Thread by @SethAbramson

(THREAD) One of the questions I get most frequently on this feed—if you can believe it—is about cultural theory. I discuss #metamodernism frequently, and people often ask, "What is it?" I'll do what I can to answer the question here, with links. I hope you'll read on and retweet.

1/ I usually try to avoid answering this question, for many reasons. Here are just a few:

1⃣ Metamodernism has caused people to go crazy.
2⃣ Metamodernism is so new there is little literature on it.
3⃣ Metamodernists are currently in a civil war.
4⃣ Metamodernism can be complex.

2/ Two more:

5⃣ Metamodernism is a "cultural paradigm," so it is such an encompassing term it really can't be adequately discussed in a character-limited social media platform.
6⃣ Metamodernism permanently changes the lives of those who study it, so it must be wielded carefully.

3/ In short, "metamodernism" is the dominant cultural paradigm of the digital age—which means that it describes how we "structure" our feelings and our logic now that we're all online. It is an evolution of its predecessor paradigm, "postmodernism"—which has become *destructive*.

4/ Postmodernism was the "structure of feeling" and "system of logic" dominant in the age of television. As many scholars had built careers on writing about postmodernism, they irresponsibly tried to pretend it was still dominant in the internet age. That was a destructive move.

5/ Many of the ills we now experience online are the result of there being no encompassing conversation about how the digital age has changed how we think about ourselves, one another, and the very nature of reality. Or—rather—the conversation we're having doesn't fit the moment.

6/ Tomorrow my interview with Russell Brand (@rustyrockets), in which I discuss "metamodernism," will air on @hearluminary. I wanted to write this thread to offer some links for those curious enough about the secret that unlocks the digital age to go down a very deep rabbit hole.

7/ "Cultural paradigms" are first identified by academics, but they are not *for* academics. They are mostly for "creatives" and—secondarily—those actively engaging in the social discourse of their time, whether they're contributing to it creatively or in critical writing or not.

8/ Metamodernism predicted that Trump would defeat Clinton. Metamodernism explains the alt-right. Metamodernism explains the role that VR, AR, MR, XR, AI, and blockchain will have in popular culture going forward. It is both descriptive and predictive, reflective and projective.

9/ As metamodernism is as broad a concept as postmodernism, it exists in its own sub-conversation in every field of study—philosophy, religion, politics, the visual arts, the literary arts, the material arts, and so on—and therefore there is no "one" conversation on the subject.

10/ That said, throughout the 2010s there was substantial disagreement about how to think about the term—and apply it—among theorists in America, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Scandinavia. My own writings fall into (as you might guess) the "American" camp.

11/ Most of those online who've encountered my writing on metamodernism first stumbled across it when I was a columnist for THE HUFFINGTON POST in the first half of the 2010s. I was trying to find a way to write about metamodernism for a popular audience. huffpost.com/entry/metamode…

12/ Much of my early writing on metamodernism focused on "literary metamodernism"—the way the cultural paradigm would manifest in literature.

I was heavily influenced by the literary theorist who coined the term "metamodernism" in 1975, Mas'ud Zavarzadeh. huffpost.com/entry/on-liter…

13/ I also felt compelled, due to the schism that existed between Dutch, Australian, Swedish, British and American metamodernists—a schism I was both at the heart of and tried my best to heal—to try to imagine whether "American" metamodernism was distinct. huffpost.com/entry/on-ameri…

14/ I did my best to identify where newcomers to metamodernism could *find* metamodern literature, including offering a review of the first-ever anthology of such literature published in English (which did not use the term, but embodied it nevertheless). huffpost.com/entry/first-an…

15/ I won't deny that things got weird, as I was trying to, in real time, figure out new ways to discuss what would have seemed to most—somewhat incorrectly—as a highly academic concept to a non-academic audience.

I certainly wasn't always successful. huffpost.com/entry/the-meta…

16/ I wrote *five-part treatises* on an abstract topic that very few yet understood... and did so on a site that many went to for "listicles."

1⃣ huffpost.com/entry/the-meta…
2⃣ huffpost.com/entry/the-meta…
3⃣ huffpost.com/entry/the-meta…
4⃣ huffpost.com/entry/the-meta…
5⃣ huffpost.com/entry/the-meta…

17/ I tried to simplify things with a three-part "The Basics" series:

1⃣ huffpost.com/entry/metamode…
2⃣ huffpost.com/entry/metamode…
3⃣ huffpost.com/entry/metamode…

I wrote a "manifesto":

▶️ huffpost.com/entry/the-meta…

I wrote essays still quoted by academics today:

▶️ huffpost.com/entry/metamode…

18/ I want to pause here to underscore again that I'm writing this thread because *you wouldn't believe* how many letters, emails, DMs, texts, Twitter comment, website comments and other communications I have received over the years asking, "Where can I read about metamodernism?"

19/ I followed up somewhat-more-successful "The Basics" trilogy of articles with two "Basic Principles of Metamodernism" articles (and some of you may find that, if you're interested in metamodernism, you want to start here):

1⃣ huffpost.com/entry/ten-key-…
2⃣ huffpost.com/entry/five-mor…

20/ I realized folks needed concrete examples of metamodern art, so I created for THE HUFFINGTON POST a "Month in Metamodernism" series:

1⃣ huffpost.com/entry/this-mon…
2⃣ huffpost.com/entry/the-mont…
3⃣ huffpost.com/entry/the-mont…

In the midst of this series, Trump announced his candidacy.

