“Beyond detecting problems in lines of code, Mythos found the seams in the informal social contract that holds the internet together.” Important reminder of all the volunteer coding labor that STILL keeps the internet running (separate from the private platforms). www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/o...
Thanks so much, Claire! 💜💜💜
Awesome! Congrats, Annie!
Thanks! Yes, I have a chapter on "fangirl fiction" which connects online fandom to works by Margaret Atwood and Naomi Alderman
Love it - thanks, Carmen!
Thanks, Xander!
This book is going to be incredible + open up an entire new field of research/inquiry for the literary & cultural studies discipline (grad students take note!). It models an entire new form of cultural criticism that combines close reading + historicism + theory + platform studies. Read her thread!
wow - thank you, Richard. I'm excited for the future (we have one)!
Thanks, Gabe!
This is a genuinely transformative book. It's long overdue for lit scholars to take the internet seriously. Vadde gives us the conceptual apparatus—articulating logics of platforms, Creative Commons, Web 2.0—to do so. Get to it.
🙏🙏🙏 (and I never use this emoji)
And huge thanks to @vauhinivara.bsky.social, @markmcgurl.bsky.social, and @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social for blurbs supporting the book and for the inspiration of their own work!
I'm really excited to have this book (10 years in the making) out in the world and in the company of books by @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social, @richardjeanso.bsky.social, @claireparnell.bsky.social, and others who are bringing the study of platform cultures to life.
By showing readers the historical arc of Web 2.0 through the lens of literary culture, We the Platform makes the case that the internet changed literature (and not always for the worse), but also that literature has the power to change and deepen our perspectives on the internet.
I use literary analysis (close reading!) to offer a complex accounting of the power structures behind Web 2.0 and explain the ways in which writers, artists, and publishers have adapted to and negotiated those power structures to create boldly experimental work in print and on platforms themselves.
The last twenty-five years has seen the explosion of mass writing online (social media posts, forum chatter, fanfic, memes). I show how this new textual abundance has influenced authors writing literary fiction, traditional publishers selling it, critics reviewing it, and scholars studying it.
We the Platform is about the impact of Web 2.0 (aka the "social Web") on contemporary literary fiction. The Web 2.0 version of internet culture emerged circa 2004 and rebranded the web as a "platform" for ordinary people to express themselves and for tech companies to profit from that expression.
We the Platform is available for preorder with the discount code CUP20 if you order directly from the press! cup.columbia.edu/book/we-the-... A thread on the argument below:
A precursor to Alan’s paper on “what constitutes good knowledge in the age of AI” and an incredible overview of the discourse unfolding across disciplines
Come hear him talk all about it at Duke tomorrow!
That's more than one book for every 100 Americans published last year. The median American read two books each year. If we up production a little more, say x200, totally manageable with AI, we can have enough for each of us to read two no one else reads www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...
New paper w/ @teddyroland.bsky.social on "How fiction powers generative AI systems." We designed a computational experiment to test the impact of the vast amount of fiction in LLM training data on how LLMs communicate, w/ implications for both AI design + literary theory. arxiv.org/abs/2603.01220
“what publishers have to sell in an AI economy isn’t just text but judgment. The content can be dissolved into weights or assembled into someone else’s context. The expertise — the capacity to evaluate, certify, and set the standard —cannot.” Great nuts and bolts piece on publisher-platform nexus
Yay, Sarah! I’m glad you feel seen 😂, and truly think the book is fantastic 💜
y'all !!!!
I love that the blurbs are basically like, "listen, she is never not telling you about some bleak shit" 😍❤️🔥 (thank you @aarthivadde.bsky.social and @markmcgurl.bsky.social)
New essay about some creeps, contemporary and canonical, in the history of the novel. I'm thinking about the nexus of the romance plot, commercial surveillance, and "the desire of the other." DM me for a PDF!
I loved this piece on James Patterson because it shows how strange authorship is, how well Patterson understands celebrity in adjacent markets to books, and how such savvy has rendered him an important patron of literature with a capital L. Plus, Vauhini followed the money to a masters thesis!
Hear me out, @npr.org... new weekly show featuring authors, editors, agents, publishers, prize judges, fanfic aficionados, TV scouts, and READERS of all kinds. It's called "BookTalk" and you've already got your new host IN STUDIO!
