Note to academics: #metamodernism is about how we—and what it means to—make the internet "true." And make politics "true." And communities. It's why The New Sincerity is a metamodern subgenre. If you think metamodernism is "post-truth," you're a postmodernist defending dead turf.
1/ Postmodernism has the benefit of being a 70 year-old dessicated paradigm that at least—for all that—enjoys [a sad sort of] discourse maturity. Metamodernism is in its wild infancy—but still old enough to read as paradigm shift what postmodernism deems "higher media literacy."
2/ This is a metamodern feed predicated on curatorial journalism. That means the feed acknowledges I've expertise in some areas and not others, and therefore rely on (thousands and thousands) of others with differential expertise rather than a Romantic notion of solitary genius.
3/ Postmodernism died when it became paradoxically predicated on dialectics and centralized authority; deconstruction was conjoined—as Derrida never intended—with the esoteric politics of who chooses who can deconstruct and what can be deconstructed, often an ends-based analysis.
4/ *All* centralized truth-making apparatuses, *all* dialectical—polar—meaning-making praxes, began dying at the advent of the internet (which is reified deconstruction). A new paradigm—metamodernism—was needed to *reconstruct* a now-deconstructed truth. *Not* produce post-truth.
5/ If you're a communications academic and don't realize the air you breathe is postmodern, you're like a white man ignorant of the privilege of his race—you draw power from that which you chose to make invisible to yourself. It's also a blindspot consuming your academic oeuvre.
6/ Metamodernists say "error breeds sense" not because metamodernists choose to *produce* error—but because error is always-already present in any networked space (itself an always-already deconstructed cultural artifact) and therefore one *must* reconstruct—partially—from error.
7/ Twitter being a safe space for error to be used as one part of a meaning-/truth-making praxis can go down a dark road—QAnon—or, like the political metamodernism emerging in Scandinavia (or in my writings) kick toward the light of post-deconstruction truth (*not* "post-truth").
8/ So if you're an academic reading the article that just came out saying—mirabile dictu!—maybe QAnon has *higher media literacy* than postmodern comms academics, ask why your own [once cultural-dominant] paradigm took a *decade* to find out what all metamodernists knew in ~2010.
9/ Trump is winning—as is QAnon—not because they're doing something dire *on the postmodern spectrum*, but because, JFC, they years ago—in both cases, only *pseudo-intentionally*—*overleapt* the postmodern dialectic to enter into (and reside in) contemporary metamodern discourse.
10/ Postmodernists writing about the internet are like the first human who'll see alien life—almost certainly, the *first* thing that'll happen is they won't *know* they're witnessing alien life, as it's hyper-paradigmatic. The tools aren't even present to ask the first question.
11/ Because I write publicly about metamodernism as an academic as well as practicing the paradigm as a curatorial journalist—and because I write under my name—you can *talk to me* and we can *dialogue*. To lump me in with [anonymous] bad actors is an obscenity I won't tolerate.
12/ For those wondering what all this means in lay terms: it's what metamodernists call "a romantic response to crisis"—which often requires "reality as a unit of measure" *not* for the purpose of saying nothing's true but understanding *how* things can be true in digital spaces.
13/ The internet makes us lonely and sad; it makes us feel everything is ephemeral, truth is eroding, and we're many different people at once. It's disorienting and—if you move through it in a postmodern mindset—creates *hopelessness*. Metamodernists are fighting to restore hope.
14/ "QAnon" (the collective) are dangerous terrorists. But if you think what these dangerous terrorists are selling is *anger*, you've missed half the equation. They're selling "angry optimism"—in other words, (misguided) anger matched fully by (misguided) *hope* on the back end.
15/ It's the same thing with Trump. Because late postmodernism somehow became unable to *actually* instrumentalize—rather than just theorize—paradox, postmodernists (most academics/critics) can *only* say Trump surfs on anger. Yes, that *and* (misguided) hope. Both are essential.
16/ If you ask a metamodernist who the Democrats *have* to nominate to defeat Trump, they will tell you it needs to be someone who harnesses—but in a reasonably well-guided and earnest and integrity-laden way—both *anger* and (*and!*) *hope*. That means Sanders or Warren or Wang.
17/ Buttigieg had a window—early on—to become a certain breed of metamodern politician and maybe win this thing. But the debate in which he went negative destroyed the integrity of what we call his "poetics" and left him to surge briefly and then fade. He will not be the nominee.
18/ Tulsi Gabbard is *not* a metamodernist, but she does *appeal* to the very, very dark end of the metamodern spectrum—the 4channers. But largely that's "projected" metamodernism, much like The New Sincerity is—it requires *you* to see it a certain way for it to be "metamodern."
19/ Metamodernists predicted Clinton would either lose in 2016 or come *very* close to losing, the reason being *not* any defect in her experience or preparedness but the fact that she was a late-postmodern politician (like Biden, now) in a post-postmodern age. That risks defeat.
20/ What I'll do now is post some articles posted from the viewpoint of *my own* branch of metamodern thought, acknowledging that there are many others (as in postmodernism). All of these were written for a popular audience, so they *try* (sometimes fail) to avoid academy-speak.
SOURCE1/ huffpost.com/entry/ten-key-…
SOURCE2/ huffpost.com/entry/five-mor…
SOURCE3/ huffpost.com/entry/metamode…
SOURCE4/ medium.com/@Seth_Abramson…
SOURCE5/ This last one was written for a slightly more (semi-)academic audience, in a Scandinavian journal, but it gets into Trump and some may find it interesting. It has six parts; you have to use the right-hand (green) sidebar to navigate between them. metamoderna.org/situating-zava…
