A debate has broken out over geek culture at Jacobin. Ian Williams levels the charge that geeks have displaced actual politics with a pseudo-politics of brand loyalty. Jase Short counters that the passionate cultural consumption of geeks leads to its own form of politics, from intellectual property debates to campaigns against sexual harassment.

I’m reminded of larger debates on the politics of popular culture within academia. Williams on geekdom sounds a bit like Theodor Adorno on the culture industry, bemoaning the masses cajoled into pseudo-activity by light jazz. For Williams, geeky interests, and the taste battles they provoke, have taken up the brainspace that might otherwise be occupied with radical politics. (Adorno himself had a more modest goal than social transformation: the contemplation of the impossibility of art in bourgeois society.)

While I don’t want to underestimate the propagandistic power of contemporary media, I’m not very convinced by arguments resting on the claim that we have a finite amount of attention to parcel out to worthy causes.