Author: sjef van beers

Introduction: What Was I Looking At Again?

It’s 2026 and if you’re feeling overwhelmed, you’re not alone. Over the past decade, the structure of social media has changed completely.… Read More

Job application for you, bitch!

Tara Kelton

Tara Kelton does a deep dive into Job Job Job Sahur, the AI-slop character born from TikTok comments telling Italian brainrot creators to “get a job”… Read More

Tara Kelton is an Indian-American artist based in Bangalore whose practice centers on informal digital labor in platform economies – the invisible human effort that sustains supposedly automated systems. Kelton embeds herself within the platforms she critiques: from co-creating with image production studios in India, to collaborative experiments with Uber drivers, to reimagining how search engines function. Kelton’s work has been featured and supported by Hyundai Artlab, New Museum, ZKM Karlsruhe, distant.gallery, Institute of Network Cultures, Tiat, ICA Singapore, and the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. Kelton is a Y12 member at NEW INC, in collaboration with Rhizome, and she is co-editor of Silicon Plateau, a publishing series that explores the intersection of technology, culture and society in Bangalore.

I Unlocked My Wallpaper So I Could See My Life, But Then I Unlocked My Life So I Could See My Wallpaper

Livia Giannotti

Every day, when Livia Giannotti opens her laptop, she gets interrupted. Before she can even reach for her phone while it loads, there it is: her daily Windows wallpaper… Read More

Livia Giannotti is a journalist and writer currently based in London. Her journalistic work has appeared in The Guardian, Huck Magazine, the New Statesman Media Group publications, Noctis Magazine, and more. She also writes for Airwars, where she works on assessments of civilian harm in Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and Iran. As an independent writer, she writes about music, silence and reality… well, realities.

🍭🍬 Order your candy! 🍬🍭

Your feed is designed to be just as addictive as candy. To celebrate our upcoming symposium The New Orality, we’re putting together free candy goodie bags. Order your candy here,Read More

SLOWwwww- – . . 

Socrates Stamatatos

Socrates Stamatatos uses slowness as a subversive response to the elitism and exclusion embedded in accelerationist thought.… Read More

Socrates Stamatatos is an independent curator and transdisciplinary artist based in Athens. Their curatorial, artistic and theoretical pursuits engage deeply with the queer experience and the philosophy of caring, focusing on the empowerment of marginalized communities through the use of digital technologies for connectivity and community building. They hold a BA in Theory and History of Arts. They have shown their work and contributions of various disciplines independently and in collaboration with a variety of art and cultural institutions, including Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam, Aksioma in Ljubljana, panke.gallery in Berlin, Onassis ONX/AiR in Athens and die Angewandte University of Applied Arts in Vienna-to name a few. They are also a Culture Moves Europe 2025 fellow.

Thinking Face Emoji – Episode 1: Girlboss, Through the Years

In this inaugural episode of Thinking Face Emoji, Margarita Osipian and Sjef van Beers from The Hmm, are joined by Sam Cummins, of Nymphet Alumni, to discuss the girlboss.… Read More

Thinking Face Emoji – Episode 2: Sigma Male, or How Incel Terms Went Mainstream

In this episode Salome Berdzenishvili, from the Institute of Network Cultures, and Sjef van Beers, from The Hmm, talk to Dr. DaniĂ«l de Zeeuw, from the University of Amsterdam, about how terms originally associated with incel and femcel communities seem to have reached the mainstream.… Read More

Thinking Face Emoji – Episode 3: Gigachad, or the Surge of Nu-genics

In the third episode of Thinking Face Emoji, Margarita Osipian from The Hmm and researcher Mita Medri, are joined by writer and cultural commentator Ana Sumbo, to discuss the online phenomenon of looksmaxxing.… Read More

Thinking Face Emoji – Episode 4: Sock, the Bushwick enby

In this episode, Maja Mikulska from The Hmm and Anielek Niemyjski from the Institute of Network Cultures are joined by Maya B. Kronic – co-author of Cute Accelerationism – to discuss all things Sock.… Read More

Thinking Face Emoji – Episode 5: Post-Soviet Girl, or the Sad Girl Trope

In the fifth episode of Thinking Face Emoji, Margarita Osipian from The Hmm and Anielek Niemyjski from the Institute of Network Cultures are joined by writer and independent researcher SalomeRead More

Thinking Face Emoji – Episode 6: The Future of Girlhood

In the sixth and last episode of the season we delve into the future of girlhood in online culture. Since 2023, the so-called “year of the girl” with trends likeRead More

Data Centre Tour 2024

Presentation Marloes Presentation Lars Presentation Leo Jitsi call Please fill out our survey Subscribe to our newsletter Follow and join the Hmm on:📷 Instagram👔 LinkedIn📬 Telegram👾 Discord Unrelated to theRead More

Introduction

How did we end up with our current feeds?… Read More

I’ve Got the Need — the Need to Feed

Jason Scott

Historian of technology Jason Scott dives into the history of the feed… Read More

Jason Scott is the founder of TEXTFILES.COM, a 25 year old library of BBS history. He’s also the software curator of the Internet Archive, one of our favourite places on the web.

The Perfect Feed workshop results

The outcomes of the workshop we did with RGBdog… Read More

Beyond Named Interactions

Yehwan Song

Web artist Yehwan Song presents new interaction models in her Image Contribution to this dossier… Read More

Yehwan is a web artist and designer who creates anti-friendly, nonuser centric, unconventional, and diverse independent websites and tries to flip the general understandings of web design and subvert users’ behaviors. She believes that digital discomfort comes from a lack of consideration of diversity and the deprivation of care. Link

The Hmm’s Data Centre Field Trip – Files & Links

🚌 Please fill in our survey 👾 The Hmm @ REBOOT 🗞️ Subscribe to our email newsletter   🤳 Follow us on Instagram 💬 Join our Discord server  📬 SubscribeRead More

Inside the Metaverse Experiments of Babusi Nyoni

Sjef van Beers interviews Babusi Nyoni about his experiments creating a decentralised metaverse. … Read More

Instructions for The Hmm IN Gaming Spaces

We’re excited to have you joining for The Hmm IN Gaming Spaces on Wednesday. Ů©(◕‿◕。)۶ During this tour we’ll explore the social impact, possibilities, and power of gaming spaces by touring differentRead More

Introduction

What are the consequences of being financially dependent on creating content on social media for both the people and the content in this ecosystem? … Read More