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Matt Seybold

@mattseybold.bsky.social

8.2K followers 1.9K following 4.7K posts

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

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · Jun 20

“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.”

Against Technofeudal Education

Pillars For Protecting Our "Core Infrastructure" From OpenAI

theamericanvandal.substack.com

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Reposted by Matt Seybold

Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis.bsky.social · 1h

"They poison our democracies" | Οn Big Tech, populism and the future of The Left www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nlwt...

"They poison our democracies" | Yanis Varoufakis on Big Tech, populism and the future of The Left

YouTube video by BBC Newsnight

www.youtube.com

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 10h

Spending a career watching centuries-old fields of study shrivel & die, cactus-like, being told there is no water by deans on lily pads in the middle of the lake.

Do not recommend.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 11h

What was it about the business incentives about late 2000s securities ratings agencies that caused serious problems? 🤔 @mattseybold.bsky.social

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 11h

NVIDIA and OpenAi:

Concerns that their “increasingly complex and interconnected web of business transactions is artificially propping up the trillion-dollar AI boom.“

@bloomberg.com $NVDA 👀
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 11h

Commercial AI is definitely a moral hazard.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 18h

The most violent two-page chapter in academic history.

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Ignacio Sanchez Prado @isanchezprado.bsky.social · 20h

For the Pittsburgh Review of Books, I wrote an essay on Schattenfroh’s novel genealogies and the question of a total novel that does not coalesce into signification. Thanks Ed Simon for accepting the essay. pghrev.com/totality-wit...

Totality Without Signification - Pittsburgh Review of Books

In the late 1990s, I took a college class called “Literary Models: Novel,” part of a sequence of eight such classes aimed to teach undergraduate students in

pghrev.com

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Reposted by Matt Seybold

Jacob Silverman @jacobsilverman.com · 19h

It's pub day for my book, "Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley," which chronicles the rise of the tech right and their role in the 2024 election. Thanks to everyone who helped along the way.
linktr.ee/gildedrage

Gilded Rage | Linktree

A searing look at the rise of Silicon Valley's far right. Out October 2025.

linktr.ee

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 21h

@marcwatkins.bsky.social @tedunderwood.com @ecourtem.bsky.social @biblioracle.bsky.social

Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 21h

Fully open-access peer-reviewed journal, largely open-access biblio, collectively authored by scholars at teaching-centered institutions, pedagogical theory with psychoanalytic & political economic foundations.

And, simply on its face, a fascinating essay.

www.victoriannetwork.org/index.php/vn...

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 22h

I’m working on something about the conversion of parallel media to paragovernmental media…er…nevermind.

Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 23h

Newspapers Worse Than Dead, But Print Is A Rent Strike (A Tale of Today, Episode #15)

with Tressie McMillan Cottom, Gil Duran, Samuel Freedman, Jeff Horwitz, Jeff Jarvis, Andie Tucher, and Yanis Varoufakis

theamericanvandal.substack.com

Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 23h

"Parallel journalism is an essential precursor to the creation of an authoritarian network state & the precedent for all other kinds of parallel institutions. It might be tempting to see the fake news organizations on Facebook, the hiring of political pundits and reactionary columnists by X, Silicon Valley startups selling Al writing and editing software to struggling magazines, the defunding of investigative units inside prestigious periodical brands, & the funding of thinly conceived new media outlets like Barry Weiss's Free Press as independent islands in our grifter archipelago. But parallel journalism is the principle that organizes all of them."

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 1d

The epigraph to Neil Postman’s “Technopoly”

Whether or not it draws on new scientific research, technology is a branch of moral philosophy, not of science.

PAUL GOODMAN. New Reformation

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 1d

This is why you make sure there’s a girl in every group during breakout.

"IF YOU OFFLOAD YOUR CREATIVE & CRITICAL CAPACITIES IN EXCHANGE FOR CONVENIENCE,
THE ONLY THING
YOU'LL HAVE LEFT TO OFFER THE PREVAILING SOCIAL
ORDER IS YOUR OBEDIENCE!"

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Lisa Diedrich @lisadiedrich.bsky.social · 1d

Stuart Hall took Thatcherism seriously & tried to understand its affective & aspirational appeal. Trumpism operates differently, as @cnewf.bsky.social notes, but the need to offer a cultural & political counter-strategy is key. I keep thinking about Hall’s adept use of new forms of media.

Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 1d

Great call to arms by @cnewf.bsky.social, following the tactic of Jed Esty's "Future of Decline" by looking to Stuart Hall & the New Left, & urging us to forego "private agency within our universities" in favor of "collective agency by running them."

Academics Must Seize the Means of Knowledge Production - Public Books

Trumpism has canceled the knowledge society.

www.publicbooks.org

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 1d

That will be on my short list of questions for Chris in a couple weeks.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 1d

Planning to correct this trend by focusing my biography on Twain's police abolitionism, political economy, and proto-podcasting.

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Erin Grievances @erinbartram.bsky.social · 1d

To help me with this talk I'm writing, I just (re)read the introductions to every major Twain biography written by a white man in the last hundred years, plus HH's preface to Mark Twain Tonight, and I think I'm going to pass away from romanticized nostalgia.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 1d

Academics Must Seize the Means of Knowledge Production - Public Books

Trumpism has canceled the knowledge society.

www.publicbooks.org

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 1d

Trying to auto-correct Public Humanities to public humiliation.

Not today, robot. Not today.

Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 1d

Important point about the paywall profiteering of our research.

But also, Erin & her colleagues turning the MT museum into an C19 public history project is one of the thing which gives me hope for Twain Studies.

Everything is Twain Studies.

Erin Grievances @erinbartram.bsky.social · 1d

Working at a museum without access to a university library means spending 6 years thinking about/reading Mark Twain & his reception and then every time I think I had an original thought it turns out @mattseybold.bsky.social tweeted it out in the form of a peer-reviewed article a decade ago.

Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 1d

This looks incredible. Some AV alums!

Reposted by Matt Seybold

Andrew J Douglas @ajdouglas.bsky.social · 1d

At least the faculty have a counter-event. Heightening the contradictions of the “Black University,” as it were.

sway.cloud.microsoft/lq4BYdHorMjj...

Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Liberal Arts Tradition

As an alumnus of Morehouse College, Martin Luther King, Jr. ‘48 is the product of a rich and vibrant “circle of culture” encompassing the various places and means by which Black peoples examined, disc

sway.cloud.microsoft

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 1d

This project would not have happened were it not for Nate's book.

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Nate Wolff @natewolff.bsky.social · 1d

A real honor to nearly bookend (with a late cameo following earlier more substantive appearances!) this amazing series. The depth and breadth of Matt's work here is truly awe inspiring. (And good morning to my brother in late-alphabetical sorting, Yanis Varoufakis.)

Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 1d

A landing page for the completed “A Tale of Today” series in which (crossing fingers) all the links to episode bibliographies work.

A Tale of Today (2024-2025)

Episode 1: The Age of Insecurity (September 9, 2024) A new season of The American Vandal Podcast inspired by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s 150-year-old novel, The Gilded Age…

mattseybold.com

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