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Robin Youngman

@robinyoungman.bsky.social
779 followers 2.8K following 874 posts

Avid film watcher. Obsessed with 1970s Hollywood, and the Japanese New Wave. Enjoys feel-bad art across genres and mediums. ESL teacher in Asia for nine years. Writing a novel about life and film in Taipei. Leftist, interested in democracy preservation.

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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Sometimes you know from an actor's work that they were more than just a great actor, but a great person. A person who saw the hardship of life, but also understood humility and kindness. Sam Neill is, and forever will be, one of those people.
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
I thought my sister said "Nixon in five!" when she answered the phone, when she'd actually said "Nicks in five!"
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
@devincf.bsky.social
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
Yes. Because we know Trump wants to make sure this comes back into the news cycle. 🙄
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
I felt this in my soul.
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
New Signal Loss episode. The first half discusses the debacle that was the DoorDash Grandma Oval Office press conference. The second half discusses the marketing of The Drama (light spoilers - just go see it.) open.spotify.com/show/6zsBnCU...
open.spotify.com
Spotify – Web Player
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
I'm glad you liked it so much, and I really enjoyed your review! You did a good job of talking about it without, you know, *talking about it.* Do you feel that it's a movie that people outside of a certain generation range might not fully get? (In particular, related to Emma and the internet.)
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
Signal Loss Episode 3: Ghosts Stuck in the Shell. I discuss chat bots as a closed system, and how they difer from closed communities like Facebook groups. Later, I break down the rhetoric of Trump's "Open the Fuckin' Strait" tweet. open.spotify.com/show/6zsBnCU...
open.spotify.com
Ghosts Stuck in the Shell
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
I think you're really onto something here: this approach is just not suited well to the medium of film. Cinema works best as a closed system, with things like visual motifs that bookend a movie. Not when a film feels like the equivalent to a table-top RPG lore book.
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Movies Silently @moviessilently.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
I wish backstories and worldbuilding had stayed out of the blockbuster sphere and where they justly belong: in doorstop books that the nerdiest fans devour and everyone else can ignore
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Mae Nick Phra Khanong @nickjbrumfield.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
I know it's been said, many times, many ways, but Ilhan Omar is actually a fairly normal House member who codes as radical simply by virtue of being a brown hijabi woman in America
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
Absolutely. Distortions to reality become ambience and architecture. Misinformation is integral to how so many aspects of our media landscape function.
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
Misinformation in the previous era was viral. This peaked during the pandemic. Chatbot hallucinations are local. Still, if there are system-wide errors, this may result in the remapping of human cognition.
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
We are exiting the golden age of disinformation. Anxieties remain high as AI is perceived as an ontological threat to the category of truth. What comes next? New Signal Loss essay. open.substack.com/pub/robingra...
open.substack.com
Ghosts (Stuck) in the Shell: Towards a New Era of Information Technology
AI anxiety is diffuse. Hallucinations are seen as a threat to the ontology of truth. But we are now beyond the peak of viral misinformation. What comes next?
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
Algorithms and big tech companies are far from blameless. But, they produce the infrastructure in which subjects repeat the ideology of advertising. Social media is an extension and possible endpoint of the language of commodity. It does not exist in a vacuum.
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
Social media companies are losing lawsuits. The truth is, addiction at the hands of the algorithm is only part of the story. Also, the Trump administration's shifting rhetoric for justifying war with Iran. Listen now, and enjoy the drift. open.spotify.com/show/6zsBnCU...
open.spotify.com
Signal Loss # 2: Midiagnosing Social Media, Misdiagnosing Crisis
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
The power of the algorithm is overstated. The most intense acceleration occurs within closed spaces.
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
Recent lawsuits frame social media as the cause of mental illness, but social media is not a new system. Social media is the language of the commodity, internalized and reproduced by individuals. New Signal Loss: open.substack.com/pub/robingra...
open.substack.com
Signal Loss #2: Social Media and the Language of the Commodity
Recent lawsuits frame big tech platforms as a singular villain. The reality is far more diffuse and unstable.
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
The '39 adaptation of Wuthering Heights is kind of amazing in how badly it treats the source material. I don't mind that it changes content, but it completely misses the spirit of the novel, and in so doing, has become what people think Wuthering Heights is.
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
Signal Loss #1 is up. The removal of Shy Girl, AI authorship, and a crisis of meaning. Plus: Wuthering Heights (1939) and how adaptation rewrites the text. open.spotify.com/episode/6crr...
open.spotify.com
Signal Loss Episode 1: The Death of Authorship; Wuthering Heights and the Problem of Adaptation
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
Took a break, but trying to get back on the platform and start posting about film again with more regularity!
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Joe Adalian @tvmojoe.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
There were non-sci fi options the week before Christmas 1984, including a movie that had opened a few weeks earlier and was still doing gangbusters at the box office: Beverly Hills Cop
Newspaper movie listings for AMC Theaters in December 1984
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin and The Zone of Interest are both both sustain unease, but rest within more legible genre territory. Birth sets up expectations that it might be a thriller, or a ghost story, and deliberately denies the audience the pleasure of resolution in those frameworks.
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
Twenty two years later, Birth is still the most anti-commercial movie to receive a wide release by a Hollywood studio this century. It does nothing to reassure the audience, resting in a permanent state of unease. The cinematic equivalent of chewing on ice - a landmark film.
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
This isn't about AI - this is about the collapse of verification. The accusation becomes indistinguishable from the act.
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
The accusation a book was generated by AI is impossible to verify. The consequences are material. We have moved beyond the death of the author. open.substack.com/pub/robingra...
open.substack.com
Signal Loss #1: The Death of Authorship in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Signal Loss.
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Charlotte Clymer @charlotteclymer.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
Catherine O'Hara? Are you fucking kidding me? Fuck this year.
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Sherrilyn Ifill @sifill.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
Make it viral.
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alexis simpson is confused by display name changes @amutepiggy.bsky.social · 29/12/2025
damn that baby looks cool as hell
photo of an anti-smoking billboard that shows a painting of a baby smoking a cigarette. text says "You're not the only one smoking. Secondhand smoke contains over 7000 chemicals, including 70 known to cause cancer. Text QUITSMOKING or QUITVAPING to 66819 or call 800-300-8086

