When you are contemplating what to cover at the annual SXSW interactive festival in Austin, Texas, it’s nice to have a choice of a session that includes, “We Are What We Click: The Dark Side of Sideboobs.”
Soylent, Selfies and Sideboobs -- Yes, Re/code Meerkats SXSW (Even if Twitter Tries to Stop Us)
It’s time for the annual festival of whatever.
“This panel will provide a horrifying view of humanity, based on click trends,” reads the description. “What if we are what we read online? What if the measure of a person is, in fact, their browser history? That’s a scary thought, because we know what you click on, and it tends to be the stupidest stuff you can find. Face it, your reptilian brain controls your clicking finger.”
There is a BuzzFeed staffer on the panel, of course, which is presented by the Knight Foundation.
There’s also “Speaking Duckface to Power: Selfies and Activism,” which is actually very serious. “From the Syrian Jihadist #selfies to the recent #selfie rallies conducted on social media websites in solidarity with various economic, political, and social issues around the world, taking and sharing #selfies have turned into a popular form of visual expression and activism in the digital networked era.” reads the description. “Aside from revisiting the historical dichotomy between the private and the public within the feminist discourse, the conversation will also trace the global history of portraiture in the arts and photography from the 19th C to the drug cartel #selfies of present day Mexico to self-shot and uploaded close-up orgasms on indie-porn sites.”
Woah, this is a little bit more than a selfie stick.
And, of course, there’s Soylent, whose founder Rob Rhinehart is appearing at “Sustainable Food Production Through Biotechnology”, in a session that notes that “food is hardware.”
We’ll cover all this and more and also will chitchat with live video streaming service Meerkat, which got whacked by Twitter just as SXSW kicks off by limiting the ability of users to link to their followers. The social communications giant just bought a competitor, by the way.
Call it the dark side of Twitter.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
