Adrienne Massanari
@adriennemassanari.bsky.social
Assoc Prof@AmerU (views mine). New book: Gaming Democracy (MIT Press). Researches digital cultures, platform politics, games, etc. Wrote that one thing about Reddit that one time (okay several things). I will always want to see your pets.
She/her/hers.
She/her/hers.
Pinned
Gaming Democracy
How play and gaming culture have mainstreamed far right ideology through social media platforms.From #Gamergate to the ongoing Big Lie, the far right has gon...
mitpress.mit.edu
My new book from @mitpress.bsky.social, Gaming Democracy: How Silicon Valley Leveled Up the Far Right, is out today! The book explores how play and gaming culture have mainstreamed far right ideology through social media platforms. #digitalculture #games #politics #platforms
Reposted by Adrienne Massanari
You may have heard that Trump’s extortion of University of California was defeated in court. But do you know who won this historic case? Spoiler: not a single UC administrator participated. It was all faculty members of the UC Faculty Associations and @aaup.org! Cc: @veenadubal.bsky.social
Behind the Scenes: How UC Faculty Beat Back Trump's Attacks
YouTube video by UC Faculty
youtu.be
December 5, 2025 at 7:15 AM
You may have heard that Trump’s extortion of University of California was defeated in court. But do you know who won this historic case? Spoiler: not a single UC administrator participated. It was all faculty members of the UC Faculty Associations and @aaup.org! Cc: @veenadubal.bsky.social
I, for one, welcome our giant citrus overlords.
What looks like an alien starship visiting a small country estate in eighteenth-century Germany is in fact, *checks notes* a giant pomelo. So nothing to see here, #skystorians
December 5, 2025 at 11:53 AM
I, for one, welcome our giant citrus overlords.
Reposted by Adrienne Massanari
Holy shit.
Reuters reporting that new admin instructions on visas are if you worked at a platform in trust & safety or content moderation or on fact checking or online safety at an platform you *and your loved ones* are ineligible for H-1B visa.
www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...
Reuters reporting that new admin instructions on visas are if you worked at a platform in trust & safety or content moderation or on fact checking or online safety at an platform you *and your loved ones* are ineligible for H-1B visa.
www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...
December 4, 2025 at 5:41 PM
Holy shit.
Reuters reporting that new admin instructions on visas are if you worked at a platform in trust & safety or content moderation or on fact checking or online safety at an platform you *and your loved ones* are ineligible for H-1B visa.
www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...
Reuters reporting that new admin instructions on visas are if you worked at a platform in trust & safety or content moderation or on fact checking or online safety at an platform you *and your loved ones* are ineligible for H-1B visa.
www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...
RACHEL: How am I going to reopen this place in a week? It’ll take a miracle. Not that I believe in miracles.
(The door creaks open behind her. BEN enters. Think Paul Rudd meets Adam Brody meets Seth Rogen meets Adam Sandler meets Jesse Eisenberg meets Jeff Goldblum.)
BEN: How about…eight miracles?
(The door creaks open behind her. BEN enters. Think Paul Rudd meets Adam Brody meets Seth Rogen meets Adam Sandler meets Jesse Eisenberg meets Jeff Goldblum.)
BEN: How about…eight miracles?
(RACHEL walks past children playing. Her biological clock ticks. She’s thirty, almost dead.)
LITTLE GIRL: Are you excited for the County Hanukkah Fair?
RACHEL: Not really. I’m not super into Hanukkah.
LITTLE GIRL: Are you excited for the County Hanukkah Fair?
RACHEL: Not really. I’m not super into Hanukkah.
Scenes from a Hallmark Hanukkah Movie Written by Someone Who Has Definitely Met a Jew
EXT. SMALL TOWN BUS STOP – DAY (A beautiful woman with slightly wavy brown hair steps off a bus. She’s RACHEL, a corporate lawyer from The Big Cit...
buff.ly
December 3, 2025 at 9:41 PM
RACHEL: How am I going to reopen this place in a week? It’ll take a miracle. Not that I believe in miracles.
(The door creaks open behind her. BEN enters. Think Paul Rudd meets Adam Brody meets Seth Rogen meets Adam Sandler meets Jesse Eisenberg meets Jeff Goldblum.)
