/02/s...
Reposted by Matt Seybold
one of the coolest things about ChatGPT is how you can actually just never use it. you can fill your whole entire life with simply not once using it. it's incredible.
November 25, 2025 at 4:15 PM
one of the coolest things about ChatGPT is how you can actually just never use it. you can fill your whole entire life with simply not once using it. it's incredible.
Reposted by Matt Seybold
Most folks probably recognize that Intuit also donated $1M to Trump's inauguration, which might've had something to do with the administration's recent closure of Direct File, a free tax-filing service created by 18F and USDS — the highly skilled, productive gov't org's eviscerated by DOGE
November 19, 2025 at 3:53 AM
Most folks probably recognize that Intuit also donated $1M to Trump's inauguration, which might've had something to do with the administration's recent closure of Direct File, a free tax-filing service created by 18F and USDS — the highly skilled, productive gov't org's eviscerated by DOGE
Reposted by Matt Seybold
I wrote about what Marjorie Taylor Greene gets right (the Trump administration has failed), what she gets wrong (basically everything else) and what her resignation says about the future of the GOP newrepublic.com/article/2036...
Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Playing the Long Game
The resigning Georgia congresswoman understands something that other Republicans don’t.
newrepublic.com
November 25, 2025 at 1:52 PM
I wrote about what Marjorie Taylor Greene gets right (the Trump administration has failed), what she gets wrong (basically everything else) and what her resignation says about the future of the GOP newrepublic.com/article/2036...
Reposted by Matt Seybold
Unfortunately, print is not always a rent strike, @mattseybold.bsky.social. 😫
The state is demanding printed (yes *printed*) syllabi for every undergrad course at a public university in an effort to censor & control curriculum in accordance with hard right values. That's likely to require over 2 million pieces of paper, which is somehow not understood to be wasteful.
Florida DOGE seeks information on every course taught at universities
ORLANDO, Fla. — Florida’s DOGE team has asked state universities to turn over data on every undergraduate course offered at the 12 schools, including the syllabus and names of faculty
www.union-bulletin.com
November 24, 2025 at 10:23 PM
Unfortunately, print is not always a rent strike, @mattseybold.bsky.social. 😫
Reposted by Matt Seybold
An engaging, provocative, conversation between @mattseybold.bsky.social, @whitneytrettien.bsky.social & @cnewf.bsky.social on research and teaching in the age of AI. The question of AI democratization yields contrasting views of humanities' future. theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/criticism-...
Criticism & The Chatbot Bubble (Vandal Live at UPenn English)
with Christopher Newfield & Whitney Trettien
theamericanvandal.substack.com
November 24, 2025 at 5:30 PM
An engaging, provocative, conversation between @mattseybold.bsky.social, @whitneytrettien.bsky.social & @cnewf.bsky.social on research and teaching in the age of AI. The question of AI democratization yields contrasting views of humanities' future. theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/criticism-...
Reposted by Matt Seybold
The official poverty line is mid$30k, but what if it’s actually $140k, as this piece argues?
"The Valley of Death: Why $100,000 Is the New Poor
Once I established that $136,500 is the real break-even point, I ran the numbers on what happens to a family climbing the ladder toward that number"
interesting analysis:
www.yesigiveafig.com/p/part-1-my-...
Once I established that $136,500 is the real break-even point, I ran the numbers on what happens to a family climbing the ladder toward that number"
interesting analysis:
www.yesigiveafig.com/p/part-1-my-...
Part 1: My Life Is a Lie
How a Broken Benchmark Quietly Broke America
www.yesigiveafig.com
November 24, 2025 at 12:41 PM
The official poverty line is mid$30k, but what if it’s actually $140k, as this piece argues?
Reposted by Matt Seybold
I finally watched this. The data and the tech are horrifying. @drtanksley.bsky.social’s research and pedagogy, however, are incredible — themselves a reminder of how GREAT great scholarship is. Just so, so good. Truly, everyone pls watch this — to learn about the bad and to be reminded of the good.
I need everyone, esp anyone working in education or tech (but really everyone) to WATCH THIS CLIP of @drtanksley.bsky.social discussing the technologies infiltrating our schools & psyches and how she is addressing it with our young people. youtu.be/5mtcSL4S3HQ
Howard University AI Panel
YouTube video by Tiera Tanksley
youtu.be
November 23, 2025 at 2:35 PM
I finally watched this. The data and the tech are horrifying. @drtanksley.bsky.social’s research and pedagogy, however, are incredible — themselves a reminder of how GREAT great scholarship is. Just so, so good. Truly, everyone pls watch this — to learn about the bad and to be reminded of the good.
Reposted by Matt Seybold
I once knew a Federal bank examiner, and one time someone asked him why we had to KEEP inspecting banks over and over. He basically said every new batch of business school grads invents bank fraud from first principles.
