Filling the Void

By: Marcus Gilroy-Ware

Narrated by: Nathaniel James

Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's Summary

Filling the Void is a book about how the cultures and psychology of social media use fit within a broader landscape of life under capitalism. It argues that social media use is often a psychological response to the need for pleasure and comfort that results from the stresses of life under postmodern capitalism rather than being a driver of new behaviours, as newer technologies are often said to be. Both the explosive growth of social media and the corresponding reconfiguration of the web from an information-based platform into an entertainment-based one are far more easily explained in terms of the subjective psychological experience of their users as capitalist subjects seeking 'depressive hedonia', the book argues.

Filling the Void also interrogates the role of social media networks, designed for private commercial gain, as part of a de facto public sphere. Both the decreasing subjective importance of factual media and the ways in which the content of the time line are quietly manipulated - often using labour in the developing world and secret algorithms - have potentially serious implications for the capacity of social media users to query or challenge the seeming reality offered by the established hegemonic order.

©2017 Marcus Gilroy-Ware (P)2017 Audible, Ltd

more of a book about politics and capitalism

It's not a bad listen at all. This guy has put a LOT of work into this (it was originally intended to be a PhD thesis) and if you're looking at reasons to hate social media you'll find them no problem. He also hates Thatcher, capitalism and the NYSE. He references every statement, and the book at times comes across a bit dry when listened to. I feel this would make a phenomenal textbook.

Great book. Bad reading

Seriously, if your gonna get this, read the book and dont listen to it. it sounds like a boy reading it for the 1st time at school.

poorly read

To give the book an overall bad score would be unjust to say the least as the content is excellent and groundbreaking, however my consumption of such outstanding material was often disrupted by what can only be described as a terrible performance by the reader. I would gladly purchase this audiobook again if it was to be re-read by someone else as I am sure I missed vast swathes of the content whilst trying to unpick the muddled mess the reader got himself into. I almost gave up on it many times.

Great Content, Poorly Read

I was really looking forward to this book, and will probably have to buy a physical copy, as this is just painful. The research within it is compelling, but the narration is painfully monotone. Such a shame.

interesting book ruined by dreadful narration.

Good book with an interesting perspective in social media. Sadly ruined by the narrator, who continually mispronounces words, stops halfway through sentences and uses emphasis in appropriately. It is as if he is reading the book aloud for the first time and gets lost in longer sentences. Shame, because the book itself is worth reading.