Fediverse memes

Lol I literally had a strict rule where I downvoted every comment that started with "this", no matter what else was written. Fuck that noise.

I did quite enjoy that article, although I would disagree with his conclusion. As can be guessed from my user name, I think the nature of capitalism is to blame, not personal habit. It seems tenuous to claim that a phenomena that has affected humans by the billions can be remedied by personal choice. A critic may say that is exactly buying into the illusion of capital. What is a systemic issue of production and distribution being reduced to one of personal agency, moral failing, and consumer preference.

One of the best books I've read in a long time is about precisely this. Immediacy, or the Cultural Style of Too Late Capitalism by Anna Kornbluh. It is a spiritual successor the Frederic Jameson and Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, as well as Debord and others.

Her argument is mainly that as markets have come to dominate every aspect of our existence, market logic has come to dominate culture. The current logic she names Immediacy. The idea being that in all aspects, including academia, culture is dominated by personal, immediate experience. It is nominalism, the idea that mediation of experience through abstraction, whether philosophical concepts or difficult art, is pretentious, impersonal, boring, amd tedious. We demand immediate response from that we engage with. Whether it be social media, music, novels, or movies, they are required to be immediately relatable, translatable, and consumable.

This is why shows like Rings of Power feel vapid and lacking. They are not mythical people in which we can posit ourselves, in which we can aspire and dream of greatness, of justice, of friendship and loyalty. The show feels like it is sneering and rolling its eyes at these. No one is really like Aragorn, come the fuck on. Hokie ass garbage.

Instead it offers us... ourselves in a fantasy setting. Symbolism and themes are hard and boring and pretentious, so they will pursue their own petty interests as we would and squabble and pout. Shows like this just feel like our world in a new setting. The orcs are "complicated", under the auspices of moral complexity but really just to denude morality from the world altogether. No grand messages. That shit is lame. And so we are more invested in Aragorn the moment his face changes to tenderness,as he looks down at Sam, willing to defend his his master against this 6' tall man with a longsword wielding a candlestick, and shows a deep moral complexity. This is using something rare in our world, a powerful man, a Numenorian, admiring the courage of a hobbit gardnerer with a candlestick. Admiring his bravery and loyalty. And as a mysterious, threatening, hardened traveller showing compassion and vulnerability.

It is striking in its contradiction, actual subversion, difficulty, and seeming otherwordly goodness. Not that shows have to portray traditional morals to be compelling. They need to portray something that is not immediatelt accessible to us. But that goes directly against the market logic. The same logic that creates fetishized commodities that seemingly appear at our door. That turns the complexities of climate disaster, exploitation, global supply chains into little entertainment boxes that exist simply because we desire it to.

The gig economy, where employment is mercurial, "nomadic", precarious, is celebrated as freedom. The destruction of new possibility is celebrated as authenticity. Live your truth. I heard an ad for lawyers that offered to help on "your divorce journey".

And as this world offers us constant ennui and anomie by fuflilling desires it convinces us we have, it also implores us to act now! The environment is collapsing, recycle your cans for Christ sake! Buy products in brown packaging you fucking monster! So it feels almost irresponsible to dream, foolish to hope, impossible to imagine. The actual message of Marvel movies, novels that are part confessional diary, green marketing, is that "this is the only world. Even in space. Even with superheroes. Even in Middle Earth. The only arrangment. Even your wildest fantasy cannot escape this reality. There is no world outside of capitalism. All is exchange and consumption and endless banality", As Mark Fischer put it "It is easier to imagine the end if world than the end of capitalism".

So I, and Kornbluh, do actually agree the solution is a moral imperative. But not to engage with the machine in a moderate way. Trying to curate an eddy in a flood. But to make difficult art. Art that is mediated. Art that requires investment and separation and abstraction. Just now, when the world is on the brink of endless catastrophe, is it most appropriate to dream of different possibilities. To read Lord of the Rings and look at Aragorn not as sentimental and trite, but as aspirational.

Lastly, if you have interacted with teenagers there is a deep, bedrock cynicism that eclsipses irony and sarcasm. Those things imply a hope thst was betrayed. They largely have never hoped, have never stayed up breathelessly reading a challenging book, or listened to an album on repeat that fundamentally changes them, that they feel beyond their bones. Which is full tragedy. Adolescence should be when dreaming through new and exciting media elavates you, opens new horizons. There is overwhelmingly apathy, amusement, boredom. Little curiosity or imagination. Their entire worlds have been robbed of them. They can sense it. They don't tend to love or even like social media. But their horizons are closed. Nothing left even to dream of. They don't have the faculties to even sense what it is they are missing, they just know it is.

Very sorry for the length. I just really love the book, and thanks for the article. It was a good productive read.