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The Circle of the Snake: Nostalgia and Utopia in the Age of Big Tech
Shocked by 9/11, the Great Recession, digital anxiety, and ecological collapse, the West suffers from nostalgia. People everywhere yearn for a utopian version of the past that never existed. Desperate for relief, many long to escape from the present. Some will stop at nothing to achieve it. In his essential new book, Grafton Tanner, author of Babbling Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts, argues that our nostalgia today is partly a consequence of the attention economy. At a time when historical literacy is crucial, and old prejudices are percolating into the present, Big Tech’s predictive algorithms are locking us into nostalgic feedback loops. The result is a precarious society with its gaze fixed on the good old days. Spanning from the ancient Sophists to Black Mirror, The Circle of the Snake is at once a reckoning with the myth of digital utopia and an incisive analysis of nostalgia as a weapon to spread fascism.
176 pages, Paperback
Published December 11, 2020
About the author
Grafton Tanner
6 books85 followersGrafton Tanner is the author of The Hours Have Lost Their Clock: The Politics of Nostalgia, The Circle of the Snake: Nostalgia and Utopia in the Age of Big Tech, and Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts. His work has appeared in NPR, The Nation, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Real Life. He also hosts Delusioneering, an audio series about the myths of capitalism, and he writes and performs music with his band Superpuppet.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
February 21, 2021
overall an interesting and fairly accessible exploration of nostalgia and big tech (though the parts about nostalgia were imo more insightful). the one major drawback is that this book is quite unfocused -- incredibly so at times -- which is almost impressive considering how short this book is.
December 4, 2020
This is really exciting and engaging but then at the end it's like "we're fucked" and I was like Uh oh
March 22, 2023
This work, with its promise of unlocking obscure but pivotal psychic/technological patterns of the time in which we live in a theoretically sophisticated leftist way (and it's cool title) raised one big question in me: who the hell runs the ship at Zero Books? As far as I can tell, their editorial policy is to publish anyone willing to call themselves a leftist who might irritate some notional “establishment” left figure, an archetypal overeducated bluenose and likely Trotskyite… actually, that description sounds a lot like the reputation of Sebastian Budgen, one of the head honchos of Verso, Zero’s rival and much more established lefty publisher. What this means is they seem to publish two categories: incoherent sloppily-edited edgy/contrarian/presenting nonsense, and stuff by Maoists, who, say what you want about them, will at least put the work in to produce something that hangs together in its own terms. And I’m pretty sure Grafton Tanner is not a Maoist.
I didn’t even really disagree with this book that much, but it’s just bad- poorly written, poorly argued, massively inflated portentous claims that ultimately amount to very little. It’s just sloppy, bush league, and in that respect is similar to another flagship property of this prominent leftist publisher, Angela Nagle’s alt-right explainer “Kill All Normies.” Tanner mercifully doesn’t ax-grind like Nagle, and one doesn’t easily picture him paling around with Tucker Carlson, but Nagle’s various hatreds also occasionally gave her work focus this book could have sorely used.
The stupid thing is this would probably make a pretty good article at Jacobin, and the sad reality seems to be that Zero Books’ business model is “Jacobin articles, blown up to book size, and with even less editorial oversight and basic proofreading than would obtain at a fairly small socialist magazine.” The internet, Tanner informs us, runs on engagement, engagement runs on feeling, and a common feeling in an era of rapid, uncomfortable, and often objectively unfortunate change is nostalgia. Social media companies, especially, keep you on their sites by encouraging feelings you already have, so they help put nostalgia on your stream. You hit “like,” they deliver more, on and on. Among other things, this has the unfortunate effect of causing people to yearn for a lost golden age (which didn’t really exist), vote for people and projects that exacerbate their problems while promising to deliver said age, make them more scared, which makes them more nostalgic… etc etc.
Seems true enough! But, we don’t get anything like a deep dive, or even an adequate explainer, of how any of this actually works. That’s hard, I know, given that these companies are quite secretive about what they do. But like… you could try. Try some investigative journalism! I know this dude teaches “communications studies” or something and they’re not trained in anything so pedestrian (or, you know, useful), but you could at least make some calls, see if an engineer will spill anything over a drink or two. Or you could try to understand and explain the dynamics of nostalgia in a more sophisticated way than noting that that one song about “turning back time to the good old days” expresses it, as though anyone who ever heard that once-ubiquitous shitty ditty would find this to be any kind of a revelation. But no. Meanwhile, a lot of the writing is clunky on the sentence level and all of it is portentous on the paragraph/chapter level. In short, this book would make an ok article, but its true form should probably be a Facebook comment circa 2017 with a dozen-odd likes. *’
I didn’t even really disagree with this book that much, but it’s just bad- poorly written, poorly argued, massively inflated portentous claims that ultimately amount to very little. It’s just sloppy, bush league, and in that respect is similar to another flagship property of this prominent leftist publisher, Angela Nagle’s alt-right explainer “Kill All Normies.” Tanner mercifully doesn’t ax-grind like Nagle, and one doesn’t easily picture him paling around with Tucker Carlson, but Nagle’s various hatreds also occasionally gave her work focus this book could have sorely used.
