AI Summary
5 min readIn 1688, after England’s Glorious Revolution, the nobility lost political and cultural power while new wealth flooded in from the colonies. Suddenly, there was a new bourgeoisie with money but no guidance on how to consume virtuously. This vacuum gave birth to the concept of taste—not as personal preference, but as a moral framework for handling abundance without wrecking society. Today, NYU professor and cyber ethnographer Ruby Thelot argues we are in an analogous moment, facing an industrial revolution of intelligence and capabilities. Taste, he says, is the question of how to deal with this abundance so it does not destroy us.
What a Cyber Ethnographer Actually Does
Thelot describes himself as someone who studies groups of people online—how they behave, what they do, and the novel social norms they create. His research ranges from furries to Instagram users. For a recent piece, he asked five hundred people what an Instagram story like meant to them, building a lexicon of three categories: content appreciation, romantic affiliation, or friendship continuation. With the Mozilla Foundation, he studied the new “close friends” feature, asking who gets let in and what that label means for a relationship.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **The AI Language Gap** - Americans claim to dislike "AI" but actively use tools like ChatGPT, revealing a disconnect between the boogeyman of job loss and practical, everyday utility.
- 2 (01:44) **Defining the Cyber Ethnographer** - The guest explains his role as someone who studies groups of people online, from furries to Instagram users, to build language around novel digital behaviors.
- 3 (03:29) **The Acceleration of Digital Culture** - The field of cyber ethnography is not new, but the rapid shipping of features makes it harder to research the behavioral changes they cause.
- 4 (04:51) **Separating Real Trends from Algorithmic Illusions** - The hardest part of the job is distinguishing a genuine social phenomenon from a few viral TikToks that feel bigger than they are.
- 5 (07:45) **The Rise of Plural Culture and Balkanization** - We have moved from a monoculture to a "plural culture" with many active, generative cultural epicenters that are often isolated from each other.
- 6 (10:57) **Algorithmic and Machine Capture** - Creators are now caught in a three-legged waltz between their human audience, the platform algorithm, and an increasingly bot-driven audience.
- 7 (14:26) **Why Are There No New Mass Aesthetics?** - New aesthetics exist, but they are not becoming mass culture because the culture industry has been fully financialized and is risk-averse.
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Show Notes
Sophia Dew and Sofia Puccini are joined by Ruby Thelot, designer, artist, cyberethnographer, professor at NYU, and founder of 13101401, for a wide-ranging conversation about internet culture, AI, digital communities, and how technology is reshaping the way we relate to one another.
Drawing on years of research into online behavior, Ruby explains how digital cultures form, why algorithms shape more than just what we see, and what AI is changing about creativity, communication, and identity. They discuss cyberethnography, online subcultures, "machinic taste," AI companions, social norms, internet language, and why Americans often say they dislike AI—even as they increasingly rely on it in everyday life.
Resources:
Follow Ruby X: https://x.com/being_on_line
Substack: https://beingonline.substack.com/
Follow Sophia on X: https://x.com/sophiadew
Follow Sofia on X: https://x.com/schisofrenia
Follow MTS on X: https://x.com/mtslive
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