Olga White

Slow Your (Sc)Roll is a media installation that confronts the visual tempo and ideological numbness of the attention economy. Social media platforms are designed to keep us scrolling—to transform our attention into monetizable behavior. Memes, in this context, are optimized for frictionless consumption: punchline-first, thought-last.

But what happens when that loop is interrupted?

This exhibit decelerates digital culture. By removing memes from their algorithmic stream and presenting them in physical space—as printed, framed, thematically grouped artifacts—it reorients the viewer. Without the option to scroll past, audiences must sit with each image. Patterns emerge. Narratives cohere. The memes start talking to each other.

The inaugural installation, hosted at CU Boulder’s ATLAS B2 Center for Media, Arts & Performance (March 2025), focused on a recurring memetic trope: the FBI fairy godmother. Across platforms, users jokingly portray government surveillance as friendly, quirky, and even comforting—“my assigned FBI agent” becomes a digital confidante. This exhibit curates those memes into a unified visual essay, asking: Why is being watched funny? What does irony do to soften or subvert state power? And what are the cultural effects of making surveillance feel personal, even intimate?

Grounded in media studies, platform capitalism, and meme theory, Slow Your (Sc)Roll transforms casual jokes into cultural critique. It is part gallery, part critical literacy intervention—a modular exhibit ready for adaptation in universities, libraries, or arts spaces engaging with media aesthetics, political communication, and digital affect.