1 Matching Annotations
  1. Aug 2023
    1. And nothing had ever been nearly so hot, so potentially clout-rich, as Covid-19. We all know why. It was global. It was synchronous. We were digitally connected, talking about the same thing for weeks, months, years, and on the same global platforms. As Steven W Thrasher writes in The Viral Underclass, Covid-19 marked “the first viral pandemic also to be experienced via viral stories on social media”, creating “a kind of squared virality”.

      Reminds of when tv shows were the talk of the town the next morning: everyone had seen it. You knew others had seen it, because there was just the two channels. It was a communally binding thing this talking about it. Media splintered, our interaction splintered, became diffuse. Covid centered everyones attention on a single thing. Globally, synchronous, on specific platforms, not just in the abstract but with individual's stories through our digital connections. Vgl [[Schaal van aandacht splitst 20210222161155]] wrt attention diffusion, Covid undid the diffusion.