BEN: How about…eight miracles?
(The door creaks open behind her. BEN enters. Think Paul Rudd meets Adam Brody meets Seth Rogen meets Adam Sandler meets Jesse Eisenberg meets Jeff Goldblum.)
BEN: How about…eight miracles?
Reposted by Adrienne Massanari
Imagining these guys forming a primitive fertility cult around Clippy
December 3, 2025 at 9:33 PM
Imagining these guys forming a primitive fertility cult around Clippy
"What’s sold as innovation is really surrender. As the university trades its teaching mission for “AI-tech integration,” it doesn’t just risk irrelevance—it risks becoming mechanically soulless. Genuine intellectual struggle has become too expensive of a value proposition."
AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself
Students use AI to write papers, professors use AI to grade them, degrees become meaningless, and tech companies make fortunes. Welcome to the death of higher education.
www.currentaffairs.org
December 3, 2025 at 12:21 PM
"What’s sold as innovation is really surrender. As the university trades its teaching mission for “AI-tech integration,” it doesn’t just risk irrelevance—it risks becoming mechanically soulless. Genuine intellectual struggle has become too expensive of a value proposition."
"Students, faculty, staff and alumni need to create a subversive alternative university lurking within the shadows of the university itself. This shadow university is essential because trustees, administrators and wealthy donors ultimately control the structure of universities."
🔥🔥🔥
🔥🔥🔥
Northwestern’s Complicity With the Trump Regime
We need shadow universities to preserve academic values and academic freedom at a time when they are under attack by government officials and campus administrators.
www.insidehighered.com
December 3, 2025 at 12:24 AM
"Students, faculty, staff and alumni need to create a subversive alternative university lurking within the shadows of the university itself. This shadow university is essential because trustees, administrators and wealthy donors ultimately control the structure of universities."
🔥🔥🔥
🔥🔥🔥
Reposted by Adrienne Massanari
Statehood for D.C. is an ethical obligation at this point, required to protect the rights of our residents to govern ourselves against such out-of-state troops being sent to patrol our city.
NEW: Republican-led states, in a new filing at the D.C. Circuit, say D.C. residents are irrelevant, D.C. belongs to everyone else. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
The filing is led by the South Carolina and West Virginia attorneys general. Both states sent troops to DC.
The filing is led by the South Carolina and West Virginia attorneys general. Both states sent troops to DC.
December 2, 2025 at 8:51 PM
Statehood for D.C. is an ethical obligation at this point, required to protect the rights of our residents to govern ourselves against such out-of-state troops being sent to patrol our city.
Reposted by Adrienne Massanari
TX Tech has a flow chat for guidance on what can be taught in the university system. Two things:
1. Very little content seems to be permitted. This is partisan control of the curriculum.
2. I would not enjoy teaching under these conditions, but I really would not want to be a Chair or Dean.
1. Very little content seems to be permitted. This is partisan control of the curriculum.
2. I would not enjoy teaching under these conditions, but I really would not want to be a Chair or Dean.
December 1, 2025 at 10:55 PM
TX Tech has a flow chat for guidance on what can be taught in the university system. Two things:
1. Very little content seems to be permitted. This is partisan control of the curriculum.
2. I would not enjoy teaching under these conditions, but I really would not want to be a Chair or Dean.
1. Very little content seems to be permitted. This is partisan control of the curriculum.
2. I would not enjoy teaching under these conditions, but I really would not want to be a Chair or Dean.
Reposted by Adrienne Massanari
The purpose of US liberal education is to strip figures like Parks of all of their radical edges and make them caricatures. Parks is portrayed as a frail, tired woman who just wanted to sit down. Just like Harriet Tubman is portrayed as simply a helpful caretaker.
6) Rosa Parks wasn't meek. A lifelong believer in self defense, her politics were expansive. She loved Martin & Malcolm & Stokely, Ella Baker & Queen Mother Moore, fought for reparations, Black history in every curriculum, prisoner defense, welfare rights—"any move to show we are dissatisfied."
December 1, 2025 at 4:06 PM
The purpose of US liberal education is to strip figures like Parks of all of their radical edges and make them caricatures. Parks is portrayed as a frail, tired woman who just wanted to sit down. Just like Harriet Tubman is portrayed as simply a helpful caretaker.
