Grant Bollmer

Katherine will go live again next tomorrow (Wednesday, March 4) at 2pm for Tech Time with Ian McDermott and again at 4pm for the Ghost Help Hotline. twitch.tv/mediaarchaeology

Our next livestream with Katherine will be today at 2PM - Dream Incubation Practice (Creating our Ghost Bodies)

Thank you, and sure, I'd be happy to answer any question you might have!

Anyway, this is getting a bit outside of what I actually know, which is more or less just limited to the corporate personhood stuff! But hope this is helpful!

Obviously this has gotten all more complicated today because I think lay definitions of "personhood" (stemming from things like fetal personhood) have clearly undermined a lot of what actually was a pretty coherent legal understanding of what a "legal person" is

I guess so? Competency would probably be a good category - like, within the classical debates surrounding corporate personhood, it was regularly brought up that a child or infant is, technically, not a "person" under law because a child shouldn't be, say, punished in the same way as an adult

To give rights to corporations that ‘natural persons’ do not actually have

The comparison between bearing witness is really interesting though because, as I see it, legal personhood is about punishment and fines more than rights as such, but I think this is what’s changed in the past decade or so (the Supreme Court used a relatively unobjectionable ‘fiction’…)

Some people in this tradition meant this very literally, others acknowledged that it’s a bad parallel because, say, a corporation cannot be married. But this is the distinction between a ‘natural person’ and a ‘legal person’, the latter of which is a legal fiction necessary for law to operate

To be very brief here (as I feel I should respond since Seth mentioned the influencer book!), legal personhood descends from a British legal tradition that uses ‘person’ to signify who has rights and who can be punished by law. It doesn’t mean all ‘persons’ have equal rights or abilities under law

Now, if you DO want a more academic evaluation of the book, here's a great review of it in @ijoc-usc.bsky.social by Oscar Gómez Pascual, who I feel really gets what the book is going for!

YouTube video by Ashley Embers Is this the end of the influencer economy?

It genuinely surprises me when there's some reference to the Influencer Factory out there from actual influencers and content creators - but here it is, discussed at length in a video essay by the Ashley Embers!

Americans give capitalism its lowest ever rating in new Gallup survey A slim majority of Americans rate capitalism positively.

The lowest share of Americans ever view capitalism positively and big business rates even worse in new Gallup data released today.

THERE IS STILL TIME TO ENJOY SUP'S SUMMER SALE!

Take advantage of 50% off of all in-stock print and ebooks sitewide* now through Monday, 9/8. Whether by the pool or in the shade, we'd love to be your last summer read.

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I mean, a worldview that says that an impenetrable measurement machine can show you the aliens hidden in your soul seems like something they may already believe

You can pick up "The Influencer Factory" for just $14! A book novelist and media strategist Andrew Ladd has said, "I feel like this is how nineteenth century proletarians must have felt reading Marx"! (And our book seems to be more popular among actual influencers than the academics who study them!)

Blue banner with a tropical water background. The centered text says the following: End of Summer Sale, 50% off sitewide, August 25 - September 8, browse now

WE'RE HAVING AN END OF SUMMER SALE! The weather may be cooling, but SUP's end of summer sale is hot!

Take advantage of 50% off of all in-stock print and ebooks sitewide starting today, 8/25, through 9/8. #ReadUP

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Every single one of mine is in there, as well!

I got a flu booster today and it made me reflect on the sense of national accomplishment I felt when I drove to a public facility, waited in my car until my number was called on an app, and got my first covid jab. It's fucked the right gets to erase what a moment of technological liberation that was

Joseph Weizenbaum in 1975: "The very asking of the question, 'What does a judge (or psychiatrist) know that we cannot tell a computer?' is a monstrous obscenity. That it has to be put into print at all, even for the purpose of exposing its morbidity, is a sign of the madness of our times." #ai

In case anyone happens to be in Korea next weekend, I'm going to be presenting at the Nam June Paik Art Center's "48-hour NJP School" on the 19th - the entire event looks exceptionally cool, and I'm very excited to be part of it! njpart.ggcf.kr/events/250

We have an amazing sale going on at the University of Minnesota Press this week... stock on summer reading with $10 paperbacks presswide when you buy 3 or more and use checkout code MN93820!

Wondering where to start? Check out this 🧵 for some starter packs to unlock $10 books:

Wall Street journal article with the headline “Pope Leo Takes On Al as a Potential Threat to Humanity”

Finally, a Holy War I can join

OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has a plan to overhaul college education — by embedding its artificial intelligence tools in every facet of campus life. If the company’s strategy succeeds, universities would give students A.I. assistants to help guide and tutor them from orientation day through graduation. Professors would provide customized A.I. study bots for each class. Career services would offer recruiter chatbots for students to practice job interviews. And undergrads could turn on a chatbot’s voice mode to be quizzed aloud ahead of a test. OpenAI dubs its sales pitch “A.I.-native universities.”

Every future imagined by a tech company is worse than the previous iteration.

From the emergencyintercom community on Reddit: Elisa’s Insta Story Explore this post and more from the emergencyintercom community

It seems the best responses to The Influencer Factory so far have come from people who either are influencers themselves or are really invested in influencers, and not even remotely academic, which is genuinely shocking to me.

Just got in the mail today the absolutely gorgeous Korean translation of Materialist Media Theory! Thanks to Sungyong Ahn for sending it along!

Platform Fandom: Weverse and the Technological Domestication of Fan Community - Grant Bollmer, Bethany Tillerson, 2025 This article is a critical examination of the social media platform Weverse and its associated e-commerce platform Weverse Shop, platforms developed and operate...

New in Social Media + Society ⬇️⬇️⬇️

Bollmer, G., & Tillerson, B. (2025). Platform Fandom: Weverse and the Technological Domestication of Fan Community

#FanStudies

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

It’s day 2 in the book exhibit at #SCMS25 #SCMS2025! Stop by and see us @uminnpress.bsky.social or check out our online exhibit at www.upress.umn.edu/scms25/ for 30% off!

Checked out the #scms25 book room - you can pick up The Affect Lab from @uminnpress.bsky.social but The Influencer Factory has already been accounted for! @stanfordpress.bsky.social

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Perhaps you don't want to hear anything about the American tech industry and Silicon Valley--well, can I interest you in this brand new article which I coauthored with a former undergrad student at NC State, on the Korean media platform Weverse and the political economy of K-pop fandom!