AirBnB CEO calling it “vibe revenue” just 👨🍳 😘
The underlying cause of every bubble - debt masquerading as financial innovation - depends on not just short financial memory & speculative neophytism, but reinventing jargon of finance, like how each generation of kids has new ways to say same things.
The underlying cause of every bubble - debt masquerading as financial innovation - depends on not just short financial memory & speculative neophytism, but reinventing jargon of finance, like how each generation of kids has new ways to say same things.
November 22, 2025 at 6:02 PM
I once knew a Federal bank examiner, and one time someone asked him why we had to KEEP inspecting banks over and over. He basically said every new batch of business school grads invents bank fraud from first principles.
Reposted by Matt Seybold
I’ve spent almost seven years covering Meta and have had a good deal of exposure to internal work product on teen well-being. But a Friday filing in the school district social media litigation breaks some ground on Meta’s causal findings regarding social media harm.
www.reuters.com/sustainabili...
www.reuters.com/sustainabili...
www.reuters.com
November 23, 2025 at 12:48 AM
I’ve spent almost seven years covering Meta and have had a good deal of exposure to internal work product on teen well-being. But a Friday filing in the school district social media litigation breaks some ground on Meta’s causal findings regarding social media harm.
www.reuters.com/sustainabili...
www.reuters.com/sustainabili...
Reposted by Matt Seybold
I am so honored to have been interview by Brad Fest for boundary 2.
My interview with @roberttally.bsky.social, “Grateful and Generous Reading: An Interview with Robert T. Tally Jr.,” has just been published in the November 2025 issue of boundary 2. read.dukeupress.edu/boundary-2/a...
Grateful and Generous Reading: An Interview with Robert T. Tally Jr. | boundary 2 | Duke University Press
read.dukeupress.edu
November 23, 2025 at 1:04 AM
I am so honored to have been interview by Brad Fest for boundary 2.
Getting an admittedly small set of quote-skeets that are like, you don’t understand the ways things work, this is just vertical integration or sector synchronization or whatever.
I’m gonna block that shit.
I’m gonna block that shit.
a man in a black suit stands in front of a white background
ALT: a man in a black suit stands in front of a white background
media.tenor.com
November 22, 2025 at 11:53 PM
Getting an admittedly small set of quote-skeets that are like, you don’t understand the ways things work, this is just vertical integration or sector synchronization or whatever.
I’m gonna block that shit.
I’m gonna block that shit.
Reposted by Matt Seybold
Fun fact: November 28, 2001:
"ENRON, which had been a component of the S&P; 500, was removed at the end of trading Thursday and replaced by NVIDIA Corp., a Santa Clara, Calif.-based maker of computer-graphics chips."
"ENRON, which had been a component of the S&P; 500, was removed at the end of trading Thursday and replaced by NVIDIA Corp., a Santa Clara, Calif.-based maker of computer-graphics chips."
November 22, 2025 at 7:44 PM
Fun fact: November 28, 2001:
"ENRON, which had been a component of the S&P; 500, was removed at the end of trading Thursday and replaced by NVIDIA Corp., a Santa Clara, Calif.-based maker of computer-graphics chips."
"ENRON, which had been a component of the S&P; 500, was removed at the end of trading Thursday and replaced by NVIDIA Corp., a Santa Clara, Calif.-based maker of computer-graphics chips."
Reposted by Matt Seybold
is it good when the biggest chunk of the economy reminds you of when bevis and butthead kept selling each other chocolate bars using the same dollar back and forth
NVIDIA earnings were a mirage. The market figured it out surprisingly fast. NVIDIA bump evaporated.
I don’t know how this information can enter the system without exploding the bubble.
But sometimes bezzles visible for months before crash.
Waiting for the feds?
open.substack.com/pub/shanakaa...
I don’t know how this information can enter the system without exploding the bubble.
But sometimes bezzles visible for months before crash.
Waiting for the feds?
open.substack.com/pub/shanakaa...
November 22, 2025 at 4:11 PM
is it good when the biggest chunk of the economy reminds you of when bevis and butthead kept selling each other chocolate bars using the same dollar back and forth
Is “After The Hunt” unwatchable? Is it just me? I’ve tried 4 times now, I haven’t even gotten 15 minutes in.
November 22, 2025 at 10:27 PM
Is “After The Hunt” unwatchable? Is it just me? I’ve tried 4 times now, I haven’t even gotten 15 minutes in.
Reposted by Matt Seybold
Are we really at a stage in public education where we consider it OK to have literally Google-branded schoolchildren whose learner identities are tied to being "responsible AI" users of private for-profit technologies?
November 22, 2025 at 8:31 PM
Are we really at a stage in public education where we consider it OK to have literally Google-branded schoolchildren whose learner identities are tied to being "responsible AI" users of private for-profit technologies?
Reposted by Matt Seybold
This morning, @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and I, along with Robert LeBlanc, gave a workshop on close reading @ncte.org — and then got to hang out in person for a bit too!
