The Aesthetics and Politics of the Online Self
A Savage Journey into the Heart of Digital Cultures

1. Introduction -- 2. Authentic Actions Within Network Algorithms -- 3. Can the Dividual Self Be Organized? -- 4. The Divided Subject – New Forms of the Online Self Regarding “Hate Speech” -- 5. Personalities Without People -- 6. Art Entr’acte I -- 7. Militant Proximity: Digital Cameras and State Violence in Israel/Palestine -- 8. Observations on Potency and Self -- 9. Aesthetics by Algorithms: Sovereignty and Disappearance in Palestine -- 10. Selfies as Augmentation of Reality -- 11. Perspective Collectives of the Shared Self -- 12. Art Entr’acte II -- 13. Saving Anonymous -- 14. Anyone-subjectivity and the Grotesque Media Body: Alternative Configurations of the Online Self on the Deep Vernacular Web -- 15. Selfie Communism -- 16. Networked Participation: Selfie Protest and Ephemeral Public Spheres -- 17. Heretical Facial Machines, or the Ambivalence of Faciality in the Politics of Digital Dissent of Anonymous -- 18. Art Entr’acte III.

This volume investigates our dissonant and exuberant existence online. As social media users, we know we’re under surveillance, yet we continue to click, like, love and share ourselves online as if nothing was. So, how do we overcome the current online identity regime? Can we overthrow the rule of Narcissus and destroy the planetary middle class subject? In this catalogue of strategies, the reader will find stories on hacker groups, gaming platforms in the occupied territories, art objects, selfies, augmented reality, Gen Z autoethnographies, love and life. The authors of this anthology believe we cannot simply put vanity aside. A rational analysis of platform capitalism is not going to convince the TikTok youngsters nor liberate us from Zuckerbergian indentured servitude. Do we really need to wade through the subjective mud and ‘learn more’ about online aesthetics? The answer is yes.