A review by ralowe
Well, That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes of an Accidental Activist by Franchesca Ramsey

2.0

wow i really decided to put myself in the full force of the attention economy with this one, huh? remember that viral video "shit white girls say to black girls?"ќ well, if you ever wanted a deep dive into not only the origin of that video, but also felt you really needed more background on the play-by-play details of how the anderson cooper show went in HD 60fps, then come get your book. if you didn't, this would be a great ironic stocking stuffer. these are all not serious suggestions. and fuck all the trolls who come for franchesca ramsey, i'm not on their side. i found this book frustrating as a person who is not of the alternate dimension of social media online content creation. come get your representation! the book, as you would expect, is the height of professional craftspersonship, like *pose*, or anything else ryan murphy does, which is why i just can't with ryan murphy, which is perhaps an affect that shares lineage with *glee*, a soft non-offensive aural environment, an affectsphere curated to prevent harm. ryan murphy had nothing to do with this. but somehow everything. conveyor belt discourse. that a market exists for those looking for the most oblique trajectory toward the social is not new, but discourse appears to be accelerating towards a particular hegemonic style that deserves some examination. a representational middle in lieu of resource redistribution. wanting to generate a introductory pedagogy on social issues doesn't sound like a terrible idea, i just worry that hyper-speculation on the audience's capacity and streamlining the procedural efficiency in how these social justice products emerge creates a ton of content for i have no fucking idea who really. the marauding mass of the clueless and underinformed? isn't this stuff everyone kind of already knows? is it dangerous for me to assume that? after we get pass the "shit white girls say"ќ moment, the book tries to fill up the rest of the book with what reads like scripts to segments and bits on social media content creator videos. about 99% of the problems in this book would go away in an EMP burst"У"Уramsey's iteration of the tech-enabling commodity fantasy that nonengagement is a nonoption. the other fallacy that one's self-created celebrity is a burden. being a black girl dating a white boy. what friends to delete from social media. this all plays as an alibi for the tech industrial surround of how we see, think and act. is this hell? these things severely constrict ramsey energy and talent. trapped in the simulated uncanny valley of a corporate personhood where historical disparity is just a heading to a thumbnail on a link waiting to be clicked. interpassivity. would you like to know more?