A plea to reclaim the internet from addictive platform capitalism. For everyone who wants to scrutinize their own use of the internet and online platforms. From Zoom fatigue to the NFT hype, to online cancel culture and more.

We’re all trapped. No matter how hard you try to delete apps from your phone, the power of seduction draws you back. Doom scrolling is the new normal of a 24/7 online life. What happens when your home office starts to feel like a call center and you’re too fried to log out of Facebook? We’re addicted to large-scale platforms, unable to return to the frivolous age of decentralized networks. How do we make sense of the rising disaffection with the platform condition? Zoom fatigue, cancel culture, crypto art, NFTs and psychic regression comprise core elements of a general theory of platform culture. Geert Lovink argues that we reclaim the internet on our own terms. Stuck on the Platform is a relapse-resistant story about the rise of platform alternatives, built on a deep understanding of the digital slump.

Geert Lovink is a Dutch media theorist, internet critic and author of many books on network culture. In 2004 he founded the Institute of Network Cultures at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA).

Paperback, published in 2022, 240 pages