Profs and Pints Meetup-Metro DC

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “Social Media to Social Reckoning,” a talk about how Big Tech social media platforms operate and affect our world, with Caddie Alford, leading digital rhetoric scholar, associate professor of rhetoric, and co-lead of the AI Futures Hub at Virginia Commonwealth University.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/nv-social-media-social-reckoning .]

Learn what social media platforms attempt to get us to think and feel, and assess the impact that their algorithms are having on our social lives and democracy, with Caddie Alford, a scholar of persuasion vis-à-vis Big Tech’s power.

Applying the ancient art of rhetoric to social media platforms and what’s billed as “artificial intelligence,” she’ll offer insights on the beliefs held by AI company CEOs and on the changes that Elon Musk made to Twitter. She’ll discuss concepts like cyberlibertarianism, technofascism, and “data trauma,” and she’ll call attention to the relationship between how we talk about social media and how we use it. If you started out “surfing the web” but now find yourself “doomscrolling,” her talk will help you understand why.

Dr. Alford will shed light on the discrepancies between how Big Tech social media companies portray themselves and how they actually operate. No matter how much they characterize social media platforms as “ecosystems,” the platforms’ true purpose is harvesting our data for shareholder value.

We’ll look at how the story of AI is deeply intertwined with the story of the internet, and how the political agendas of Big Tech social media companies are actualized by the material realities of computing infrastructure, contingent labor, and other considerations.

We’ll close by discussing how social media users are pushing back at Big Tech and its justifications for its policies and agendas. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image from Pixabay.

Profs and Pints DC presents: “When Nazis Prowled Our Coasts,” a look at how Hitler brought war to America, with Kevin Matthews, professor of history at George Mason University and teacher of courses on early 20th century European history and World War II.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/dc-nazis-prowled-coasts .]

A German submarine surfaces in New York’s harbor. Nazi saboteurs armed with explosives land on a Florida beach with orders to blow up factories in Tennessee and dams on the Ohio River. American ships are sunk in broad daylight while vacationers look on from New Jersey to Virginia Beach, from the Outer Banks to Key West.

It wasn’t the plot of a bad movie. Such events actually happened during the early months of 1942, helping to explain why watchtowers still stand near the beaches of Delaware and New Jersey today.

Come learn about this forgotten episode of our nation’s World War II past with Professor Kevin Matthews, who previously has given excellent Profs and Pints talks on the Battle of the Bulge, the rise of Fascism, and the history of the Irish Revolution.

He’ll describe how Nazi Germany sought both to make the United States pay for siding with Britain, and defeat us at home before our forces could get to Europe, by sending its forces places you now associate with boardwalks and bodysurfing. It ordered its U-boats to beat America like a “kettledrum” as part of a campaign known as Operation Paukenschlag (which translates as “drumbeat.”) And by the spring of 1942 its submarines also were prowling the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.

Aiding the success of Nazi Germany’s campaign were two unwitting allies: the U.S. Navy, which refused to change tactics in the face of Germany’s attacks; and the leaders of American cities, who refused to impose blackouts and thereby created a neon-lit shooting gallery the length of the East Coast.

You’ll learn how Britain’s Royal Navy and Royal Air Force helped defeat the U-boats at a time when they threatened our entire war effort, and how the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover helped establish himself as the nation’s top cop by doggedly tracking down Nazi agents.

It’s a talk that will give you plenty to think about on your next trip to the beach. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: The tanker S.S. Dixie Arrow after being torpedoed by a German submarine off Cape Hatteras in March 1942 (U.S. Navy photo).

Profs and Pints DC presents: “The ‘Gooning’ Lecture,” answers to our questions about a growing online sexual practice, with Jenn Pollitt, assistant professor in the gender, sexuality, and women’s studies program at Temple University.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/dc-gooning .]

The term “gooning” has exploded across online spaces, yet many people have only a vague or wildly inaccurate sense of what it actually references.

Learn about gooning both as a sexual practice and as a cultural phenomenon shaped by the internet with Jenn Pollitt, a scholar whose research focuses on pornography, digital culture, and the changing nature of intimacy in the age of screens.

She’ll provide clear, grounded, and research-informed exploration what gooning is, how it emerged within digital porn cultures, and why it resonates with so many people in an era defined by screens, algorithms, and constant stimulation.

Drawing from media studies, sexuality research, and firsthand analysis of online communities, Dr. Pollitt will situate gooning within broader conversations about intimacy, attention, and embodiment in the digital age. Rather than treating gooning as fringe or purely sensational, she’ll frame it as a lens for understanding larger cultural shifts, especially in terms of how people navigate loneliness, overstimulation, and the search for intimacy in increasingly mediated environments.

Among the questions she’ll tackle: What does gooning reveal about how technology is reshaping desire and sexual experience? Why does it blur the line between pleasure and dissociation? And how does it challenge traditional ideas about connection, agency, and control? (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: Photo by Terry Johnston / Creative Commons

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “Why We Want Who We Want,” on the surprising science of attraction, dating, and lasting love, with Todd B. Kashdan, professor of psychology and founder of The Well Being Lab at George Mason University.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/nv-why-we-want .]

Why do we feel instant chemistry with one person and nothing with another? Are men and women searching for different things? Can passion survive ten years of shared bathrooms and thermostat negotiations?

Hear such questions tackled by Dr. Todd B. Kashdan, a psychology professor who has spent more than two decades studying human fulfillment in his Well-Being Lab. His lively, provocative talk will cut through dating-app folklore—as well as all of that terrible relationship advice out there—to give you a much clearer understanding of what stirs the heart.

Using evidence from decades of relationship science, including speed-dating encounters, Dr. Kashdan will show where assumed differences in the desires of men and women disappear once two people sit across from each other.

He’ll examine whether people can accurately judge their own romantic market value, and why the qualities that generate immediate desirability may have surprisingly little to do with why we choose to enter into a relationship with someone over the long haul (or at least a few months).

He’ll pepper the evening with provocative exercises and with evidence-based tips for becoming a more interesting person and romantic partner. You’ll learn how to escape the exhausting mentality of the dating market and how to talk to friends who have been seduced by manosphere theories.

Come for the science. Stay to discover whether your dating instincts are brilliant, disastrous, or merely inherited from a nervous primate. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image by Canva.