Girl Online: Symposihmm #1
Girl Online is a full-day programme hosted by The Hmm, a platform for internet cultures, taking place across SPUI25 and University of Amsterdam locations on Friday 16 May. Expect talks, performances, workshops, and more. This first ever Symposihmm will dive into girl trends, self-infantilisation, girl as a strategy in digital spaces, and the future of girlhood. It is part of This is who you’re being mean to, The Hmm’s broader 2025 year theme, exploring gender expression online.
During the event we can provide live closed captioning for those with hearing impairments and disabilities. Please reach out to us if you are joining on-site and have this access need, so that we can reserve a seat for you within view of the screen with captions. If you are joining online via our livestream, live captioning will be available as one of the streaming modes.
For better or worse, performing as a girl online can be a powerful way to subvert the algorithm. And thanks to the whiplash of the girlboss epidemic, a meeker and cute self-image is taking hold. Trends like girl math, babygirl, and girl dinner reflect a tendency across genders to self-infantilise, with a growing resistance to industrialized understandings of adulthood, often tied to economic strains and shifting life expectations, particularly amongst younger generations.
At the same time, the notion of girlhood itself is being questioned, reframed, and adopted in online spaces. As AI isolates our feeds even more by sorting us into predetermined categories, labels influence how we’re seen—and how we see ourselves. With machine learning gradually influencing more of our daily lives, how will our online actions and self-understandings change as a whole?
About the speakers
K Allado-McDowell is a writer, artist, musician, and a pioneering figure in the field of AI literature. Since 2020, they have authored several books with GPT-3, co-edited and contributed to multiple anthologies, and regularly publish essays on art, AI and ecology. In their recent essay ‘Am I Slop? Am I Agentic? Am I Earth?’, they reflect on how our sense of self evolves as AI becomes increasingly embedded in daily life.
Maya B. Kronic is Head of Research and Development at Urbanomic, a British publisher that advocates for philosophical thinking as a creative practice. With Amy Ireland, Kronic is the co-author of Cute Accelerationism (2023), and the author of Gender Synthesis (2024).
Mireille Tap is a visual artist whose work feels tender, sensual, spikey, and gloomy. Underneath a dreamy shroud, her work touches on urgent social issues such as the definition of motherhood, access to healthcare, and housing. Referring to her body, lecture performances allow her to share in the most immediate way. She is drawn to the aggressive, unpredictable nature of sound and considers her voice a radical medium to work with.
Mela Miekus is a writer with a curatorial practice, who focuses on contemporary art and internet cultures, particularly online community formations.
Mita Medri comes from a background in Cultural Analysis and a Master’s in Design Cultures. Her research is mostly centered on digital occultism, witches, digital platform politics, and online subcultures.
Martine Neddam is a visual artist who has been working with internet virtual characters who lead an autonomous artistic existence in which the real author remained invisible. One of her most well-known artworks is mouchette.org, what appears as a personal website of a prepubescent female artist. Created in 1996, this was one of the first works of art to explore the game of online identity that later became prevalent on social media platforms.
