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Articles by Tom Whyman
Social media was once a great global conversation. Now it's just individuals locked into their own private worlds
Tom Whyman I used to post an awful lot on Twitter. I couldn't tell you how many times a day exactly – but after discovering the platform in late 2010, I became intoxicated by the feeling that I was able to participate in a sort of global conversation.
Social media was once a great global conversation. Now it’s just individuals locked into their own private worlds
‘Tweeting ended up feeling like a kind of painful social duty.’ Photograph: True Images/Alamy I used to post an awful lot on Twitter. I couldn’t tell you how many times a day exactly – but after discovering the platform in late 2010, I became intoxicated by the feeling that I was able to participate in a sort of global conversation. Here, I felt, was a platform that anyone could join, and on which anyone could be listened to.
Faut-il dire la vérité aux enfants au sujet du Père Noël? Un philosophe se penche sur la question
Notre culture attend des parents, et des adultes en général, qu’ils mentent aux enfants en disant que les cadeaux de Noël ont été déposés par un joyeux bonhomme qui vole dans un traîneau tiré par des rennes. Mais ce mensonge est-il moralement acceptable ? Je me souviens très bien du moment où j’ai réalisé que le père Noël n’existait pas. J’avais environ six ans, c’était en plein été, et j’étais assis sur les marches devant notre porte arrière, en train de penser à Dieu.
Werner Herzog’s New Book Tackles The Problem Of Truth
You might think of Werner Herzog’s new book, The Future of Truth, as the story of two animals. On the front cover, you see the silhouette of a lone penguin, somewhere in the middle distance, setting off from icy tundra to the mountains. While never made explicit in the text, this image is an obvious reference to a memorable vignette from Herzog's 2007 documentary Encounters at the End of the World.
Surely The British Left Is Taking Full And Strategic Advantage Of This Moment
If America is starting to feel a bit early days of Nazi Germany, then I’d say my native Britain is taking on the distinct feel of Austria before the Anschluss. Last year, the Labour party, led by Sir Keir Starmer, were elected into government with a massive parliamentary majority, which they somehow managed despite receiving fewer total votes than in the previous election in 2019, when they slumped to a massive defeat.
If Britain is broken, what is to blame – big money and big tech, or graffiti on your train?
Graffiti on a Bakerloo line carriage, London, 16 June 2025. Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images Britain, let’s face it, is crap. Crap, I mean, in quite a specific sense: we might not be teetering on the brink of civilisational destruction, as the post-Brexit right can often seem to think. But there nonetheless remains a vast, ambient sense of rubbishness. Everything is expensive but nothing works. Our streets are full of potholes; our houses are full of mould.
The case for lying to kids about Santa — from a philosopher - BusinessWorld Online
I have a vivid memory of the moment I realized Santa didn’t exist. I was around six years old, it was the height of summer, and I was sitting on the step outside our back door, thinking about God. The existence of God, back then, was something that annoyed me: it meant that every Sunday, we had to go to church. Then I realized: there isn’t actually any evidence God exists. I only think God exists, because this is something people have told me.
The case for lying to kids about Santa - from a philosopher
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The case for lying to kids about Santa - from a philosopher
I have a vivid memory of the moment I realised Santa didn’t exist. I was around six years old, it was the height of summer, and I was sitting on the step outside our back door, thinking about God. The existence of God, back then, was something that annoyed me: it meant that every Sunday, we had to go to church. Then I realised: there isn’t actually any evidence God exists. I only think God exists, because this is something people have told me.
Breaking up with my X
I joined Twitter in December 2010, at the height of the student fees protests. After a friend had some moderately incendiary tweets shared by a Guardian liveblog (or something like that), I wanted in on the action. As an undergraduate, my friends and I used to compete to get the stupidest letters printed in the student newspaper, and the Twitter game just seemed like an extension of that: winning would mean shouting something loud enough to catch the attention of the press.
U.K. Politicians Can't Fix What They Broke
The other day, I was riding a bus through one of the more depressed parts of the northern English urban aggregation where I live, on my way to an Anglo Saxon-themed farm park adjacent to a historically important former monastery.
Print your own tickets, treat your own illnesses – welcome to DIY Britain
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Print your own tickets, treat your own illnesses – welcome to DIY Britain
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Print your own tickets, treat your own illnesses – welcome to DIY Britain
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Can Art Transform How We Experience Public Space?
