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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mattseybold.bsky.social
“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
mattseybold.bsky.social
UPenn hosting Chris Newfield and I next week, including for a "live" recording of American Vandal. Wonder if we'll be able to come up with anything to talk about?
mattseybold.bsky.social
Just read Peter's thread, which is very good.
peterswimm.com
If Trump-aligned control Tech sector already spans Intel, Oracle (with TikTok U.S.), Meta, X, Tesla, Sinclair, T-Mobile, Paramount, and Walmart… what’s left outside? Not much. But the gaps are critical chokepoints. 🧵
mattseybold.bsky.social
Good thread for thinking about what is (and what is not) already part of the kleptocratic architecture of surveillance, extraction, and coercion.
peterswimm.com
If Trump-aligned control Tech sector already spans Intel, Oracle (with TikTok U.S.), Meta, X, Tesla, Sinclair, T-Mobile, Paramount, and Walmart… what’s left outside? Not much. But the gaps are critical chokepoints. 🧵
Reposted by Matt Seybold
peterswimm.com
I did a thread here a few weeks ago conjecturally but Matt did the legwork - There is now a cradle to the grave surveillance apparatus ready to go.

What’s the trigger?
mattseybold.bsky.social
Important piece from Marshall. Dismantling kleptocracy is the most urgent goal, & anti-monopoly policy must be part of that.

The problem we face, as I tackled last week, is that with very few exceptions, U.S. anti-monopoly policy has been antitrust, & has ranged from weak to counterproductive.
Reposted by Matt Seybold
thomassdavis.bsky.social
The midterms from my analog upper level seminar; they’re brilliant & full of theories on the function of art
in the present while undertaking micro-scale formal analysis. An 80 minute class & no one left early. Print is a rent strike & a pedagogical asset for this moment. @mattseybold.bsky.social ✊🏼
mattseybold.bsky.social
Important piece from Marshall. Dismantling kleptocracy is the most urgent goal, & anti-monopoly policy must be part of that.

The problem we face, as I tackled last week, is that with very few exceptions, U.S. anti-monopoly policy has been antitrust, & has ranged from weak to counterproductive.
Reposted by Matt Seybold
mattseybold.bsky.social
Inspired by Northwestern students protesting EdTech-delivered loyalty oaths, by the student-led Luddite Renaissance, by Matthew Josephson, Connie Bruck & @tressiemcphd.bsky.social, I tried to track how kleptocratic antitrust policy enables a surveillance megalith.

open.substack.com/pub/theameri...
Reposted by Matt Seybold
citizense.bsky.social
There’s more to that Tom Sawyer than meets the eye; Huck is not on a need-to-know basis during the Evasion in AHF. The key is Jim’s coat of arms. It helps to get Tom’s Cervantes, Dumas, heraldry allusions. That nobody in-novel gets any of this is MT’s tragic/ironic point.

@mattseybold.bsky.social
rachelfeder.bsky.social
Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat
mattseybold.bsky.social
I enjoy this argument, though I think unhinged might be the right word.
mattseybold.bsky.social
“Do you really think if 20% of current active users of Facebook & Twitter deleted their accounts tomorrow, fascism would be over?”

Yes, I do, maybe not instantly, but it would be like asking if the frog in the lidded pot with the fire under it is alive.
Reposted by Matt Seybold
andyhines.bsky.social
All together now:
annakornbluh.bsky.social
NO
bloomberg.com
The Trump administration is inviting all US colleges to participate in a compact that would grant preferential federal funding in return for commitments to specific policy changes like DEI bans, according to a source
mattseybold.bsky.social
Wife: We’re on our way to Chili’s. You’re dressed like Mark Ruffalo. If you make us listen to “Oasis Unplugged” in the car, I swear I will make sure they rescind your PhD.
mattseybold.bsky.social
If GOP is indeed steadfast in destroying the College Board, the progressive agenda is to make sure nothing replaces it. The College Board is an EdTech tapeworm inside K-16 gobbling away from both ends. I’m pretty sure its GOP critics just wish they owned the tapeworm.
annieabrams.bsky.social
the college board's not a progressive organization
camasonian.bsky.social
I've proctored dozens of AP and SAT tests at my school and never earned a single dime for any of it.

They profit off an army of teachers providing them free labor.
Reposted by Matt Seybold
annieabrams.bsky.social
the company profits from standardizing courses bearing both high school and college credit, on what planet is that progressive
Reposted by Matt Seybold
sofivalenciac.bsky.social
“American kleptocracy is built atop a system of extraction which requires nearly universal and largely voluntary participation in an attention economy activated by mountains of debt”.
mattseybold.bsky.social
Inspired by Northwestern students protesting EdTech-delivered loyalty oaths, by the student-led Luddite Renaissance, by Matthew Josephson, Connie Bruck & @tressiemcphd.bsky.social, I tried to track how kleptocratic antitrust policy enables a surveillance megalith.

open.substack.com/pub/theameri...
Reposted by Matt Seybold
mattseybold.bsky.social
…all put together, in America. Well, now, you can see, yourself, that when you come to spread a little dab of people like that over these hundreds of billions of miles of American territory, it is like scattering a ten-cent box of homœopathic pills over the Great Sahara.”
mattseybold.bsky.social
Twain on The Discovery of America:

"America was occupied a billion years & more, by Injuns & Aztecs, & that sort of folks, before a white man ever set his foot in it. During the first 300 years after Columbus's discovery, there wasn't ever more than one good lecture audience of white people…
Reposted by Matt Seybold
Absolutely vital reading on the media and ed tech systems as they currently stand.
mattseybold.bsky.social
Inspired by Northwestern students protesting EdTech-delivered loyalty oaths, by the student-led Luddite Renaissance, by Matthew Josephson, Connie Bruck & @tressiemcphd.bsky.social, I tried to track how kleptocratic antitrust policy enables a surveillance megalith.

open.substack.com/pub/theameri...
Reposted by Matt Seybold
jeffsharlet.bsky.social
To be clear, I wasn't interested in Tommy Robinson's hearing, or even Robinson himself, but I once would have been more interested in his fans who gather with flags outside the courthouse, their imagination of themselves as holy warriors just for standing there.
mattseybold.bsky.social
“October 12, the anniversary of ‘Discovery.’ It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.” - Mark Twain