12 September 2026: the graphs have been redrawn.
Every entry’s graph now puts the term in the middle, with its neighbours on a ring grouped by cluster, its sources marked as books, and a legend that filters the picture. A map of all twenty clusters and every link between them sits on All Clusters. The point is the landscape: you can now see at a glance which cluster a term belongs to, which clusters it sits between, what it rests on, and what points at it.
Welcome to the Cabinet of Digital Terms: a vibrant knowledge bank for the curious mind.
Capturing moving language. Every word here is a node in a power structure. Not a definition — a map.
What this is
Surveillance capitalism. Dopamine loop. Dark pattern. Ghosting. Deinfluencing. Groomer. Red pill. You have heard these terms. You probably use some of them. But do you know where they came from? Who introduced them, and why? What they make visible — and what they quietly conceal?
The Cabinet of Digital Terms is a knowledge bank developed by Marieke de Vogel within The Project Digital Alertness at the [Communication & Multimedia Design program] of the [HAN University of Applied Sciences], in collaboration with the [Lectorate Media Design]. It brings together 250+ terms from digital media, platform culture, political discourse, and popular culture, organized across 20+ thematic clusters. Supported by 800+ verified external links to primary sources, it does something a traditional glossary would never do: it maps them. Not to define, but to connect the dots.
We reject the myth of neutral knowledge. As Donna Haraway argued, true objectivity requires acknowledging our position: “Feminist objectivity means quite simply situated knowledges.” Instead of offering static definitions, the Cabinet invites you to trace the relationships between terms, revealing the forces that shape our digital reality. The Cabinet of Digital Terms is a knowledge bank of 20+ clusters, 250+ terms, 800+ source references from digital media, platform culture, political discourse, and popular culture. Each term is examined for its origin, its use, its power structure, and - most importantly - what it conceals.
This is not a glossary. A glossary defines. This collection does something different: it identifies terms worth examining - for genealogy, circulation, stakes, and the shifts in meaning that reveal who benefits from a term’s existence.
Who is this cabinet for?
Here you may lose yourself in a network of 20+ clusters and 250+ terms, where every word opens a door to deeper insight. With 800+ references as our foundation, we invite you to discover the forces beneath the screens of the digital world, follow hidden connections, and learn the language that shapes our reality.
This is your place if you are not satisfied with superficial answers, but crave depth behind the algorithms, data, and power structures.
This project is an inspiring resource for:
Researchers & Academics: Who seek depth in the genealogy of terms and wish to use the 800+ verified sources for sharp analysis.
Teachers & Educators: Who want to inspire their students with the vocabulary,look for more terms, to think critically and remain resilient in a digital world.
Students: From media, sociology, computer science, and design, who want to bridge theory with the fascinating, sometimes treacherous mechanisms of daily platform use.
Policymakers & Government Officials: Who want to work with passion and insight on responsible digital policy, understanding how algorithms and data use shape our society.
Healthcare Professionals & Medical Staff: Who want to explore the ethical and human side of digital healthcare tools, AI, and data to strengthen the quality of care.
Digital Citizens & Activists: Who want to turn uncomfortable feelings about online interactions into clear insight and powerful resistance.
Designers & Developers: Who want to improve their work with a critical eye and an ethical heart, understanding how design influences behavior and consciousness.
Are you ready to lose yourself in the questions of why it works this way, who benefits, and which words hold the key to digital freedom? Then you are in the right place.
How it was made — Cartographic Prompting
The Cabinet of Digital Terms is a knowledge bank of 250+ terms across 20+ clusters, with 800+ verified external sources. It was produced using cartographic prompting - a research method developed within Project Digitale Alertheid at HAN University of Applied Sciences.
The name is deliberate. Where conventional analysis dissects a concept — breaking it into components and defining each one — cartography positions it within a field of forces. A map does not explain a city. It shows where things are in relation to each other, where the borders run, and what lies at the edges.
Cartographic prompting (working definition): a prompting practice that takes cartography itself as input — a large language model is instructed with writing instructions, search directions, and content frameworks — so that the placement of digital terms in a relational network reveals which cluster a term belongs to and why.
Applied to language, cartographic prompting treats each term as a node in a network of power, history, and meaning. Each analysis asks: where did this word come from? Who introduced it, and why? What does it make visible — and what does it conceal? Who benefits from its circulation? What happens to people who encounter it without knowing what it does?
The method uses large language models — Claude (Anthropic), ChatGPT (OpenAI), and Lumo — as analytical partners, guided by a structured prompt. The prompt specifies the analytical layers: etymology, genealogy, power structures, ethical dimensions, labour implications, and societal impact. The model generates a draft. The researcher edits, challenges, redirects, and selects.
This is not AI-generated content in the sense of automated output. It is a collaborative analytical practice in which the model provides generative capacity and the researcher provides judgment. The distinction matters — and it is part of what this vault is about.
