Presented by the Centre for Cinema Studies and Cinema Thinks the World, the Critical Thinkers Series features research talks by notable and emerging scholars in Cinema and Media Studies. Join us for the first talk in the Spring Series by Dr. Danielle Wong, Assistant Professor in UBC’s Department of English Language and Literatures.
No Fun: Asianness and the Ruined Internet
These days, being online is not much fun. Today’s ruined internet is often characterized by the integration of machine-learning into everyday networks—the “TikTokification” of social media being a thinly veiled racial narrative about how genuine, creative fun became the tedium or hellscape of algorithmic feeds. Wong’s talk will examine the “no fun Asian” as a racial dimension of this contemporary story of the internet, where cyber Cold War anxieties underscore algorithmic society and elide how the history of machine learning emerges from colonial and imperialist logics about the ludic Other. Turning to memetic TikTok dances and a history of amusement in early computing, this talk approaches discourses about the ruined internet as an opportunity for a more critical examination of algorithmic fun as racial affect and as potential formulae for protest.
About Dr. Danielle Wong:
Danielle Wong is Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia. Prior to joining UBC’s Department of English Language and Literatures, she was a postdoctoral associate in the Asian American Studies Program at Cornell University.
Her research and teaching interests focus on historical and contemporary relationships between race, Empire, and “new” technologies. Her current book project examines Asian North American new media productions and performances, and traces a genealogy of “virtual Asianness” by analyzing how Asian North American racialization has, and continues to be, interwoven with shifting concepts of mediation and virtuality. She is also a faculty affiliate of the Asian Canadian and Migration Studies Program at UBC.
This event is free and there is no need to RSVP.
