The devices and platforms we rely upon to communicate and gather information also keep us under constant surveillance. Our current, collective options for resistance illustrate the extent to which surveillance technologies are sewn into — and give shape to — the fabric of daily life.

Irony is neither the gateway drug nor an alibi for racism. The alt-right’s euphemistic symbols of racism are meant to confuse outsiders and affirm insiders who can feel a sense of belonging by being in the know, but they are not attempts to trick the otherwise unsusceptible into racist thinking. What allows the far right to flourish is the ability for angry, entitled people to find each other and support each other’s racial animosities, not the ambiguities of ironic discourse.

Four years before Tinder was founded, I was painted a picture of radical sexual practice that looked something like the stereotype ideal of a liberated sexuality. Now Tinder, Bumble, Feeld and any number more hook-up apps sit snug on our screens, and I’m skeptical — not of technology’s ability to deliver a platform for radical sex but of the very idea of “radical sex” tout court.

My bathroom ghost sits somewhere liminal in my web of belief; he’s not part of how I typically navigate the world, which requires constant banal prediction. That it remains there, however, is ethically important. Your ghosts, too, your demons, your holy visions don’t need to exist; you could no doubt account for them scientifically. The bombastic tendency of Western science is to pathologize, and thus dismiss such things. But the question of what realities are possible should not just be answered by the measurable components of what already has been. Does maintaining the reality of your ghost hurt you or help you? Does a collective commitment to something mystical, outside “reason,” cause more harm than good?