Donald Trump

politician · 16 mentions across 8 readings

In this course

Trump appears primarily as a symptom of algorithmic and media feedback rather than a direct subject of analysis, cited to illustrate how mass populations can be driven toward political outcomes through technologically amplified fear and fragmentation. His 2016 election is invoked as an example of how social media's affinity-based architecture and proof-of-work mechanisms create conditions for reactionary consolidation—the "conservative culling"—among populations disoriented by algorithmic curation and mass media. The readings use Trump less as a historical figure than as evidence of how contemporary technoscience and platform dynamics generate political movements that escape authorized institutional control.

Background

Donald John Trump is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 45th president from 2017 to 2021.

Mentioned in 8 readings

Hugh Davies

The Gamification of Conspiracy: QAnon as ARG

7

ARGs have existed for over twenty years and have been used to promote ideas, products and services, or have existed purely for art or entertainment.[^42] The specific type of ARG that QAnon presents is unique. While the Q-drops and the narr…QAnon’s support of Trump is not simply literal and tactical, but conceptual and strategic. More than lionising Trump in its conspiracy narrative, the social, cultural, and political polarization that QAnon creates, ultimately works in his f…Q was not the first ARG to appear on 4chan. Throughout 2016 and 2017, several similar games featuring secret government officials leaking secrets appeared on the /pol/ message board. These ARGs, now widely understood as precursors to QAnon …

+4 more

Geoff Shullenberger

Mimesis, Violence, and Facebook: Peter Thiel’s French Connection

3

As one examines the list of participants, one name stands out: Peter Thiel, not, like the rest, a university professor, but (at the time) the President of Clarium Capital. In 2011, the New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/11/2…But so far, I have been expanding on what Thiel himself has said, which others have echoed. However, what accounts of Girard’s role in Thiel’s Facebook investment never mention is the other half of Girard’s theory, the half that Thiel was a…In a seemingly Ayn-Randian vein, Thiel likes to call tech entrepreneurs “founders,” and in lectures and seminars has compared (http://blakemasters.com/post/24578683805/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-18-notes) startups to monarchies. He en…

Aaron French

The Mandela Effect and New Memory

1

our technoscience culture. As unauthorized ideas and beliefs move closer together through the ease of technological transmission, they will continue to move farther away from authorized knowledge and narratives. They could increasingly find…

China Mieville

On Social Sadism - Salvage

1

No matter how much we might wish it, no uprising of the oppressed will be disciplined and rigorous enough to contain all expressions of the vengeful urge, nor even that to cruelty. Much ‘Leninism’ has fondly fantasised about leading charges…

Eugene Wei

Status as a Service (StaaS)

1

flattering one to Instagram, only to pull it down if it doesn't accumulate enough likes within the first hour. It’s another example of proof of work, or at least vigorous market research. Almost every social network of note had an early si…

Félix Guattari

Integrated World Capitalism and Molecular Revolution

1

populous—frightened and dazed by the mass media—huddle into a conservative culling (i.e. Trump 2016), while a seizable minority remains more or less refractory. But if we approach this problem from another angle, not only from struggles of…

Notes on À bruit secret_ Notes on Duchamp

Cybernetics, CIA, and Organized Crime

1

9 Legrady, Miklos. Did Marcel Duchamp Pave the Way For Donald Trump? New Art Examiner, September, 2021. https://newartexaminer.net/did-duchamp-pave-the-way-for-donald-trump/ 10 Asher, Betty M. Oral History Interview, 1980 June 30 and 1980 …

Notes on Foxacid

Quantumsquirrel, Weeping Angel - Scott Benzel

1

opposite, like the gravitational blobbing of black-and-white on either side of the Technocracy Inc. logo (formerly the yin-yang minus the dots), a given target’s exterior calm increasingly tagged to interior tension and lack of resolve… Cap…

Appears alongside

People mentioned in the same passages — sorted by co-occurrence weight.