University of Twente Philosophy Lectures 2024-2025
21 November 2024, 15:45-17:30, RA2503 (Reception to follow, hosted by Ideefiks, in LA 2507)
Jon Greenaway
PhD, Gothic Studies, Manchester Metropolitan University
Title: On the Horror Space of the Internet: From haunting to sadism
Abstract: We’re all haunted now — this is just a simple truth of our present age. On the mundane level, this is visible in the multiple selves and multiple versions of selves reflected and represented in our social media profiles. In the wake of the rise of platform capitalism and the ever-encroaching digitisation of our daily lives, we have inevitably and inexorably all become our own ghosts. This talk offers an introduction to horror films in the age of the internet, moving across films like Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse (2001) and Unfriended: Dark Web (2018) to Rob Savage’s Host (2020). Our ever-increasing integration into the digital sphere doesn’t just fracture the subject, but transforms it into a spectral presence that is rearticulated and performed in new ways across all of the platforms we are now tied to. Haunted by what we once were and alienated from one another through the code/space of the web all that is left for us is a collapse into boredom and sadism, endlessly scrolling bored and wired at the same time. In the wake of the rise of AI slop the internet has overwritten even representation and reproducibility of the image. If the internet is a haunted house, it is now decaying and crumbling around us. Can we find a way out?
Bio: Jon Greenaway is a horror expert, and co-host of the leftist film analysis podcast Horror Vanguard. His work has appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times, The Baffler and a host of other online publications.
