Cultural Criticism

Algorithms as Authors: Rethinking Critical Theory for the Age of the Infinite Scroll

Classical critical theory was built for a world of bounded texts, stable authors, and legible ideological structures. Social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram have scrambled all three categories, producing meaning through computational processes that resist conventional semiotic and discourse analysis. This article maps the emerging theoretical vocabulary scholars are developing to make sense of algorithmic culture as a system of power, narrative, and control.

Jul 25, 2026

Sixty Seconds of Foucault: The Promise and Peril of Critical Theory's Viral Moment

Critical theory has escaped the seminar room—and it did so through an algorithm. On TikTok and adjacent platforms, concepts drawn from Foucault, Marx, Judith Butler, and bell hooks now circulate among millions of users who have never encountered a university syllabus. This opinion piece interrogates what this viral dispersal actually means for intellectual culture: whether it represents a genuine democratization of critical thought or a process of flattening that ultimately serves the same atten

Jul 25, 2026