longest collaborative sentence [remixed]
11 · 11 · 2025
Times New Roman
With thanks to the staff of the Whitney Museum of American Art for permission to work with Douglas Davis’ The World’s Longest Collaborative Sentence (1994–2012).
longest collaborative sentence [remixed] uses Douglas Davis’ collaborative piece to explore the friction between authorship and censorship.
Davis’ sentence, which is open, anonymous, and unmoderated, offers an early and revealing example of freedom of expression in a digital space. The build up of anonymous voices reveals the fine line between free speech and hate speech, and questions where responsibility lies when collective authorship is left unchecked.
This website showcases the original sentence as a continuously autoscrolling text, shifting focus to the multiple censorship modes. Some methods of obscuring language is intentionally disruptive, introducing friction and visual noise, while others are meant to remain subtle. This spectrum reflects the varied approaches to moderation found in digital communities.
Censorship decisions were informed by close reading of the sentence, accounting not only for explicit language but also for subtler forms of aggression. Accessibility and reading patterns were considered throughout, particularly in the design of the obscuring methods. Some choice words and microaggressions could have gone unnoticed, which is the nature of the internet. If there are any glaring instances of this, reach out to: marywildesign@gmail.com.