Posts By: Maurice Dharampal

A Genealogy Of LiveLeak: From Transgressive Teen To Mannered Man

By Maurice Dharampal, June 17, 2021

In early May 2021, the internet lost a controversial yet vital part of its history. Seemingly out of the blue, video hosting platform LiveLeak shut down. It was a staple website for gore content, especially among millennials or other early internet users, and for its information transparency and unrestricted censorship to citizen journalists, whistleblowers and [...]

Will Gaming Become Tomorrow’s Music Stage?

By Maurice Dharampal, May 28, 2021

The pandemic is causing labels to hold out with album rollouts for the time concerts are allowed again. This streamlining of revenue models is quite common but doesn’t sit well with fans. But if there’s one thing this pandemic has shown, is the culture industry’s ability to innovate. Other ways of streamlining business models are [...]

Political Art As Critical Theory In Armand Hammer’s Haram

By Maurice Dharampal, May 20, 2021

‘It’s difficult to write about somebody who is a better writer than you,’ billy woods elucidates. Together with fellow rapper ELUCID, they make up the New York duo Armand Hammer, whose recently released album Haram dotted with lyrical references to literature, Critical Theory, shrewd social and political commentary. As a digital humanities grad student and [...]

A Theory of Digital Hygiene

By Maurice Dharampal, May 12, 2021

…Cleanliness is godliness And God is empty just like me. – Zero by The Smashing Pumpkins (1996) Cleanliness is next to Godliness Since the COVID-19 pandemic, our interaction with the digital has increased to never-before-seen heights. Along with it identity theft, hacks, the ‘misinfodemic’, data breaches, phishing, and other cyber risks all skyrocketed as result. [...]