I used to think, “I hate this job. I’m going to get a different bad job.” And then I would hate that job. Finally, I realised, and this is the truth – “Fran, you just don’t like to work”. I would have been a fantastic heiress.
Fran Lebowitz: ‘Hiking is the most stupid thing I could ever imagine’
The US author and orator on leaf blowers and Labubus, the weirdest thing she has done for love and struggling with contemporary novels
www.theguardian.com
December 1, 2025 at 1:16 PM
I used to think, “I hate this job. I’m going to get a different bad job.” And then I would hate that job. Finally, I realised, and this is the truth – “Fran, you just don’t like to work”. I would have been a fantastic heiress.
The abstract and distanced way the author discusses gen AI in this piece as if it's something he's not directly working to create is just 🤯. Once again, it's somehow everyone else's problem to fix a technology no one actually asked for or wants. This inevitability discourse has got to stop.
Opinion | How to Prepare Your Kids for the A.I. Revolution
www.nytimes.com
December 1, 2025 at 12:42 PM
The abstract and distanced way the author discusses gen AI in this piece as if it's something he's not directly working to create is just 🤯. Once again, it's somehow everyone else's problem to fix a technology no one actually asked for or wants. This inevitability discourse has got to stop.
Reposted by Adrienne Massanari
An issue we're seeing at all levels of university is that many students are simply refusing to do *anything*. They aren't reading the syllabus, aren't following assignment guidelines, aren't engaging with material, ignoring deadlines. And this might seem like old news, but it truly has ramped up.
November 28, 2025 at 10:15 PM
An issue we're seeing at all levels of university is that many students are simply refusing to do *anything*. They aren't reading the syllabus, aren't following assignment guidelines, aren't engaging with material, ignoring deadlines. And this might seem like old news, but it truly has ramped up.
“‘AI’ is being used as a magic word that is code for less worker power, hoarding of more resources, and making an uninformed gamble on high energy demand computer chips magically saving us from climate change...”
More than 1,000 Amazon workers warn rapid AI rollout threatens jobs and climate
Workers say the firm’s ‘warp-speed’ approach fuels pressure, layoffs and rising emissions
www.theguardian.com
November 28, 2025 at 8:39 PM
“‘AI’ is being used as a magic word that is code for less worker power, hoarding of more resources, and making an uninformed gamble on high energy demand computer chips magically saving us from climate change...”
Reposted by Adrienne Massanari
There are many more bad tech products to avoid. But I keep coming back to @hypervisible.blacksky.app and David Golumbia’s concept of luxury surveillance.
We need to really think about the surveillance tech we’re adopting — and certainly that we’re pushing on others.
disconnect.blog/a-tech-criti...
We need to really think about the surveillance tech we’re adopting — and certainly that we’re pushing on others.
disconnect.blog/a-tech-criti...
November 25, 2025 at 5:33 PM
There are many more bad tech products to avoid. But I keep coming back to @hypervisible.blacksky.app and David Golumbia’s concept of luxury surveillance.
We need to really think about the surveillance tech we’re adopting — and certainly that we’re pushing on others.
disconnect.blog/a-tech-criti...
We need to really think about the surveillance tech we’re adopting — and certainly that we’re pushing on others.
disconnect.blog/a-tech-criti...
Reposted by Adrienne Massanari
THREAD.
3 years ago, with no warning, a brilliant orange farm cat wandered over from the draughty barn where he had been living, in rural Cornwall, and decided he wanted to live with us instead.
We decided to call him Jim.
This is the first photo I took of him, on that night: December 1st, 2022.
3 years ago, with no warning, a brilliant orange farm cat wandered over from the draughty barn where he had been living, in rural Cornwall, and decided he wanted to live with us instead.
We decided to call him Jim.
This is the first photo I took of him, on that night: December 1st, 2022.
November 26, 2025 at 8:44 PM
THREAD.
3 years ago, with no warning, a brilliant orange farm cat wandered over from the draughty barn where he had been living, in rural Cornwall, and decided he wanted to live with us instead.
We decided to call him Jim.
This is the first photo I took of him, on that night: December 1st, 2022.