Michael Rakowitz’s The Waiting Gardens of the North presents a dream of public space as a place to think, play, be On entering Michael Rakowitz’s The Waiting Gardens of the North, one is first overwhelmed by the sensations in play in the art: light and smell. Often, one exists in a gallery space far too cerebrally, engaged only with the ‘ideas’ the work is supposed to imply. But here, the work makes its point by placing one first fully, bodily within the space.
Dialectical Aristotelianism: On Marx's account of what separates us from the animals
I have noticed, in Anglophone philosophy, a certain way of invoking Marx. The pattern here is—understandably, given the relative scarcity of substantial engagement with Marx outside of (radical) political theory—a rather loose one. But I've spotted it in the work of John McDowell, Michael Thompson, and Mary Midgley. In each of these thinkers, Marx is invoked in the context of an inquiry into human nature: into the question of what (if anything) separates us from the animals.
Is it a Botticelli or a Hollywood blonde? How to spot a fake painting
In March, a family in northern France sold a painting that had hung for years in their small TV room, for €780,000. In the family since 1900, the dust-covered picture, passed down through the generations, was jokingly referred to as “the Brueghel”, given its resemblance to the work of the Flemish masters. Only when an auctioneer was called to the house to assess the value of its contents, did he suspect that The Village Lawyer (1615-17) actually was by Pieter Brueghel the Younger.
Why Was ‘Succession’ the Greatest TV Show Ever?
Tom WhymanOpinion30 May 2023artreview.com If it is to enter the Parthenon of prestige TV, then what does a ‘great’ show even look like? Spoilers ahead. Why was Succession (2018-23) the greatest TV show of all time? I don’t necessarily mean to claim that Succession was indeed the greatest TV show of all time.
Euthanasia Is Final. Loneliness Is Not
A state-run death plan is offered to isolated elderly citizens in new science fiction film Plan 75, which holds an uncomfortable mirror to the social atomisation of the present Chie Hayakawa’s Plan 75 is an unusual film: fiction, but shot almost like a cinéma vérité documentary; sci-fi, but so naturalistic that it doesn’t really feel speculative at all.
Key words: Dialectics
The word ‘dialectics’ comes from the Greek dialektikḗ – a discussion through question and answer. For Aristotle, dialectics allows us to clearly formulate arguments based on commonly-held opinion: to think critically, we might now say, about common sense. Dialectics is grounded in the world as we find it but refuses to see any part of this world as immediately and obviously solid, or fixed: it refuses to take anything for granted.
Does it really matter which way up an abstract artwork is hung?
On the left is how Mondrian's New York City 1 has been displayed for 75 years, while on the right is the 'correct' way - Peter Horree / Alamy Stock Photo Next week, a new exhibition will open at Tate Modern displaying the works of Piet Mondrian, he of lines fame, alongside that of Hilma af Klint, the early-20th-century Swedish painter and theosophist whose art-historical importance has been obscured in large part because her abstracts, produced primarily as an expression of her spirituality,...
How Do We Know When Disaster Is Upon Us?
A new display of ‘Holocaust letters’ reveals the ways in which real people become entwined with catastrophe – and challenges our understanding of ‘normality’ For reasons both understandable and elusive, our culture is generally in quite an ‘apocalyptic’ headspace right now.
Why Do We Still Find Vermeer So Fascinating?
The Old Master gives us what we might think of as a philosophy, about the relationship between art and everyday life Sometimes, you’ll hear something about one of those blockbuster exhibitions a big museum in the middle of a capital city puts on, often called ‘TITIAN’ or something like that, and you’ll think to yourself: yeah, fair enough. I really should make it my business to go.
Why do kids love dinosaurs?
“Daddy! Daddy!” shouts my three-year-old from the living room where he is playing.
The Doomed Project of ‘Smart Thinking’
Philosophy is not here to help you do better at your job In recent years, a new literary genre has emerged: bookshops (notably Waterstones) have gradually replaced sections like ‘Philosophy’ with something called ‘Smart Thinking’.
Farage Pushes 'Britcoin' Conspiracies, and a Newsletter Subscription
On February 7, Nigel Farage hosted a segment on GB News on the topic of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and the Bank of England’s proposal to introduce a “Britcoin” by 2030. He framed the technology as a potential danger to personal freedom and financial autonomy.
What ‘Cursed’ Art Tells Us About the Future of AI
Tom WhymanOpinion19 April 2023artreview.com 100 gecs’s music, the thought goes, sounds like how the internet feels – but are we clinging to a utopian idea of our digital life? If you haven’t heard the music of 100 gecs yet, then brace yourself: you probably won’t like it at first. Indeed, your initial exposure to the hyperpop duo – whose major label debut, 10,000 gecs, came out last month – will probably cause you to recoil in confusion and fear. Where to begin?
