Gideon Jacobs

Nonfiction @newyorkermag @artforum, @nytimes, others. Fiction @bombmag, @thedrift_mag, @heavy_traffic_mag, others. Also @Gideon___Jacobs on IG. Links in bio.

[Gideon Jacobs @Gideon___Jacobs]

“Masruq saw pictures on his terrace and said, ‘I heard Abdullah saying that he heard the Prophet saying, ‘The people who will receive the severest punishment from Allah will be the picture makers.’’” -Sahih al-Bukhari 5950

Friday, helping @trevorpaglen launch his new book.

[Gideon Jacobs @Gideon___Jacobs]

As with most behaviors, people will only start using their phones less if/when it becomes obvious that people want to fuck them less because they’re always on their phone.

[Spike Art Magazine @spike_art]

“Maybe the closest thing the doomscrolling laity gets to a quotidian realization of enlightenment or the Kingdom of Heaven, is not the end of images but the end of the reign of images.” – @Gideon___Jacobs in our Spring 2026 print issue, “Everything’s Computer” – out now!

[Gideon Jacobs @Gideon___Jacobs]

IMAGES: A Show is coming to New Theater Hollywood March 20, 22, 24, 25. Tickets--> https://t.co/86JaxnqKVj

Written and performed by GIDEON JACOBS
Directed by RUBY MCCOLLISTER
Featuring JAY ISRAELSON & HALEY STIEL
Video by JAK RITGER & CASSANDRA JENKINS

[Gideon Jacobs @Gideon___Jacobs]

The Julia Stoschek Foundation has invited me, @DeanKissick, and @David_Rudnick to give a talk titled “The End Of Images” on March 15th at the Variety Arts Theater in Los Angeles. It will start at 8pm, just after the Academy Awards. “That’s all folks.”

[Gideon Jacobs @Gideon___Jacobs]

For those who find it difficult to read in our burgeoning neo-oral/aural era, an audio version of my essay "MAGA as Fan Fiction," edited by @LILINTERNET for @newmodels_io.
https://t.co/O1CnHhzTMZ

[Gideon Jacobs @Gideon___Jacobs]

@grok By approximate percentage, how much more common is it for men to unknowingly walk around with their fly undone now that most are on their phone while urinating? Thank you.

[Gideon Jacobs @Gideon___Jacobs]

@Grok What percentage of modern phone calls begin with one or both parties saying, "Hold on, let me put in my headphones." Thank you.

[Gideon Jacobs @Gideon___Jacobs]

Thank you @syllabus_tweets for choosing "MAGA as Fan Fiction" as essay of the week.

[The Syllabus @syllabus_tweets]

Before becoming the head of the FBI, Kash Patel wrote a children’s book trilogy full of MAGA conspiracies. Our essay of the week tracks how right-wing politics pivoted from myth-making to mass-market fantasy.

By @Gideon___Jacobs in @LAReviewofBooks

https://t.co/j8Jno6OVC4

[Los Angeles Review of Books @LAReviewofBooks]

@Gideon___Jacobs on Trump's image machine: "The fiery movement to MAGA was a classic example of soteriology and messianism taken too literally, an absence of the simultaneity of metaphor, people living in story rather than with stories." https://t.co/f8PhJey21l

[Gideon Jacobs @Gideon___Jacobs]

Out today w/ @LAReviewofBooks, the final installment of what we are retroactively calling a three-part series. All these essays have been about our species' relationship to images. All try to frame DJT as a painful, distracting symptom. God bless🇺🇸. https://t.co/cqhDcjMgRg

[Emilie Friedlander @AdHocEmilie]

NEW POD ALERT: We spoke with artist and writer @Gideon___Jacobs about the political aesthetics of the Zohran campaign—and how reality, in a post-Trump and post-Musk universe, is beginning to bend to the rules of fiction

[Gideon Jacobs @Gideon___Jacobs]

Beware the Subway Takes Industrial Complex

[Los Angeles Review of Books @LAReviewofBooks]

"The image had overpowered reality in an unfair fight." In the wake of the 2024 election, @Gideon___Jacobs peered into the uncanny valley of Donald Trump. https://t.co/G2pLvhKUvC

[Gideon Jacobs @Gideon___Jacobs]

All this practice has done for me as a reader -- at the NYT and other legacy media outlets -- has made me realize I do not like writers I thought I liked.

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

Can the New York ‘Times’ turn its writers into video stars? That seems to be the bet the newspaper is making as it puts some of its most notable voices — including Ezra Klein, Ross Douthat, and now Wesley Morris — in front of the camera. https://t.co/KCtHizvuOk

[Gideon Jacobs @Gideon___Jacobs]

I wrote about @KayKasparhauser's show at Entrance for @Artforum's summer issue. The work was an example of "grace and survival via [Johnny] Knoxvillian surrender and Sisyphean tenacity—a politics of making as if the elevator door is about to slam shut."
https://t.co/gAPKDP9S2L

[ANIMAL BLOOD @animalbloodmag]

"In some ways, I think schizophrenia is, like dissociation, a strangely understandable response to a world that is constantly and increasingly trying to make sense of us, predict our behavior, map our identities, translate and flatten the Self into data. Sometimes insanity seems like a reasonable defense. Good Dada, bad data."

@Gideon___Jacobs on image-making, dissociation and schizophrenia, and how media shifted before and after the Trump administration: https://t.co/J6vlrvpqTO

[Gideon Jacobs @Gideon___Jacobs]

There is a particular kind of art/literary world event that is simultaneously charged with ambient social anxiety AND a diffuse disappointment that there’s nothing and no one present worth being anxious about. Tragic rooms.

[Gideon Jacobs @Gideon___Jacobs]

Went on @newmodels_io to discuss my essay in
@LAReviewofBooks, "Player One and Main Character." Realized today I should have titled it "The Story of Player One and Main Character." More fun.🇺🇸
https://t.co/Rr3FghtvWF

[Gideon Jacobs @Gideon___Jacobs]

For @DocumentJournal, had the pleasure of chatting with @trevorpaglen about Images: A Show and also images in general. Photos by Daniel Arnold, who accompanied me on one of my sessions practicing preaching on the subway.

https://t.co/EkkdSzAjY1