November 22, 2025 at 8:40 PM
This morning, @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and I, along with Robert LeBlanc, gave a workshop on close reading @ncte.org — and then got to hang out in person for a bit too!
Reposted by Matt Seybold
"Given that the Big Ten is about to create 'a for-profit company using what are essentially public dollars,' [a Penn State trustee] argued, boards need to know more in order to be able to advise their institutions accordingly."
www.insidehighered.com/news/governa...
www.insidehighered.com/news/governa...
Secretive Big Ten Deal Riles Trustees
The Big Ten is weighing a $2.4 billion private equity deal. But multiple trustees at member institutions say they aren’t getting enough information and the proposal has been rushed.
www.insidehighered.com
November 22, 2025 at 7:43 PM
"Given that the Big Ten is about to create 'a for-profit company using what are essentially public dollars,' [a Penn State trustee] argued, boards need to know more in order to be able to advise their institutions accordingly."
www.insidehighered.com/news/governa...
www.insidehighered.com/news/governa...
Look at me, holding it together.
November 22, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Look at me, holding it together.
Reposted by Matt Seybold
Matt Seybold is coming to Chicago!
join InterCcECT for a miniseminar in the theories of neofeudalism, 3 December
if you'd like to start an InterCcECT in your town, ping us for the handbook!
@mattseybold.bsky.social
interccect.com/2025/11/02/s...
join InterCcECT for a miniseminar in the theories of neofeudalism, 3 December
if you'd like to start an InterCcECT in your town, ping us for the handbook!
@mattseybold.bsky.social
interccect.com/2025/11/02/s...
Serfs Up
Is too-late capitalism evolving a new mode of production? A new mode of accumulation? Or just a new political and ideological dispensation of the main forces and relations that have defined moderni…
interccect.com
November 22, 2025 at 4:04 PM
Matt Seybold is coming to Chicago!
join InterCcECT for a miniseminar in the theories of neofeudalism, 3 December
if you'd like to start an InterCcECT in your town, ping us for the handbook!
@mattseybold.bsky.social
interccect.com/2025/11/02/s...
join InterCcECT for a miniseminar in the theories of neofeudalism, 3 December
if you'd like to start an InterCcECT in your town, ping us for the handbook!
@mattseybold.bsky.social
interccect.com/2025/11/02/s...
Reposted by Matt Seybold
Chicago! Mark your calendars for Theory at the Bargaining Table. Th 12/4 at 3:00p at UIC Daley Library. Featuring @annakornbluh.bsky.social @mattseybold.bsky.social and @bakerdphd.bsky.social in conversation about confronting the challenges of of higher ed labor bargaining.
November 22, 2025 at 7:00 PM
Chicago! Mark your calendars for Theory at the Bargaining Table. Th 12/4 at 3:00p at UIC Daley Library. Featuring @annakornbluh.bsky.social @mattseybold.bsky.social and @bakerdphd.bsky.social in conversation about confronting the challenges of of higher ed labor bargaining.
Reposted by Matt Seybold
Wow…gave this a watch due to @mattseybold.bsky.social’s mention and reaction to it.
It’s so much worse than I realized 😳
I see @shengokai.blacksky.app talk about this sort of thing fairly often as well.
youtu.be/5mtcSL4S3HQ?...
It’s so much worse than I realized 😳
I see @shengokai.blacksky.app talk about this sort of thing fairly often as well.
youtu.be/5mtcSL4S3HQ?...
Howard University AI Panel
YouTube video by Tiera Tanksley
youtu.be
November 22, 2025 at 5:04 PM
Wow…gave this a watch due to @mattseybold.bsky.social’s mention and reaction to it.
It’s so much worse than I realized 😳
I see @shengokai.blacksky.app talk about this sort of thing fairly often as well.
youtu.be/5mtcSL4S3HQ?...
It’s so much worse than I realized 😳
I see @shengokai.blacksky.app talk about this sort of thing fairly often as well.
youtu.be/5mtcSL4S3HQ?...
Reposted by Matt Seybold
Same, must-watch (and must-share with your a.i.-pushing administrators):
This video is so overwhelming I had to sit down & stare at the wall awhile. I was physically shaking.
I had heard some of these anecdotes before - Proctorio & Tubman bot - but Tanksley synthesizes them (with much much more), revealing undeniable regime of EdTech racialized surveillance & policing…
I had heard some of these anecdotes before - Proctorio & Tubman bot - but Tanksley synthesizes them (with much much more), revealing undeniable regime of EdTech racialized surveillance & policing…
I need everyone, esp anyone working in education or tech (but really everyone) to WATCH THIS CLIP of @drtanksley.bsky.social discussing the technologies infiltrating our schools & psyches and how she is addressing it with our young people. youtu.be/5mtcSL4S3HQ
November 22, 2025 at 3:51 PM
Same, must-watch (and must-share with your a.i.-pushing administrators):