3 years ago, with no warning, a brilliant orange farm cat wandered over from the draughty barn where he had been living, in rural Cornwall, and decided he wanted to live with us instead.
We decided to call him Jim.
This is the first photo I took of him, on that night: December 1st, 2022.
Reposted by Adrienne Massanari
my jaw is on the floor and yet im completely unsurprised. trump’s only political conviction is that he loves a handsome winner
A reporter asks if Mamdani stands by calling Trump a fascist. Mamdani starts to give a delicate answer.
Trump (smiles, pats Mamdani's arm): "That's OK, you can just say yes. It's easier. I don't mind."
Trump (smiles, pats Mamdani's arm): "That's OK, you can just say yes. It's easier. I don't mind."
November 21, 2025 at 8:58 PM
my jaw is on the floor and yet im completely unsurprised. trump’s only political conviction is that he loves a handsome winner
Reposted by Adrienne Massanari
Trump frickin' loves this guy lmao
November 21, 2025 at 9:04 PM
Trump frickin' loves this guy lmao
Every faculty member is at least two of the animals on this chart. #academicsky #acasky
November 20, 2025 at 12:30 AM
Every faculty member is at least two of the animals on this chart. #academicsky #acasky
Reposted by Adrienne Massanari
I know that at this point it's a subplot in the Epstein files drama, but I feel compelled to point out, once again, that Larry Summers HAS NO BUSINESS teaching students at ANY university ever again!
My latest cries into the abyss, in @thenation.com
www.thenation.com/article/soci...
My latest cries into the abyss, in @thenation.com
www.thenation.com/article/soci...
Why Is Larry Summers Still Employed?
The revelations about the economist’s attempts to pressure a women into a “relationship”—with guidance from Jeffrey Epstein—should finally disqualify him from teaching students.
www.thenation.com
November 19, 2025 at 4:24 PM
I know that at this point it's a subplot in the Epstein files drama, but I feel compelled to point out, once again, that Larry Summers HAS NO BUSINESS teaching students at ANY university ever again!
My latest cries into the abyss, in @thenation.com
www.thenation.com/article/soci...
My latest cries into the abyss, in @thenation.com
www.thenation.com/article/soci...
Reposted by Adrienne Massanari
Academia is a really racist and sexist place. Larry Summers, as the president of Harvard, epitomized that racism and sexism but he is not unique. That's why we needed DEI.
November 18, 2025 at 3:48 PM
Academia is a really racist and sexist place. Larry Summers, as the president of Harvard, epitomized that racism and sexism but he is not unique. That's why we needed DEI.
And they were never really "liberal" to begin with. The roots of SV have been wedded to libertarianism and eugenics since the beginning.
November 19, 2025 at 1:08 AM
And they were never really "liberal" to begin with. The roots of SV have been wedded to libertarianism and eugenics since the beginning.
I mean, I like therapy dogs and all too, but maybe we could just not have the National Guard deployed in perpetuity? Just spitballing here. #freedc
National Guard brings in therapy dogs for deployed troops in DC
The goal of the event was to help boost morale and provide comfort and support, according to the National Guard.
www.wusa9.com
November 18, 2025 at 4:31 PM
I mean, I like therapy dogs and all too, but maybe we could just not have the National Guard deployed in perpetuity? Just spitballing here. #freedc
Everything about this thread rings true. I'm so sad that our universities collectively agreed to just throw all of this tech at students because something something "digital natives" (the evergreen trope that won't die) and have basically abdicated their responsibility to actual education.
Finally got to the "I want to burn it all down" portion of the gen AI-era semester, where I realize they're all using some sort of LLM to "help" organize their thoughts and it's just spitting out raw sewage onto the screen.
November 18, 2025 at 12:31 PM
Everything about this thread rings true. I'm so sad that our universities collectively agreed to just throw all of this tech at students because something something "digital natives" (the evergreen trope that won't die) and have basically abdicated their responsibility to actual education.
Reposted by Adrienne Massanari
Nobody who should fuck off actually fucks off anymore. We're stuck with all these fucking people.
November 18, 2025 at 11:30 AM
Nobody who should fuck off actually fucks off anymore. We're stuck with all these fucking people.