Choose Your Future, 2021, is part of KW Digital: Open Secret, 16 July - 31 December.

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www.kw-berlin.de/en/open-secret/

In 2021, I commissioned a group of artists and memers to write short wiki-style descriptions of fantastical future scenarios. Writers were instructed to copy/paste existing wikipedia entries and “play mad libs” with the nouns and dates. Drawing on movements from the past, these short stories recombine political history to anticipate long tail ideologies and factions that may soon emerge.

Choose Your Future takes the hyperbolic imaginings of young people, raised on the internet, and puts their words directly into the mouths of content creators. In this way, the project emulates the signal amplification that occurs through social media, as radical takes move from the anonymous fringe into the verified mainstream. Is this the multi-faceted analysis of the Rand Corporation? Or is it a teenage meme poster who thinks it would be cool if these political keywords combined? I’m interested in the point where those spheres overlap.

This project combines the creative efforts of some of the artists, memers and content creators that have most inspired me over the past few years. Texts by: Margo Bergamini, Nick Bird, @ manletpill, David Noel, Abbey Pusz, D.Z. Rowan and Joshua Citarella. Read by: Caroline Busta, Mat Dryhurst, A.M. Gittlitz, Daniel Keller, Anna Khachiyan, Holly Herndon, Lil' Internet, Jack Wagner and Joshua Citarella.
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Open Secret is a six-month long online program exploring the role of the hidden in our apparently “open” society. Information technologies are supposed to increase our access to knowledge, making the world more legible, while undermining ignorance and superstition. But sometimes the feeling prevails that we have entered a new dark age of black boxes, projections, and paranoia. Techno-culture is obsessed with the unseen, the inaccessible, the known-unknown. Open Secret pursues things that are obscured–through artistic commissions, a suite of essays by leading thinkers, and an intensive public program dedicated to critical reappraisal of the digital infrastructures that organize civic life. With new contributions released on a monthly basis, the Open Secret website will bring together art, technology, politics, and new patterns of exchange.

Curators: Nadim Samman, curator digital sphere, in collaboration with Katja Zeidler, head of education & mediation

Choose Your Future, 2021

My guest is Brace Belden, an organizer, an infamous shitposter and co-host of the TrueAnon podcast. I’ve spent the last few years interviewing young people who make radical posts online and later find their way into real world politics. Irony and humor play a huge role in this process. For the first episode, I wanted to talk to one of my favorite posters who has also lived his politics in the real world.

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Doomscroll 01: Brace Belden

My guest is Catherine Liu, professor of film and media studies at UC Irvine. She is the author of 'Virtue Hoarders: the Case Against the Professional Managerial Class'. We discuss the origin of trauma studies, self branding on social media and the ideology of the professional class. Liu has an unwavering commitment to historical materialism and a fierce critique of elitist academies. She explores the intense moralism of our times as it relates to the Freudian super-ego.

Doomscroll 02: Catherine Liu

My guest is musician Matty Healy of The 1975. He joins me to discuss internet culture and the strange aesthetics of our time. We explore the inspirations behind his work, including the writing of cultural theorist Mark Fisher. Matty describes the "slow cancellation of the future" by comparing distinct styles of pop music across various decades. Fisher links these cultural moments to larger economic shifts that are often felt but rarely seen.

Doomscroll 08: Matty Healy

My guest is Amber A'Lee Frost, a writer, organizer, co-host of the Chapo Trap House podcast and the author of Dirtbag (2023). We discuss today's dysfunctional left, elite overproduction, online political subcultures and the emergence of “youth” as a counter-cultural and consumer demographic. Is the New Right support for labor real? What does it mean for American workers?

Doomscroll 09: Amber A'Lee Frost

My guest is Quinn Slobodian, a professor of international history at Boston University. He is the author of "Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism". Neoliberalism is the most misused word in today's political discourse. In this episode we discuss the origins of the ideological movement. What is neoliberalism? When did it begin? How did it transform global politics?

Doomscroll 15: Quinn Slobodian

My guest is Adam Friedland. We discuss the ethics of platforming and the art of the talk show interview. For a few reasons, we chose to put this part of the conversation on the private feed only.

This is a subscriber’s only episode. You can get access to the full catalog for Doomscroll and more by becoming a paid supporter. Subscribe now on Patreon or Substack:

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Doomscroll 17.5: Adam Friedland (preview)

My guest is Ezra Klein, an opinion columnist at the New York Times, the host of The Ezra Klein Show. He is a co-author, along with Derek Thompson, of a new book titled Abundance. We discuss his promethean, energy-rich vision for the future, polarization in the attention economy and the end of the neoliberal consensus. We explore our new political era and the rise of superpower competition between the US and China.

