Whatever else we mean by the “internet” now we mean, by way of the rise of social media, a certain shared climate of feeling, an animated and sped-up hubbub of the discourse of human interest. By turns soothing and bruising, it is the very medium of what Lauren Berlant, correcting a longstanding tendency to think of emotions as internal and private, has described instead as public feelings. They are the affective substance of political life, the very thing, even more than political ideas, to which online citizenship has become attuned and by which it is increasingly deranged. While the tenor of our online exchanges runs the gamut from sympathy to snark and beyond, one of the internet’s signature speech genres is surely the rant, the hyped-up rhetorical expression of mockingly contemptuous dismay.  Mark McGurl, “Feeling Like the Internet,” Public Books (x)