Two instruments guide the practice: CLAUDE.md maintains the vault — indexes, counts, link integrity, retroactive updates — while Doctor Alert.md positions each term: which cluster it belongs to, which existing terms it connects to, and why. Maintenance and positioning are deliberately kept separate, so consistency is checked apart from analytical judgment.
A handful of entries — Sigma Male, Looksmaxxing, Tradwife, Ragebaiting, Recommender Systems, Virtual Influencer — carry the method furthest as working prototypes: each has its own Sources folder distinguishing primary from secondary literature, a Narrative Typography image, and a semantic landscape. In the graph, a Sources toggle, a Cluster toggle, and a Backlinks toggle let you reveal or hide that evidentiary layer, a term’s cluster-siblings, and its incoming links on demand — the map stays legible at whatever depth you want to read it.
The project began with long-form, eight-section analyses under the name Media Cartografie. Cartographic prompting is its operationalisation for the public vault: a way of using AI not to generate answers, but to make the hidden visible.
The Cabinet is not a finished reference — it is a living, iterative practice. Clusters get added, entries get revised, connections get corrected as the network itself reveals what it’s missing. What you see today is a snapshot of ongoing work, not a completed atlas.
Read the full methodology: Cartographic Prompting — how placement in a relational network reveals connections in digital culture.
How an entry is structured
Every entry in this vault follows the same structure. Understanding it helps you read the analyses — and use them as a template if you want to contribute.
Hook - a concrete, recognisable situation. Not a definition. The reader recognises the moment before they know what it is called.
Literal meaning - what the term literally means, broken down etymologically where relevant.
Origin - where the term came from, who introduced it, and how its meaning has shifted since.
Definition - one sentence, plain language. The term itself may appear; other jargon does not.
The Appeal - why the term circulates. What it promises. Why people use it without questioning it.
The Friction - what the term conceals. Who benefits from its existence. What it makes invisible.
Why This Matters - the analytical conclusion. What changes once you see the term clearly.
Related terms - other terms discussed inline, elsewhere in the vault.
Read more - verified external sources, in the format: [Title](URL) — Author (year). *Publisher/Journal*
Project Digitale Alertheid — Conversation Pieces
The Cabinet of Terms is part of a larger project. Project Digitale Alertheid strengthens digital awareness and resilience by turning digital manipulation into material experience. It does this through conversation pieces — designed artefacts that create friction, provoke dialogue, and make abstract platform mechanisms tangible.
Soulmeter — how much of your soul have you sold to the internet?
Wheel of Dark Patterns — spin, match, recognise the manipulation
Mindtrick Machine — nine metaphorical brains, from dark patterns to dark encounters
Narrative Typography — the form of a word reveals its meaning before you read it
Doctor Alert: The Digital Banner Coat — the body as message
Rad van Rollen — dark patterns translated into a language children can debate
The Non Fluencer — refusing the logic of the algorithm
Term Seeker — reach for a term, receive a provocation
NO A-MEAZING — the only way to win is to refuse to play (coming soon)
How to navigate
By cluster - 20+ clusters, each mapping a distinct domain of digital life. Use the expandable menus below to browse by cluster. Start with the cluster that names something you already sense but cannot yet articulate.
By term - use the search to find a specific word. Every entry connects to related terms across clusters.
By connection - open the graph view to see which terms are most central, which clusters are most connected, and where the unexpected bridges are. The most connected terms in this vault — Surveillance Capitalism, Recommender Systems, Cognitive Surrender, AI Literacy — describe the infrastructure everything else runs on.
Browse by cluster
Platform Mechanisms & Economics — 25 terms
Platforms are not neutral tools. This cluster maps the technical and economic architecture through which platforms shape user behaviour — recommendation algorithms, dark patterns, gamification mechanics, and dopamine loops. The terms here name mechanisms that are easier to resist once they have a name.
- AI Slop
- AI as a Utility
- Age of Average
- Attention Economy
- Attention Harvesting
- BUMMER
- Biometric Surveillance
- Bot Farms
- Clickbait
- Dark Patterns
- Deceptive Design
- Dopamine Feedback Loops
- Empathy Exploit
- Enshittification
- Gamification Creep
- Ludic Loop
- Microtargeting
- Neuromarketing
- Nudging
- Predatory Design
- Echo Chamber
- Filter Bubble
- Ragebaiting
- Recommender Systems
- Shadow Banning
- Synthetic Generation
Society and Power — 24 terms
A small number of people now control the infrastructure that everyone depends on. This cluster maps the structural concepts describing the political-economic architecture of the digital age — technofeudalism, surveillance capitalism, cybernetic governance, the revolving door between regulation and industry.
- Broligarchy
- Cybernetic Governance
- Digital-Military-Industrial Complex
- Dual-Use Technology
- Financial Fabulism
- Flood the Zone
- Fortress Futurism
- Founder Mode
- Grifters
- Grokipedia
- Hubris Syndrome
- Memecoin
- Military-Industrial Complex
- Muskism
- Narrative Engineering
- Panopticon
- Reconstruction Economy
- Revolving Door
- Social Credit System
- Sovereignty as a Service
- Surveillance Capitalism
- Techno King
- Technofascism
- Technofeudalism
Gender & Identity — 19 terms
The manosphere gave normative gender hierarchy a vocabulary, a ranking system, and a distribution network. This cluster maps terms that frame gender, attractiveness, and social status as measurable, ranked quantities — from SMV to tradwife, from looksmaxxing to incel.
