Beyond Growth co-founder Eric Schiller will give a presentation titled “Digital Hipsterism: Anti-intellectual Movements in Social Media” at EsoZone Portland 2011 on November 18. Here’s Eric’s description of the talk:

In this talk I will explore how social media technology has facilitated the creation of loose ‘internet cults’, and how they are used to influence their followers. I will analyze elements of the lifestyle design movement, Hacker News, and Reddit to further the thesis that social media portrays itself as a transparent means of communication yet in reality is anything but. Using the notion of ‘Digital Hipsterism’ to unmask the authoritarian and anti-intellectual core of these movements, I will demonstrate how depth of research and well reasoned arguments are not valued, but merely the appearance of depth is regarded as the ideal truth.

Eric is a part-time social critic and philosopher. When not writing snarky essays, he works as a freelance web designer and developer in Seattle.

Eric’s essay on digital hipsterism can be found here. You can read the Technoccult interview with Eric and his collaborator Duff McDuffee here.