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Doomscroll 18: Ezra Klein

My guest is Andrew Callaghan, a documentary filmmaker and the host of Channel 5. He is the director of This Place Rules (2022) and Dear Kelly (2025), an in-depth portrait of a man he met at a ‘White Lives Matter' rally. We discuss the breakdown of consensus reality and how deplatforming can often lead to greater political extremism. Andrew describes his early origins in the anarchist movement and his participation in a group called Seattle Solidarity. His work explores the decline of the American dream along with the rise of political radicalism online and IRL.

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Doomscroll 19: Andrew Callaghan

My guest is Vivek Chibber, a professor of sociology at New York University. He is the author of Confronting Capitalism, The Class Matrix and Postcolonial Theory & the Specter of Capital. Chibber is the editor of Catalyst Journal and the host of the Confronting Capitalism podcast. 

We discuss the cultural turn, the rise of identity politics and the crisis of academia. Chibber is deeply committed to a material analysis and is unflinching in his critique of class tourism on the political left. He describes the early theoretical foundations for socialism as it relates to liberal philosophical ideals.

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Doomscroll 20: Vivek Chibber

My returning guest is Catherine Liu,‬ a professor of film and media studies at UC Irvine. She is the author of "Virtue Hoarders: the Case Against the Professional Managerial Class". We explore the psychological significance of “trauma” and “care” within the liberal discourse today. Liu describes a moral panic among elites where the language of personal therapy attempts to right social and historical wrongs. These topics will be part of her forthcoming book "Traumatized!", to be published by Verso Books early next year.

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Doomscroll 23: Catherine Liu

My guest is Hasan Piker‬, a live streamer and political commentator. We discuss the state of the online left and the massive rightward shift of young men toward Donald Trump and the Republican party.

I sat down with Hasan during his suspension from Twitch. He reads a misleading headline published in the New York Post. Later, we discuss the strategic possibilities of a two party system and explore the paths to socialism in the 21st century.

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Doomscroll 24: Hasan Piker

My guest is Francis Fukuyama, a scholar and political scientist. He is the author of many books. He is most well known for his 1992 work, "The End of History & the Last Man".

Drawing on Hegel and Marx, Fukuyama explores the concept of teleology — the idea that history is a linear process where human societies progress through sequential socioeconomic forms. As Marx famously wrote, Feudalism was replaced by Capitalism and would ultimately be replaced by Socialism. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama argued that western liberal democracy was the final form of human government. His thesis has been updated and revised many times since and remains a frequent subject of debate today.

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Doomscroll 25: Francis Fukuyama

My guest is Aella, a writer, blogger and sex worker. She writes the highly popular blog Knowingless. She is a member of the online community LessWrong.

We discuss the emergence of AI, the sex industry (online and offline), robot gfs and libertarian transhumanism. Aella describes her evangelical religious upbringing and how she learned to navigate the secular world. We explore the overlap of niche online politics and fetishes, the Woke Wars, debate culture and free speech.

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Doomscroll 26: Aella

My guest is Aella. We discuss the psychological and social origins of sexual fetishes, the dark side of internet pornography, and we bring clarity to the online debates around race and IQ. Due to TOS, some of these topics can’t be included on the YouTube episode. Other topics are better kept off of public channels.

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Doomscroll 26.5: Aella

My guest is ‪Tim Heidecker, a comedian, musician and actor. He is a host of Office Hours. You can find him performing live music as 'Tim Heidecker and The Very Good Band'. 

His video work pioneered the style, affect, and genre of new media alt-comedy. We discuss how online irony became today's real world politics. We explore the shift from legacy TV to streaming platforms. How did our media ecosystem shape the politics and culture of today?

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Doomscroll 27: Tim Heidecker

My guest is Tim Heidecker. We discuss his background in music and DIY creative scenes as well as our shared admiration for artist and documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis.

Doomscroll 27.5: Tim Heidecker

My guest is Yancey Strickler, an author and former music critic. He is a co-founder of Metalabel as well as a co-founder and previously the CEO of Kickstarter.

We discuss the new shape of online culture. Dark Forest spaces are gated digital communities, often curated around a specific niche or field of expertise. They represents a retreat from open social media into private spaces, where users may have complex and context-rich conversations.

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Doomscroll 28: Yancey Strickler

My guest is Yancey Strickler. We discuss the theory and practice of content moderation on big platforms. Today, the “terms of service” also necessarily set the parameters of debate and have profound downstream effects on political reality.