KICK/T

Brought to you by Ihya County Tobacco Education Program

California"
There is a green street sign in front of the billboard that says PA HA LANE.
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 30/12/2025
Morbidly pleased to look this up and find it to be literally true.
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
Roddy Doyle was an absolutely terrible choice to be the chair for The Booker. Flesh winning feels like the two white guys on the panel decided to go for the least literary, most masculine of the books.
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 04/11/2025
Even ATN News isn't covering Cheney's passing right now.
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Tom Shapira @tomshaps.bsky.social · 13/10/2025
Thomas Pynchon should write the novelization of ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER.
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
Bad news for people who like water-themed titles on their Booker Shortlist...
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 20/09/2025
Cool video! Really good eye for noticing this. Look forward to more shorts, you've got this down!
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Devin @devincf.bsky.social · 19/09/2025
I've been doing little videos over at TikTok, Instagram and YouTube shorts. Here's the latest one, about the mystery avatar in HBOMax's SUPERMAN collection.
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Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 16/09/2025
Hasn't aged one bit.
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Devin @devincf.bsky.social · 12/09/2025
GamerGate Never Ended, or, Looks Like I Picked The Wrong Week To Start Playing HELLDIVERS II www.patreon.com/posts/gamerg...
patreon.com
GamerGate Never Ended, or, Looks Like I Picked The Wrong Week To Start Playing HELLDIVERS II | Cinema Sangha
Get more from Cinema Sangha on Patreon
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 13/09/2025
Great piece, it really puts everything together in a way that makes sense and is accessible for people who might not have understood the last decade and change as it was unfurling. You mention people who report on the far-internet; any journalists you can recommend following?
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Devin @devincf.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
Saw video of today's shooter and guessing he's 764 or similar group. They're purposefully ideologically incoherent & are accelerationist nihilists. Nothing in his manifesto or painted on his guns will make logical sense together. The media won't understand this. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/764_(or...
en.m.wikipedia.org
764 (organization) - Wikipedia
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
Thanks for drawing attention to this! So many people, regardless of their politics, will misunderstand this story. We probably saw the same video - upsetting, and hard for people to understand if they haven't been aware of 4chan or 8chan culture. It's the common link in so many of these shootings.
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NANCY COMICS BY ERNIE BUSHMILLER @nancycomics.bsky.social · 25/07/2025
Nancy By Ernie Bushmiller July 24,1948
NANCY BY ERNIE BUSHMILLER 
P1-SLUGGO AND NANCY ARE OUTSIDE ON A VERY HOT DAY.
SLUGGO: HEY, NANCY--AIN'T TH HEAT AWFUL TODAY?
P2-NANCY: NOT AT ALL ---IN FACT, I FEEL A BIT CHILLY
P3- NANCY IS SITTING IN FRONT OF A BILLBOARD ADVERTISEMENT 
THE ADVERTISEMENT IS FOR COOGAN’S
OIL CO. THE PICTURE ON THE BILLBOARD IS A WINTER SCENE WITH A YARD COVERED WITH SNOW, A SNOWMAN ,SNOW COVERED TREES AND A HOUSE WITH SNOW ON THE ROOF
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 25/07/2025
Totally. From what I've observed living abroad, once a certain person hits a particular high level of fame, like MJ or Mike Tyson, the international audience isn't all that interested in the scandals, or aware of them. Rhapsody did amazing in Japan. This might too. MJ is bigger than Queen there.
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
Is Michael Jackson too big a subject for it not to matter if the production was troubled, or the obvious controversy around him? Is it gonna be another All Eyez On Me, where the opening is strong but it falls fast?
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
This is as excited as I could possibly be about a blu-ray announcement. Dr. McKendry and Elric Kane are the two best people to do a commentary. The movie that I double featured Halloween '96 with Scream, and made Scream look mid by comparison. A fucking classic Carpenter film. Top three.
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
Hulk Hogan is in Twilight Zone heaven. The one with gambling.
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
I feel seen.
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Robin Youngman @robinyoungman.bsky.social · 11/07/2025
In 7/11 on 7/11 at 7:11.
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