The stupid thing is this would probably make a pretty good article at Jacobin, and the sad reality seems to be that Zero Books’ business model is “Jacobin articles, blown up to book size, and with even less editorial oversight and basic proofreading than would obtain at a fairly small socialist magazine.” The internet, Tanner informs us, runs on engagement, engagement runs on feeling, and a common feeling in an era of rapid, uncomfortable, and often objectively unfortunate change is nostalgia. Social media companies, especially, keep you on their sites by encouraging feelings you already have, so they help put nostalgia on your stream. You hit “like,” they deliver more, on and on. Among other things, this has the unfortunate effect of causing people to yearn for a lost golden age (which didn’t really exist), vote for people and projects that exacerbate their problems while promising to deliver said age, make them more scared, which makes them more nostalgic… etc etc.
Seems true enough! But, we don’t get anything like a deep dive, or even an adequate explainer, of how any of this actually works. That’s hard, I know, given that these companies are quite secretive about what they do. But like… you could try. Try some investigative journalism! I know this dude teaches “communications studies” or something and they’re not trained in anything so pedestrian (or, you know, useful), but you could at least make some calls, see if an engineer will spill anything over a drink or two. Or you could try to understand and explain the dynamics of nostalgia in a more sophisticated way than noting that that one song about “turning back time to the good old days” expresses it, as though anyone who ever heard that once-ubiquitous shitty ditty would find this to be any kind of a revelation. But no. Meanwhile, a lot of the writing is clunky on the sentence level and all of it is portentous on the paragraph/chapter level. In short, this book would make an ok article, but its true form should probably be a Facebook comment circa 2017 with a dozen-odd likes. *’
March 4, 2023
This fast read worked pretty well as a last assignment for a graduate seminar in Emergent Digital Cultures that I'm teaching. It informed conversations that looped back to the beginning of our course, which started with Walter Benjamin's "Work of the Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." It was helpful to have Tanner citing Benjamin's classic essay. Tanner's book helped to generate some good conversation as we remixed Benjamin's desire to outline some theses of art that would prove useless for fascism by considering some theses of art useless to Big Tech. But ultimately, this book was less helpful than other recent readings -- Ruha Benjamin's "Race After Technology" and Legacy Russell's "Glitch Feminism." Just pair up Tanner's adoption/endorsement of Sherry Turkle's "Alone Together" with Russell's sharp critique of Turkle, and you'll get a good sense of which book may be better equipped at helping address the dangers and potential of making digital art in the belly of Big Tech.
I wanted so badly to be able to comprehend Tanner's looping, repetitive style here as a way of formally integrating the "circle of the snake," but instead, the writing here tends to come across as not finally crafted, unedited, and so it's merely repetitive rather than creatively or critically so. I appreciated Tanner's jumping around among pop culture artifacts, though by the last couple of chapters, I could no longer tell that these were advancing nuances within the overall analysis; rather, they simply served to allow Tanner to reiterate the same point. And this point -- that the interlinking nature of nostalgia and utopia generally plays into the hands of Big Tech and rightwing white supremacist nationalisms, and that the solution to the problems of Big Tech is to break up Big Tech -- simply doesn't stand up to so much repetition, to being the idea that we just keep coming back to, rather than really addressing more of the complexities of everything involved. This lack of conceptual development ultimately renders the tone of the book hopeless and fatalistic.
I wanted so badly to be able to comprehend Tanner's looping, repetitive style here as a way of formally integrating the "circle of the snake," but instead, the writing here tends to come across as not finally crafted, unedited, and so it's merely repetitive rather than creatively or critically so. I appreciated Tanner's jumping around among pop culture artifacts, though by the last couple of chapters, I could no longer tell that these were advancing nuances within the overall analysis; rather, they simply served to allow Tanner to reiterate the same point. And this point -- that the interlinking nature of nostalgia and utopia generally plays into the hands of Big Tech and rightwing white supremacist nationalisms, and that the solution to the problems of Big Tech is to break up Big Tech -- simply doesn't stand up to so much repetition, to being the idea that we just keep coming back to, rather than really addressing more of the complexities of everything involved. This lack of conceptual development ultimately renders the tone of the book hopeless and fatalistic.
