[mostly_a_lurker]

> neither reading nor lurking are ever passive acts. In fact, readers of social media are making decisions and taking grassroots actions on multiple dimensions. Unpacking this understudied phenomenon, Just Here for the Comments: Lurking as Digital Literacy Practice (Bristol UP, 2024) by Gina Sipley challenges the conventional perspective of what counts as participatory online culture. Presenting lurking as a communication and literacy practice that resists dominant power structures, it offers an innovative approach to digital qualitative methods [...]

Something is a bit strange about this presentation. "Grassroots" is not the opposite of "passive", and likewise "participatory" is not the same thing as resisting dominant power structures. If anything, since lurking is something most people do most of the time, that would suggest it is first and foremost a conventional rather than radical activity (I mean this both literally and in terms of the implied political positioning of the typical internet lurker).

In any case, something can be understudied and worth studying, interesting or uninteresting, and worthy of celebration or not, whether or not it resists dominant power structures. If it turned out most people lurked because they were usually using the internet for information rather than action, and that it had nothing to do with resisting power structures, that would still be worth studying simply because it would be a major aspect of how people use the internet.

[rendaw]

"Taking ... actions" is the opposite of "passive". "participatory" seems to be about not being passive and is not connected to the next sentence.

Re: resisting dominant power structures, I think you'd have to read "Just here for the Comments" to know why she suggests it's a political move. The text here describes it without presenting the actual arguments I think.

Or at least, that's what I got from it.

[digging]

Yeah, to be honest this is a baffling description. I'm probably similar to a kind of person they're talking about and I genuinely do not understand what they're trying to say about my lurking practices.

[sctb]

This is about as bog standard as it gets for academic language in the humanities. For example:

> But neither reading nor lurking are ever passive acts.

These acts are indeed passive, relative to the active counterpart of writing or speaking. A basic academic move is to reframe a concept in a more abstract, generalized, and artificial context, within which you can argue pretty much anything. The more insane and counterintuitive the argument sounds, the more stylish and impactful it's perceived to be. "Understudied" means that no-one has yet marketed this particular flavour combination of intellectual schlock.

They're not actually talking about your lurking practices.

[ogurechny]

Anyone can make such moves.

The idea that reading is not passive is not at all original. After all, authors are not “active” (and often do not exist), and books can't read themselves. A reader's head is needed for anything at all to happen, and that's the only “active” part at a given moment. There's enough words written about what's happening on the receiving side, the mirror of someone's “creative process”.

So called “passive consumption” should be defined as repetition of the usual, unchallenging, satisfying work (as opposed to trying hard to understand something). I have no idea what the book is about, but it must better be critical to a swindling which turns human beings into “dumb masses” instead of being based on it.

Also, there's mechanical reproduction side to it. Recorded music might be inferior to a concert in some ways, same with printed pictures and photos. But written text is also only a 2D projection of a conversation or performance. Many thinkers in human history wrote very little, and even actively disdained written accounts of their words. This is how that active-passive rift can be bridged.

[veyh]

They probably want you to buy the book to find out.