Culture Wars and Political Language — 15 terms
Some political vocabulary does not describe disagreements — it terminates them. This cluster maps terms that frame political positions as medical threats, hostile infiltration, or biological facts. Understanding the mechanism is the first step toward resisting it.
Privacy, Data and Control — 8 terms
The privacy policy is forty-seven pages long. You clicked agree. So did everyone else. This cluster maps the gap between privacy rhetoric and privacy practice, and the mechanisms through which surveillance and control are exercised, obscured, or resisted.
Behaviour & Relationships — 16 terms
Ghosting, phubbing, doomscrolling — these words did not exist thirty years ago, and the behaviours they describe mostly did not either. This cluster maps new social patterns that emerged from platform architecture. They feel personal. They are also structural.
AI-Specific Terms — 7 terms
AI systems produce convincing text, agree with whatever you say, and gradually make certain skills feel unnecessary. None of this is accidental. This cluster maps what these systems quietly do to the people who use them.
Consequences of Digital Behaviour — 11 terms
Tech neck, digital hoarding, cyberchondria, deskilling — these are not extreme cases or personal weaknesses. They are design outcomes. This cluster maps what happens to bodies and minds as a result of sustained engagement with systems optimised for engagement rather than wellbeing.
Beauty, Influencers & Self-Image — 13 terms
The platform economy of appearance distributes body norms as aspiration content, makes comparison ambient, and produces clinical consequences at scale. This cluster maps how platforms shape how people see themselves and each other.
Parents & Children — 13 terms
Platforms are not designed with children in mind — they are designed for engagement. This cluster maps terms relevant to parents and young people navigating environments built to capture attention, normalise spending, and exploit social anxiety.
Counter-Movements — 8 terms
Digital detox, slow media, mindful scrolling — resistance to platform culture is real, but often distributed through the same platforms it critiques. This cluster maps recuperation: the mechanism through which the system absorbs its own criticism. Not all counter-movements are recuperated. The analytical work is distinguishing between the two.
Design Philosophy and Ethical Design — 12 terms
Platform design is not inevitable — it is chosen. This cluster maps frameworks developed by designers who have decided that user interest matters as much as engagement metrics: Value Sensitive Design, fair patterns, participatory design, design justice.
SF as Ideology — 19 terms
The singularity, Mars colonisation, mind uploading — science fiction became the business plan. This cluster maps terms that originated as speculative fiction and are now deployed as serious policy or identity rhetoric. Ideological choices hide behind visionary language.
Manifestos — 10 terms
Five foundational texts shaped the ideological architecture of the digital age. Their vocabulary still circulates — sometimes as inspiration, sometimes as legitimation for the opposite of what was intended. This cluster maps what those texts actually argued, and what has been done with the argument since.
AI and Energy — 10 terms
The digital economy has a body. It consumes water, occupies land, and draws power. This cluster maps the material reality behind digital abstraction — energy costs, water consumption, sacrifice zones, and the colonial dynamics of a cloud economy that extracts from the Global South.
Inclusion, Accessibility and Ageing — 9 terms
Digital systems structurally exclude certain groups — not by accident but by design choice. This cluster maps the digital divide, ageism in interface design, tech abandonment as a rational response to poor design, and the gap between accessibility compliance and genuine usability.
New Digital Professions — 11 terms
These jobs exist because something in the system is not working. Content moderators, algorithmic auditors, ghost workers — this cluster maps the professions that emerge from digital transformation: not the roles the tech industry promotes, but the roles that exist because something is broken.
Subcultural Vocabulary and Platform Language — 10 terms
Language that originates online, moves offline, and mutates constantly. This cluster maps how platform architecture shapes language, and how words travel from specific subcultures into general use, carrying their original context invisibly with them.
End-Times Thinking and Elite Survivalism — 10 terms
Doomerism, longtermism, effective accelerationism, bunker preparation — this cluster maps ideologies that take the end of the world as given and build a power or identity project on it. Some are held by people with significant resources and political influence.
Statements as Analytical Object — 8 terms
Executives speak in public. Sometimes they reveal more than they intended. This cluster treats quoted statements as analytical objects — sentences that expose the categorical frameworks and institutional assumptions of the people who made them.
- “500 million people installed that app in 60 days.”
- “Adding amplitude to war is obviously an issue.”
- “During a dynamic political environment.”
- “I could definitely see it.”
- “Like Prime, but with human beings.”
- “We have never and will never sell user data.”
- Adolescence (BBC, 2025)
- Tu Nube Seca Mi Río
For information about this project, its method, and its terms of use, see Disclaimer of the Cabinet of Digital Terms.