Banish your Zoom Gloom with this essential guide to the mediatization of reality and resurgence of fascism! Explore the corporate control of media! Explore Bot Networks, Astroturfing, and Disinformation Degrading Democracy and Reality! Explore the reasons you (probably) touch your phone about 2600 times a day … How your social life came to be mediated by for-profit corporations that have turned sociality into capital … Why your government knows where you are at all times … How corporations know more about you than your friends and partner … How media and new algorithmic architectures foster the consumption of quickly obsolescent things destroying our collective environments … How media overrides the possibilities of democracy to entrench elite and increasingly authoritarian rule … and more! Heads up: this is a difficult class, that will ask you to read a lot and watch difficult things. (It is not a cheerful class.) My “wordy” syllabus sketches out some of the big picture, starting with some of the ideas and history, before shifting to a week-by-week schedule and some of the more practical matters. Probably you will want to keep the syllabus handy and return to it regularly. Finally: terms and conditions apply: your happiness and understanding of the world will be affected & you may find yourself (further) compelled to do something about all this.