White Noise: How Conspiracists Exploited an Information Gap After a Derailment in Ohio
Don DeLillo's postmodern 1985 breakout novel White Noise features a toxic chemical spill from a rail car, inviting readers to explore themes including man-made disasters, conspiracies, and capitalism. Noah Baumbach's film adaptation of the novel, released in January 2023, was shot in and around Ohio using local extras.
England Is in Crisis. Enter Sir Grayson Perry
Cometh the hour, cometh the man. The artist and knight of the realm is on a quest to save the nation from its worst tendencies Every now and then, someone will decide that what English (or British) leftists really need is ‘a new progressive nationalism’ or a ‘new nationalism of the left’. After all, we know that the UK is a basket case: a sad (and bad) old relic that’s probably going to finally, definitively fragment soon (thank God).
Brazil Disinformation Roundup: Fuel for Pro-Bolsonaro Riots & Continuing Threat
As the dust settles from the shocking events of January 8, 2023 in Brazil, one thing is clear: disinformation about elections has consequences. On that day, thousands of supporters of former Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro stormed the official buildings of the Brazilian Congress, Supreme Court, and Presidential Palace in the capital city of Brasilia.
Double Check: Are Archaeologists Suppressing Research on a Secret Civilization?
In November 2022, Netflix released Ancient Apocalypse. Framed as a docuseries, the program follows presenter Graham Hancock as he travels around the globe in pursuit of evidence of a lost civilization. Hancock presents a captivating vision of the ancient past. Atlantis, he argues, is real. The myths and legends concerning it that have lasted until today represent our collective memory of an ancient, technologically advanced people who flourished during the last Ice Age.
Double Check: Why Was Andrew Tate Arrested?
Image credit: Inquam Photos/Octav Ganea - Reuters "My name is Andrew Tate, four-time kickboxing world champion, multi-millionaire and all round nice guy. I was one time the most googled man on the planet for basically saying that 'water is wet.'" If you believe Andrew Tate's account characterization of himself, he is the image of what many young men aspire to become. Wealthy, outspoken, and self-made through a combination of intelligence and determination.
Is This the Moment ‘Cancel Culture’ Comes for the YBAs?
How online conspiracy theorists are drawing a line from Balenciaga’s bondage-themed photoshoot to the art of the Chapman Brothers Can you cancel the Chapman Brothers? Towards the end of last year, we were treated to the spectacle of certain conspiracy-minded social-media influencers attempting just that, as part of the fallout from the controversy surrounding Balenciaga’s now notorious bondage-themed child photoshoot.
Should We Care What Hegel Really Thought of Art?
And do we need more of the great idealist philosopher’s lectures on aesthetics? Probably the most important philosophy news of the year came this autumn, when it was announced that a large stash of new Hegel manuscripts had been discovered in the library of the Archdiocese of München and Freising. Well, I say ‘new Hegel manuscripts’.
Why Effective Altruists Fear Art
We don’t know how our actions will be received in the future – with art, that’s the whole beauty In recent months, ‘effective altruism’ – alongside the related concept of ‘longtermism’ – has experienced the kind of cut-through in public discourse that no philosophical position can ever really hope to achieve. Well, I call ‘effective altruism’ a philosophical position.
Double Check: Is It Illegal To Offer Namaz in Public in India?
By Priyanka Ishwari and Ilma Hasan On Sunday, October 25, India’s Railway Police were asked to investigate an incident in which four men had offered namaz – or Islamic prayer – inside a train during a stop in Kushinagar, Uttar Pradesh. Although no formal complaint had been lodged, the request was made after a video showing the men praying went viral.
Jimmy Carr’s Theory of Art
The problem with Jimmy Carr Destroys Art is that it never quite embraces its own sheer nihilistic pointlessness There’s not, perhaps, a lot to be said for being alive right now. I don’t mean that in a sort of ‘only death would be a comfort’ sort of way.
Would It Ever Be OK To Destroy Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’?
Tom WhymanOpinion18 October 2022artreview.com Art is implicated in the climate disaster whether it wants to be or not The destruction of art has been in the news quite a bit recently. Most obviously, last Friday two activists from the group Just Stop Oil staged a protest at the National Gallery in London, where they threw tomato soup over Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers (1888) before gluing themselves to the wall.
