Reckless Monetization, Surveillance Kleptocracy, & Olivia Snow’s Villain Origin Story

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Here at Quarry Farm, in 1876, Mark Twain composed and self-published a pornographic farce in mock Elizabethan prose which featured several of the most esteemed literary figures in the British canon. It was taboo. It was satire. It was indicative of Twain’s tendency to be amused, frustrated, even enraged by the euphemisms and pruderies erected of sexual discourse in the Gilded Age United States. He recognized it was not simple decorum, but a discriminatory double standard for women and an excuse for arbitrary censorship and coercion in the culture industry.

In her introduction to the Oxford edition of Twain’s 1601, the feminist critic and erotic novelist, Erica Jong, writes, “After many brave battles for the freedom to publish, we find that the enemies of freedom have multiplied…This is why the pornographic spirit is always related to unhampered creativity.”

In the third episode of the “Social Problems” series inspired by a year of chaos in social media, we feature a scholar on the vanguard of surveillance in the platform economy.

Olivia Snow is a writer, professor, and dominatrix. She is currently Tech Impact Network Research Fellow at the UCLA Center For Critical Internet Inquiry, before which she was a Tech Impact Research Fellow at NYU’s AI Now Institute. She holds a PhD in American Literature. Her research focuses on the dehumanization of the laboring body under industrial capitalism, the symbiotic relationship between popular imaginings and criminalization of sex work, the surveillance of sex workers by Big Tech, and the violence of financial and social deplatforming. She is writing a series of articles about sex work and surveillance during the Muskification of social media for Wired. [Twitter: @MistressSnowPhD]

Matt Seybold is Associate Professor of American Literature & Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, as well as resident scholar at the Center For Mark Twain Studies, and Founding Director of EC’s Media Studies, Communication, & Design major. He has been primary host and executive producer of The American Vandal Podcast since its launch in October 2020. [Twitter: @MEASeybold]

The theme song for this series is “Social” by the ’90s punk band, Squirtgun, permissions generously granted by Mass Giorgini. Check out Squirtgun’s back catalog at Apple Music or Spotify.

Episode Bibliography:

Zeeshan Aleem, “It Sure Seems Like Elon Musk Is Purging Left-Leaning Twitter Accounts” (MSNBC, 12.5.2022)

Michael David Barbezat, “‘Satanic Worship, Sodomy, & Even Murder’: How Stranger Things Revived The American Satanic Panic of the ’80s” (The Conversation, 7.4.2022)

Heather Berg, Porn Work: Sex, Labor, & Late Capitalism (UNC Press, 2021)

Heather Berg, Michelle Chihara, & Matt Seybold, “Are We All Porn Workers Now?: Gigwork & Radical Flexibility” (The American Vandal, 2.7.2022)

Stephanie Bodoni, “Elon Musk Warned To Keep Putin Propaganda Off Twitter” (Bloomberg, 12.1.2022)

Ian Bogost & Matt Seybold, “The Plausible End of Social Media, Downscaling, & The Latent Celebrity Mindset” (The American Vandal, 11.23.22)

Raisa Bruner, “A Timeline of Elon Musk’s Business Endeavors” (Time, 4.27.2022)

Carole Cadwalladr et al, The Cambridge Analytica Files (The Guardian, 2018)

Maggie Clancy, “Paypal is Widening the Racial Wealth Gap with Discriminatory Practices Against Sex Workers” (KnockLA, 7.9.2020)

E. J. Dickson, “Who’s Allowed To Use AirBnB?” (Rolling Stone, 1.8.2020)

Asia Grace, “Dominatrix Claims DoorDash Banner Her Over Sex Work: ‘It’s Dehumanizing.'” (NY Post, 4.6.2022)

hacking / / hustling

Jeff Horwitz et al, The Facebook Files (Wall Street Journal, 2021)

Jeff Horwitz, “Facebook Parent Meta Cuts Responsible Innovation Team” (Wall Street Journal, 9.8.2022)

Jeff Horwitz & Newley Purnell, “Facebook Services Are Used To Promote Religious Hatred In India, Internal Documents Show” (Wall Street Journal, 10.23.2021)

Erica Jong, “‘Deliberate Lewdness’ & The Lure of Immorality” in 1601, & Is Shakespeare Dead? (Oxford, 1996)

Robery Mackey & Micah Lee, “Left-Wing Voices Are Silenced on Twitter as Far-Right Trolls Advise Elon Musk” (The Intercept, 11.29.2022)

Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. Do they hate free speech in America?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 28, 2022

Billy Procida, “Twitter Should Cash In On Adult Content” (Mashable, 11.29.2022)

Sarah T. Roberts & Matt Seybold, “The Collapse of Twitter, Cyberlibertarianism, & Commercial Content Moderation” (The American Vandal, 11.18.2022)

Elon is a creative accountant who rebranded himself as an engineer. Like any fintech grifter, he lives in perpetual fear of liquidity crises, like the one he now faces.

Most prognosticators I’m seeing predict one of two things.

1/8
— Matt Seybold (@MEASeybold) November 9, 2022