In the past decade, Iranian universities—the main institutions of knowledge production—have faced a decline in epistemic authority and a growing gap between formal structures and the intellectual needs of a new generation. Simultaneously, the expansion of social media, the attention economy, and independent schools of social sciences have reshaped traditional power/knowledge configurations, creating informal, platform-based learning environments. This interpretive qualitative study draws on the 2023 National Survey on Social Media Culture and five semi-structured interviews with directors of independent educational institutes to examine the emergence and functioning of these alternative spaces. The theoretical framework incorporates Foucault’s dispositif and power/knowledge, Deleuze and Guattari’s lines of flight, Agamben’s subjectivation, Hall’s articulation, and Bergson’s fluid temporality. Findings indicate that under post-digital conditions, Iranian users—exposed to continuous information flows—become “open bodies” and “hesitant yet active subjects,” adopting new ways of consuming and producing knowledge. Independent schools operate not as supplements or replacements for universities but as their structural “Other,” shaped by platform logic, digital aesthetics, and attention circulation. These institutions foster new intellectual figures, collective engagement, and alternative epistemic legitimacy, contributing to the weakening of universities’ traditional authority and the emergence of a post-authoritarian knowledge ecology in contemporary Iran.