21/ On the day that Donald Trump announced his presidential run—June 16, 2015—I wrote an essay about him from the perspective of a metamodernist, perceiving the danger of his candidacy at a time everyone treated it as a joke. It was published the next day. huffpost.com/entry/trump-is…

22/ A few weeks later, I wrote another piece about Donald Trump—as American media, filled with postmodern political analysts, was still treating his presidential candidacy as a harmless joke—urging people to reconsider that flawed perspective and analysis. huffpost.com/entry/donald-t…

23/ That summer—summer 2015—I wrote a six-part academic treatise on metamodernism for the Scandinavian academic journal METAMODERNA. I was responding to the ongoing schism between my own writing and those of two Dutch theorists of my acquaintance.

Link: metamoderna.org/situating-zava…

24/ Somewhere in all this, things got real. Metamodernism took off. I was contacted by A24 Films—behind the David Foster Wallace biopic "The End of the Tour" (with Jason Segel and Jesse Eisenberg)—who asked me to write some accompanying essays. So I did. medium.com/@Seth_Abramson…

25/ Those essays were written for a more general audience, as you can tell by their titles. medium.com/just-words/met…

26/ Here's my third essay on metamodernism for A24 Films: medium.com/just-words/why…

27/ After my contract with A24 Films was completed, I tried my hand at another "Metamodernism for Beginners" essay on MEDIUM: medium.com/@Seth_Abramson…

28/ I said that during this period of time metamodernism took off, and I mean it.

Grammy Award-winning "outlaw country" artist Sturgill Simpson credited me—in ROLLING STONE, no less—with helping to inspire his album METAMODERN SOUNDS IN COUNTRY MUSIC. rollingstone.com/music/music-co…

29/ I wrote an INDIEWIRE article—"Shia LaBeouf: Plagiarist or Genius?"—that caused LaBeouf to announce himself as a "metamodernist" and begin a career as a performance artist. Yes—those weird (often wonderful) things Shia has done since 2014? I kicked off that period in his life.

30/ My saga with Shia is... long... but suffice to say it led to an empty legal threat from Shia's lawyer that I then published—as a poem—in one of my poetry collections. Through an intermediary I have since learned that Shia and I are all good now. Like I said: things got weird.

31/ If you search in JSTOR, you will find articles that reference my writing(s) on metamodernism. You'll also find references to me in edited anthologies. The two Dutch theorists I often met and argued with about #metamodernism have since published a book: amazon.com/Metamodernism-…

32/ If you Google "metamodernism" now, you find the word in news reports, in art reviews, and frankly all over. I spent the early 2010s present for the birth of the digital-age cultural paradigm that has supplanted postmodernism. It was a more bizarre time than I can now explain.

33/ In the midst of this bizarre time, I made the big mistake of trying to explain how metamodernism plays into journalism. That article is the single most misread and misunderstood public document I've ever produced. It was called "On Bernie Sanders and Experimental Journalism."

34/ I've since found much clearer ways to underscore how much I value *truth*—but also how information transfer and the pursuit of truth is generatively aided by metamodernism. For instance there's this article in THE GUARDIAN (whose title I didn't write): theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

35/ I've since returned to the topic in my own Newsweek column: newsweek.com/metajournalism…

36/ I hardly need to tell you that the innovations in research, writing, and public communications encapsulated by my Proof trilogy of political nonfiction works were inspired by my understanding of the internet as a metamodernist.

That's why the books are *odd* in so many ways.

37/ As a working poet in the early 2010s, I tried to reimagine what a poem is through the lens of metamodernism. As an underscoring of how controversial metamodernism is, my efforts in this vein led to the Metamodern Trilogy—and got me thrown out of the American poetry community.

38/ The biggest project I've ever worked on as a metamodernist is this Twitter feed. Everything about how I use the platform—more frequently, intentionally misuse it—is informed by the post-postmodern theory research I did into metamodernism in the early 2010s and still do today.

39/ Since 2016, there have even been lengthy major-media hitpieces written about me and this feed that focus (sometimes explicitly) on my "metamodern" approach to journalism and social media use. Not one was written by a cultural theorist who actually knows what metamodernism is.

40/ This metajournalistic feed is intended to embody the metamodern maxim that what we need is a "romantic response to crisis." And as its author, I have adopted David Foster Wallace's proto-metamodern maxim that *true* rebellion in this era is the willingness to be snickered at.

CONCLUSION/ Most of you only know me from this feed—and my writing on Trump. You don't know all the odd things I've been up to. In the years ahead, you may learn more about that. In the meantime, here's my bio (which media has somehow never gotten right): sethabramson.net

NOTE/ I meant what I said about metamodernism making folks go crazy. You would not believe the wild things folks have done once they adopt a new "structure of feeling" and "system of logic" for understanding the digital world. Please do proceed—if you do—slowly, and with caution.

TOMORROW/ My conversation with Russell Brand on metamodernism and other topics drops tomorrow on Luminary. Hopefully I'll have a brief YouTube clip or two to share next week—but I hope you'll consider listening to all 70 minutes on @hearluminary (which I've no affiliation with).

FURTHER READING/ amazon.com/Listening-Soci…