Later on, we discuss Yancy’s background as a music critic, his early online record label and his unconventional path to becoming a co-founder of Kickstarter. We breakdown the incentives of platforms to forecast what comes next.

At the end of this episode, we discuss a new project called A-Corps. A-Corps are a lightweight co-operative model for creatives. (TLDR: your band can be an artist co-op.) It’s not software — it’s law. We get into the hard numbers around this and share some war stories about creative life without health insurance.

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Doomscroll 28.5: Yancey Strickler

My guest is Ana Kasparian, a host and executive producer of ‪The Young Turks. We discuss her political journey from progressive to "independent and unaligned". Last year, Kasparian’s commentary took an editorial turn away from left echo-chambers and towards a generalized populism. We pay respect to the political genius and lasting influence of Michael Brooks.

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Doomscroll 29: Ana Kasparian

We dive into Ana’s background and formative experiences on TYT. We discuss the horseshoe theory meme and I float a strategic argument: “the neoliberal case for single payer healthcare” lol.

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Doomscroll 29.5: Ana Kasparian

My guest is Krystal Ball, a political commentator and a co-host of ‪Breaking Points. We discuss the seismic shift of American politics and our hard breaks to the right and left. We explore Zohran Mamdani's historic win in NYC and the ways in which the internet become real life. How do online audiences correlate to real world political coalitions? 

This episode marks the first year of the show. 

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Doomscroll 30: Krystal Ball

Krystal and I explore the looming threat of AI, transhumanism and solve “the Elon Musk situation”. We ask; what is the left-wing version of tariffs? And why should the left support economic protectionism?

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Doomscroll 30.5: Krystal Ball

My guest is Kyle Kulinski, a YouTuber and political commentator. He is the host of the Kyle Kulinkski show. We discuss the success of the online right and ask what the left might learn from right-wing shitposters. We explore the breakdown of liberal norms and the shattering of the Overton window. American politics has become increasingly radical in the last eight years. We ask; what new formation of the DNC might follow?

Last week’s horrific events have sent a shock wave through our politics, media and culture. We want to acknowledge the tragic murder of Charlie Kirk. He is mentioned briefly in this episode that was recorded at an earlier date.

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Doomscroll 31: Kyle Kulinski

We discuss Kyle’s early origins on YouTube, the New Atheism movement and his formative encounters with the work of Noam Chomsky and Richard Dawkins (this is real). Later, we explore the peculiar landscape of YouTube and how platforms shape political factions today.

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Doomscroll 31.5: Kyle Kulinski

My guest is Emily Jashinsky, a political commentator and a co-host of Breaking Points. We discuss the shifting factions of the America right; Fusionism, Populism, Monarchy, Trad, MAHA, Catholicism, Crypto-anarchy and more. Many viewers will be familiar with the infamous “Bernie to Trump” pipeline but less will be aware of the Trotskyite origins of certain canonized thinkers on the New Right.

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Doomscroll 32: Emily Jashinsky

We discuss the darker elements of the New Right and a variety of niche thinkers and ideologies. We explore the woke black lash, tariffs and the brewing conflict between crypto and nationalism. Later, we speculate about 21st century exit politics and the “internet driver’s license”.

Doomscroll 32.5: Emily Jashinsky

My guest is ‪TaylorLorenz‬, a journalist and content creator. She is the author of “Extremely Online”. We discuss social media influencers, the Democratic party and dark money. How does today’s memetic landscape help to shape real world politics? Can we preserve freedom of speech in an increasingly authoritarian environment?

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Doomscroll 33: Taylor Lorenz

We explore Taylor’s background, how she became politicized and her vision for a free and open internet. I am trolling about the techno-deterministic teleological inevitability of StateBook — its monarchy vs WeChat and there’s nothing in between. I don’t make the rules.

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Doomscroll 33.5: Taylor Lorenz

My guest is Dr. Mike Israetel, a PhD in Sport Physiology and a co-founder of ‪Renaissance Periodization‬. We discuss RFK, seed oils, endocrine disruptors, xenoestrogens and every other “based” twitter health meme in your news feed. We explore Dr. Mike’s background growing up in the crumbling Soviet Union and his life-changing encounter with libertarian philosophy. Later, we investigate the so-called pipeline between far right politics and weight-lifting. Is there any truth to this narrative?

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Doomscroll 34: Mike Israetel

Dr. Mike joins me to explore the “enhanced games”, a Peter Thiel backed Olympic-style competition that allows athletes to use performance enhancing drugs. We discuss tariffs, US competition with China and Dr. Mike’s philosophical background and influences.

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Doomscroll 34.5: Mike Israetel

Artist and internet culture writer.
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Doomscroll with Joshua Citarella

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