Adam Curtis’s ‘TraumaZone’ Needs More Adam Curtis
Tom WhymanOpinion14 October 2022artreview.com (Or why you should read Svetlana Alexievich instead) The Belarusian Nobel Literature laureate Svetlana Alexievich’s masterpiece Second-Hand Time (2013) tells the story of the collapse of the former Soviet Union from the ground up.
What Does It Mean To ‘Abolish the Family’?
Family abolition seems like a timely idea – but what are we even abolishing here, anyway? In his series of novels The Dancers at the End of Time (1972-76), the science fiction author Michael Moorcock described a fantastical historical endgame for the human species, a polymorphously perverse utopia in which everyone – what few individuals still remain on a planet that has for millennia witnessed nothing genuinely new – has the power to remake the world and themselves however they choose.
The Distant Aura of the Lindisfarne Gospels
Tom WhymanOpinion28 September 2022artreview.com They are beautiful, but they also seem incredibly far away The Anglo-Saxon history of the north-east of England is bound up with that of the monastery of Lindisfarne, located on a tidal island just off the Northumberland coast. It was on Lindisfarne that a group of Irish monks settled after they had been invited by King Oswald of Northumbria, to evangelise his kingdom, which at the time was the most powerful in Britain.
Why Does the British Monarchy Exist?
Why does Britain have a monarchy? A lot of people would probably say it isn't really the time to ask this question. In fact, that's exactly what Republic, the “official” UK campaign to replace the Windsors with an elected head of state, have said — declaring when news of the Queen's death was announced that “there will be plenty of time to debate the monarchy's future” later, when people are done grieving.
The Queen and the Paddington-Fantasy Image of Britain
It is as if some spontaneous folk tradition has suddenly started flourishing, in which the late Elizabeth II and the talking bear are cosmically united The other day, news broke that the Royal Parks of London are asking people to stop leaving marmalade sandwiches as a tribute to the late Queen Elizabeth II. I have to admit I didn’t see this one coming. From an anthropological perspective, the British mind is a wonderful thing.
Boys Will Be Boys: A Celebration of Growing Up Male
In Afghanistan, three boys sit in a dusty street, absorbed in their game of marbles. In Macao, five boys (four around the same age, one a little lost-looking on the right obviously someone’s younger brother) look serious in matching black jackets. In the USA, two boys stand in the wasteland behind a derelict building, playing in the weeds. In Malaysia, a pair of smiling shirtless boys pose for the camera, puffing their chests up to look as big as they possibly can.
NASA’s Sound of a Black Hole: An Investigation
Are NASA not just cynically manipulating some otherwise wholly unimpressive sound wave data, mining it for clicks and likes? Last week, NASA went viral with what purported to be the sound of a black hole.
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There’s No Artist Like Nathan Fielder
What is The Rehearsal really about? If Nathan Fielder and Walter Benjamin had been alive at the same time, I am certain that Benjamin would have written one of those long essays about him like the ones he wrote about Kafka, or Karl Kraus – an essay which starts with some bewitching anecdote from Jewish history, and then goes on to discuss its subjects’ work in elusive, enigmatic terms, relating it constantly to some never-quite-specified ideal of Messianic justice, or language, or the law.
What Is ‘Public Art’? (Other Than Most Probably Phallic)
Tom WhymanOpinion05 August 2022artreview.com The kids at Imperial College protesting an ‘inappropriate’ Gormley sculpture miss how art can make the prosaic that little bit stranger The other day, news broke that Antony Gormley had been given provisional permission by whoever runs Imperial College London to erect a big statue that looks like a guy with a lob on outside the university’s ‘newly built Dangoor Plaza’ (no prizes for guessing what the surname of the person who gave them the money to...
The ‘Online Grotesque’ of DALL-E Art
By not quite working properly, the AI tool spits out something genuinely new In recent weeks, we have seen two major developments in public discourse surrounding AI. The first was that story about the Google engineer declaring that LaMDA, the deep learning conversation bot he was working on, had acquired sentience. That of course was nonsense.
Double Check: Is Google's AI Sentient?
Last week, as you may have noticed, the news started to feel a bit like the start of that movie Her where Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with a chatbot voiced by Scarlett Johansson (stealing roles from actual robot actors, no doubt) – when Blake Lemoine, an engineer associated with Google's LaMDA project, was suspended by the company for publishing the edited transcripts of conversations with the deep-learning chatbot he was helping to develop.
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