July 9, 2023
Took a little left turn with this one. As a massive fan of Sci-Fi (and, in particular, the retro worlds of Cyberpunk dystopias) I decided it would behoove me to read into some social discourse on our era of digital influence.
The irony of posting my review here, is not lost on me.
A lot of what the author presents in this book are things we have come to hear about more and more in mainstream media: mental health issues arising from social media and tech addiction, the rise of fascist echo chambers, and the scrubbing of less-than-perfect additions to what we portray on social media.
The more unique concepts he puts forth are centered on what is essentially a weaponized nostalgia loop that Big Tech has been promoting over the last decade or so. While, I don’t necessarily agree with this concept, he does present some ideas on nostalgia that are worth giving over to a bit of critical thinking.
The real strength of the book, however, is just as a very black and white reminder of everything we have become entangled (willfully or otherwise) thanks to the swift and total rise of Big Tech in our daily lives.
Ultimately the book gave me a lot to think about. However, some of it came across as bitter whining and I found myself struggling to entertain those ideas. As a warning and stark reminder of where we sit in history, though, it’s a short and concise option that doesn’t bury its points in grandiose or dense writing.
P.S. The book was written in 2019, so I would be really curious to see what the author would say after all of the stuff that has happened since then...
The irony of posting my review here, is not lost on me.
A lot of what the author presents in this book are things we have come to hear about more and more in mainstream media: mental health issues arising from social media and tech addiction, the rise of fascist echo chambers, and the scrubbing of less-than-perfect additions to what we portray on social media.
The more unique concepts he puts forth are centered on what is essentially a weaponized nostalgia loop that Big Tech has been promoting over the last decade or so. While, I don’t necessarily agree with this concept, he does present some ideas on nostalgia that are worth giving over to a bit of critical thinking.
The real strength of the book, however, is just as a very black and white reminder of everything we have become entangled (willfully or otherwise) thanks to the swift and total rise of Big Tech in our daily lives.
Ultimately the book gave me a lot to think about. However, some of it came across as bitter whining and I found myself struggling to entertain those ideas. As a warning and stark reminder of where we sit in history, though, it’s a short and concise option that doesn’t bury its points in grandiose or dense writing.
P.S. The book was written in 2019, so I would be really curious to see what the author would say after all of the stuff that has happened since then...
December 18, 2020
**Good book; just needs a bit more focus**
Chapter three was the most confusing of all the chapters. In what felt like a music review, the author quickly switches topics between music, movies, and the internet.
His reading of Dueleze was the strongest part of the book and I really wish he spent more time doing that.
There were some really odd parts, random mention of incel culture, object oriented language, and really anything relating to the “Big Tech”.
The antidotes included seemed like caricature of capitalism.
Chapter 6, was really the point in which the book was tied together and the conclusion seemed more like a continuation of certain parts of the book rather than an actual conclusion.
Overall, the author has great insight into nostalgia and critical theory. I wish the book would have been constructed a bit different, focusing more on the authors talents (deconstructing texts and applying it to the subject at hand).
Chapter three was the most confusing of all the chapters. In what felt like a music review, the author quickly switches topics between music, movies, and the internet.
His reading of Dueleze was the strongest part of the book and I really wish he spent more time doing that.
There were some really odd parts, random mention of incel culture, object oriented language, and really anything relating to the “Big Tech”.
The antidotes included seemed like caricature of capitalism.
Chapter 6, was really the point in which the book was tied together and the conclusion seemed more like a continuation of certain parts of the book rather than an actual conclusion.
Overall, the author has great insight into nostalgia and critical theory. I wish the book would have been constructed a bit different, focusing more on the authors talents (deconstructing texts and applying it to the subject at hand).
December 13, 2024
lepiej, ale wciąż trochę brakuje. pierwsza połowa dobrze rozbija technokratyczny, randyczny mit cyfrowej utopii w znakomity sposób, ale późniejsza część zbiega dziwnie w stronę kulturowej analizy konkretnych tekstów kultury, w ładny, zupełnie poprawny sposób i z sercem po dobrej stronie, ale jednak najczęściej powierzchownie.
December 5, 2022
Apart from one chapter where the author discusses the careful nostalgic recreation of the 80s in Stranger Things, there is nothing really insightful here.
If you are literate in tech and its political implications, this simply reads like a series of platitudes.
If you are literate in tech and its political implications, this simply reads like a series of platitudes.
July 12, 2021
Alldeles för ofokuserad och anektodtisk. Synd, då det glimtar till ibland och man inser att författaren någonstans har en intressant skiss över vad han vill berätta.
August 3, 2022
this isn't actually that bad, i've just read way too many books just like this and so the fact that it's so unwieldy just makes it stand out as a bit less impressive.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews