'We try to avoid anxiety by getting rich, by making a hundred thousand dollars when we're twenty-one years of age, by becoming millionaires. Now none of those things lead to the joy, the creativity that I'm talking about. One can own the world and still be without the inner sense of pleasure, of joy, of courage, of creation. I think our society is in the midst of a vast change. The society that began at the Renaissance now is ending, and we are seeing the results of this ending of a social period in the fact that psychotherapy has grown with such great zest. Almost every other person in California is a psychotherapist. And this always happens when an age is dying. You see, the Greeks began their great age in the seventh, sixth centuries B.C., and then they talked of beauty and goodness and truth, all these great things that the philosophers talked about. But by the second century B.C., first century B.C., that had all been forgotten. The philosophers now talked about security, and they tried to help people get along with as little pain as possible, and they made mottoes for human beings. Beauty and truth and goodness had been lost. Our Renaissance began the modern age, and at the beginning of an age there are no psychotherapists. This is taken care of by religion and by art and by beauty, by music. But at the end of an age – every age down through history has been the same – every other person becomes a therapist, because there are no ways of ministering to people in need, and they form long lines to the psychotherapist's office. I think it's a sign of the decadence of the age, rather than a sign of our great intelligence.' -- Release

'Every once in a while, your barriers break down. You get back to this certain gasp, because there's no way to reverse time.'

'An expanded version of an article 'The Meaning of Life' published in the Counselling and Psychotherapy Journal, Dec 2001, p. 32-33 -- Existential therapy is a serious, deep and far-reaching enquiry into what it means to a particular person to be a human being. It involves an often-painful process of squarely facing up to those things that are ordinarily avoided and evaded. Paradoxically such a process can bring great strength and unexpected joy. Existential work is not for the fainthearted and it may sometimes consist of encouraging rather than soothing anxiety and guilt. The essence of the existential approach is to deflate our human vanities and remember that at the end of all our worldly adventures and preoccupations we are born to die.'

'The big secret, for both consumers and providers of psychotherapy, is that there really is no such thing as generic "psychotherapy" per se: only wildly disparate theories and divergent techniques adopted by vastly varied clinicians with dissimilar personality styles, life-experience, training, values, goals, neuroses, complexes and world-views practicing what, only in the broadest possible sense, we have collectively come today to call psychotherapy. When someone says they have been in psychotherapy, or practice psychotherapy, the reality is that his or her experience with therapy may differ radically from another person's. Psychotherapy is not – and never will be, despite efforts to scientifically systematize, manualize, objectify and make it more formulaic – something consistently or reliably predictable, prescribed and predetermined. Rather, it is, as Rank and Jung understood, an archetypal healing process that is, of necessity, at its best re-invented with each new patient and by each practitioner. -- Merkin's memoir reveals her own hard-won recognition of how unrealistic, infantile, romantic or magical expectations about what psychotherapy is and is not, can and cannot do, tend to undermine the process when not explicitly addressed during treatment. To begin with, I believe Ms. Merkin may underestimate what she has learned cumulatively from psychotherapy all these many years. First, that the fantasy of finding the "perfect therapeutic match" is, like looking for the perfect mate, just, that, a fantasy. Second, yes, it is entirely possible to "stay in therapy forever without much real progress." Which is why both unsuccessful and successful psychotherapy must inevitably end at some point. Thirdly, that, inescapably, in therapy, "the weight of responsibility is borne almost entirely by the patient. . . . " Fourth, is the recognition that constantly searching for growth, transcendence, "self-transformation" or "character change" may be a means of refusing to accept oneself for who and what one truly is. ... And last but not least, ninth, her profound perception, albeit disillusioning, that behind every all-powerful "Wizard of Oz" she and others so desperately seek and project onto a physician or psychotherapist, there is always "just another little man behind a velvet curtain." Or little woman. Another imperfect, only human, flawed fellow pilgrim plodding through life as productively as they can. There are no perfectly analyzed analysts. No totally enlightened teachers or mentors. Psychotherapists, no matter what their orientation, are not omniscient, omnipotent nor superhuman, much as we might wish them to be. -- "Above all," writes Merkin, " it provided a space for interior examination, an education in disillusioned realism that existed nowhere else on this cacophonous, frantic planet." An education in disillusioned realism indeed! Acceptance of reality, both past and present, as it is and on its own terms, rather than as we desire it to be. Of ourselves as we are. Of finitude, fate and destiny; the tragic existential facts of life. Of harsh (but also beautiful and mysterious) reality without excessive sugar-coating, buffering, sedation or anesthesia. This is a powerful lesson her antidepressants apparently never provided. Painful, expensive, frustrating, imperfect and time-consuming as it may be, any psychotherapeutic treatment that provides a good "education in disillusioned realism" can't be all bad.'

'Psychotherapy, in my view, is more soundly focused on what C.G. Jung termed individuation: the unpredictable, lengthy, labyrinthine process of becoming more whole. Psychotherapy is about finding and fulfilling our destiny: While for most this may include romantic love, marriage, parenthood, career, etc., there are others for whom fate or destiny has something quite different in store. Psychotherapy is about creativity: courageously claiming the personal freedom to express ourselves constructively in the world to our fullest potential. Finally, psychotherapy is fundamentally about acceptance: learning to accept ourselves and others, our fate, our responsibility, our existential aloneness, the unconscious, evil, the daimonic, and life on its own terms. Surely, this is a sort of love. Love of reality. Love of the world as it is. Love of all humanity. Love even of the dark and tragic, seemingly sometimes senseless side of life. And this is, for want of a better term, a spiritual love. Psychotherapy is, for these reasons, an essentially spiritual process. But it is precisely this reawakening, rekindling or stirring of spiritual love, this gradual opening up, this growing willingness to tolerate ambiguity and loneliness, this deepening receptivity to life, oneself and others during the psychotherapy process that can ready us for interpersonal love and intimacy, and which – when lacking, undeveloped or resisted - resides at the root of most mental disorders. And what exactly is the mysterious, potent, transformative power that serves to awaken this newfound or renewed capacity to love in the psychotherapy patient? Freud, Jung and others since observed that the alchemical catalyst occurs in the dynamic and uniquely intimate relationship between patient and therapist, and very much resembles--yes, you guessed it – love.'

'What is the Minotaur? First, the Minotaur represents our primal fear of the unconscious. The unconscious is that which is unknown to us. For this reason, we humans are born not only with an instinctive fear of the unknown and of death, but also an archetypal fear of the unconscious. This is one of the factors that make the psychotherapy process so threatening: a profound fear of encountering our own unconscious, of entering the dark, lonely labyrinth and meeting the Minotaur. Fundamentally, the Minotaur represents the primal fear of the unknown. Fear of the unknown is deeply-seated in the human psyche. Indeed, the Minotaur may be seen as a metaphor for death and death anxiety. Existentially, death is a symbol of non-being or non-existence, and, therefore, death anxiety can be understood, in Kierkegaard's words, as the "fear of nothingness." As existential psychologist Rollo May (1977) points out, "the threat of non-being lies in the psychological and spiritual realm as well – namely, in the threat of meaninglessness in one's existence." The Minotaur also embodies both fate (our biological nature) and destiny (our freedom) and the integral interrelationship between the two. But why do we find it such a dreadful image? Because to confront the Minotaur in the dark labyrinth is to confront ourselves: our fears of the unknown, our ferocious, beastly nature, our rage, aggression, sexuality, mortality, the daimonic. This self-confrontation is successfully accomplished by proceeding carefully yet courageously along one's own Ariadnean thread. The secret is that, metaphorically, we each have been given this thread to follow and lead us to our destiny – but only if we are brave enough to do so. Psychotherapy sometimes entails helping the patient who has lost touch with this precious thread to find it, take hold of it, and follow it wherever it may lead, inching along blindly on hands and knees in the darkness through the unknown. ...once grasped, proceeding slowly but steadily along one's Ariadnean thread provides a profound sense of purpose and meaning in life. As though one is being pulled or guided by some power greater than oneself.'

'Ernest Becker, in The Denial of Death (1973), counsels wisely that one must "consent daily to die, to give oneself up to the risks and dangers of the world, allow oneself to be engulfed and used up. Otherwise one ends up as though dead in trying to avoid life and death." ...there really is no such thing as security in life. Except for that sense of security that originates within. Relinquishing our illusions of control, accepting our relative powerlessness over life and death, and accepting ourselves as we are – including our anxiety and life's utter unpredictability – can be extremely liberating. It can allow us to stop worrying so much, and get on with living. The mysterious future will unfold soon enough. Make necessary plans and decisions. But don't dwell on them or be overly attached to their desired outcomes. Focus instead on what's happening right now, this very moment, however anxiety-provoking, painful, tedious or infuriating rather than anxiously anticipating what may or may not happen next. The future is never guaranteed, one way or another. It may or may not ever arrive. Something bad could happen. But, then, so could something good. Rather than hopeless pessimism or grandiose expectation, consider adopting an attitude of "benign optimism" (or at least neutrality) toward the potential but never promised future.'

"The feelings that you feel are very, very real, on the internet."

'Dawning horror tinged with self-loathing crept slowly over the face of claims adjuster Robert Pettlebaum, 42, as he described his job and by extension his life to others during a seemingly innocuous Tuesday lunch meeting. "Mostly what I do is I seek out discrepancies in the property appraisal versus the claimant's estimate of worth and then I…then I defer outpays…with…oh, God…," Pettlebaum said as shadows of unspeakable self-realization flickered across his increasingly desperate eyes. "Wait, no, that can't be right. I don't...do I?"'

“Everything has been figured out, except how to live.”

'You suddenly apprehend me while I am peeping through a keyhole, or having just done something vulgar, and in a decidedly embodied consciousness, I live shamefully and through blushing my recognition that I am as I appear before you. In shame "I recognize that I am as the Other sees me [Sartre, 1956]." The other's look is threatening to me because he or she can see what I am now doing and how I am responsible for what I am. If I want to take away his or her capacity for this, I will try to stare down the other, I reduce the other to a role, take away his or her capacity to objectify me. On the other hand, I, may want to preserve the other's freedom enough to win through him or her recognition of what I supposedly am. I am utterly dependent upon the other, for I am nothing unless another consciousness recognizes me as such. As I "can not be an object for an object." I must preserve the other consciousness, and yet I just as much want to destroy it for threatening me with judgment.'

'Girlfriends say: I pretend to believe you when you say you know kung fu, because I love you. The boyfriend says, not hearing anything she said: I'll stay with you until either I know kung fu; or you realize I don't really know kung fu, and my shame makes me hate you. -- Trinity loves Neo, even before he becomes The One. She's waited her whole life for him. He doesn't (yet) know kung fu, but she knows he will. And she does know kung fu -- and chooses him, saves him. That's love. But Neo doesn't return the love until he becomes who he has always known he is. He has to know kung fu first. Only then could someone really love him. -- The Matrix was the articulated solution to a growing existential crisis. It gave us hope: "Unless there's solid reason not to, I'm just going to allow the possibility that there's more to reality than what I see, and so there may be a valid reason to hope that my real life will kick in any time. And then someone will love me."

'According to Rev. Paul Flessing of Yale University's Divinity School, Snake's theosophical quandary is far from uncommon. "We all wrestle with the Big Questions about the will of God and one's place in Creation," Flessing said. "But the important thing is to have faith and try to find meaning in one's life–or lives, as the case may be. We must remember the trials of Job, whose faith God continually tested. It seems Snake is going through something very much like that, with this constant pattern of 'Continues.' The purpose will become clear to him in the end."'

'"Though raising interest rates is unlikely at the moment, the Fed will of course act appropriately if we…if we…" said Bernanke, who then paused for a moment, looked down at his prepared statement, and shook his head in utter disbelief. "You know what? It doesn't matter. None of this—this so-called 'money'—really matters at all." "It's just an illusion," a wide-eyed Bernanke added as he removed bills from his wallet and slowly spread them out before him. "Just look at it: Meaningless pieces of paper with numbers printed on them. Worthless." --- According to witnesses, Finance Committee members sat in thunderstruck silence for several moments until Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) finally shouted out, "Oh my God, he's right. It's all a mirage. All of it—the money, our whole economy—it's all a lie!"'

'In the last scene, the movie picture appears to jolt suddenly; the only way I can describe it is that it's as if the camera operator started putting the camera down before he turning it off. What's the significance of that jolt? It's in such contrast to the stillness of the rest of the movie. Does it mean it's all a dream? He's killed? What? No, believe it or not, that jolt happens because the camera operator actually did put the camera down before he turned it off. And the director liked the effect.' -- I've *seen* this movie before, but I can't say what it is because the comment above would ruin it for you, though I'm keen to recommend it. Interesting... I kinda feel art finds you, rather than the other way around, so I'm careful not to intervene but— If you'd like to chance my ruining it for you rather than leaving things to fate: Amazon > Search: "Abbas Kiarostami Close Up" > Add to basket > Checkout > ??? > !!! yw ;^)

“I’m searching for who the fuck I am.” -- I. Know. You're. From The Twat Farm.

The perception IS the reality. That's the inherent danger of the immediate consenus-making ability of twitter and other realtime platforms. -- Brendan O'Neill: "Illiberal liberalism" "Emotional incontinence" Righteous indignation/enthusiasm. That's the inherent danger of immediate action/reaction/gratification as opposed to taking the time to think things through – "Boring, hard work," as Nick Cohen puts it. (As a #moralmaze tweeter said, links to in-depth resources provide the best alibi for "shallow" twitterhappy tweetstormers.) Nick Cohen: "There's a lot of utopianism. It's very shallow and very transient. A lot of it is apathetic. It's people affirming themselves." -- RE #moralmaze. It's not surprising to see tweeters so overly keen to defend any and every perceived threat to twitter, though it's not like its going away—calm down. Defending both their newly-felt right to be heard and the social/cultural capital they've built up over the years... TWITTER IS SERIOUS BUSINESS.

'There have always been people who have found reasons to take offence. A generation ago, protest was hard work. Now Facebook groups and trending topics on Twitter can, if they ignite, produce mass protests from nowhere. -- The ease of net communication explains why so much abuse appears in comments boxes. But it also undermines the authenticity of many mass protests. The targets feel as if they are on the receiving end of genuine popular feeling, when typically the anger directed against them is shallow and transient. -- A mob fighting a good cause is still a mob. To fight back, you need to remember that although the internet age is hugely expanding the number of complaints, the old rules still apply. Whether you are the owner of a tiny blog or the editor of a national newspaper, if someone points out an incorrect fact, you correct it; if someone challenges an argument, you argue back; and if someone says that you must think what they think, you ignore them.'

'...there was something gratuitous about what Brendan O’Neill described as the liberal cause-hunter’s ‘two-minute’ hate. All the commentaries, the blogs, the tweets – all seemed a little too desperate to voice their disapproval, to reveal how disgusted they were. It was a spectacle of feelings, a seething mass of self-affirming emotional incontinence, a carnival of first-person pronouns and expressions of hurt and proxy offence. I feel, therefore I am. -- ...important for the spleen-venters was the act of claiming the moral high-ground as offended, as hurt, as a determined victim of something that they no doubt searched out on the web. This act of searching out offence and proclaiming the depth of one’s feelings from online rooftops threatens free speech. ...the danger of such a vast explosion of offence-taking is that it inhibits, creating a ‘you-can’t-say-that’ culture in which one is scared to speak one’s mind, whether its contents are moronic or not.' -- THE THOUGHTPOLICE IS YOU

'I twitter, therefore I am. I matter. -- Dr David Lewis, a cognitive neuropsychologist: "Using Twitter suggests a level of insecurity whereby, unless people recognize you, you cease to exist. It may stave off insecurity in the short term, but it won't cure it." -- Twitter's software designers were clever enough to program in tenacious intermittent reward systems, so you end up like a loser in Vegas, behaviorally trapped at the slot machines of life. -- Perhaps a more enlightened way to look at it is that you're really just enjoying a cyber-zen moment of mindfulness to be present and tweet thyself. We're all interconnected now - each of us acting like a single neuron in humanity's brain, firing bits of electricity at one another, slowly coadunating and collectively struggling toward a great awakening. That awakening could turn out to be the next stage in our evolution, and a single tweet the butterfly's wings that eventually leads to a big bang of global meta-consciousness.' -- OM...

'...no one, from executives to game designers to behavioral psychologists, can give you an absolutely clear and quantifiable test for what "addictive" means when applied purely to a behavior or action. (As opposed to, say, a chemical. Chemical addiction is an equine of differing saturation.) -- Addiction is not about what you DO, but what you DON'T DO because of the replacement of the addictive behavior. The reason why what defines addiction for one person may not define addiction for another person, even given quantified equal stretches of time action or consumption, is because addiction is not about the action, but about the individual person. This is why merely resisting addiction of any kind is not enough. This is why – although some activities are more broadly compelling than others – virtually any activity can become an addiction. What addictive behavior does is reveal underlying anxiety (and often depression, which itself is nebulous) and lack of desire to perform the things we're "supposed to" be doing. -- ...the game, as always, is a mirror. It does not create in us behaviors that we would never have otherwise; it reflects back to us what is lurking beneath the grind of our everyday existence. The solution is not to break the mirror, but to resist the urge to look away from what it shows us.'

'Online sharing is in the porcess of reaching its logical endpoint, in which identities become collective, and watching/consuming another's youtube presence becomes equivalent with becoming that presence. The technological miracle of transubstantiation takes place via hosts (IP hosts) that connect us up to the great cloud computers. Our displaced identities cannot be fixed in any particular place, disembodied we emanate and manifest in many servers at once; online we are legion. Naturally our boundaries dissolve -- we become what we regard on our screens, that with which we interact. -- The growth we once might have perceived in our pursuit of the authentic self has no conceptual or ideological basis in a post-internet society. -- Alt means not alternative but alternation. What Carles points the way toward is the oscillating self, or the dissolution of subjectivity into the online hive mind, in which every avatar is another mask we can wear.'

'"Sandbox" sometimes challenges traditional narrative, but it always puts something new in its place. ...[it] transforms predetermined narrative into dynamic, responsive narrative. ...the sandbox game distinguished itself by making the responses more significant and meaningful. -- ...a common challenge in sandbox design: player commitment to open story. ...that game design is so fun in itself that, if properly packaged, it can well be reinterpreted as gameplay itself. -- Sandbox play is essentially amoral/non-moral, in the sense that real action is often governed by the hypothetical: "What happens if I run this guy over?" ...until GTAIV, the PC personality was something of a narrative problem; the hero was a bi-polar thug for whom nothing was truly out of character. Such a character is not terribly interesting... With GTAIV, however the scarred warrior turned ironical and embittered anarchist justifies much better the peculiar range of action of a GTA hero.'

"But if we can't tweet, we don't exist!"

'The reason 3×3x3 is necessary when amplifying your character’s dimension is because it not only adds detail to the past and future of the character and world of story, where a traditional backstory might suffice, it also provides a fully developed backstory and future story that will be directly related and linked to the story in focus (the middle of the three acts). By developing a three-act past for your character, including anything from their journey through the space academy, their near-death experience due to an addiction, or what ever might have shaped them into the character we experience in the story in focus, you’ll create an extensive world of story and character dimension your audience will be able to discover when searching for more about the story in focus … the main attraction – assuming you write a compelling story and character your audience is tempted to learn more about.' -- Endless exposition. (See: SJ on Lost starting at CRISIS on its narrative arc.)

#5 Search for Authenticity: If you are smart, you realize that ‘authenticity’ is yet another archetypal persona that seduces you into a static self-conception. If not, you go down an obsolete path blazed by a stoned generation. #8 Skill: Some of your personas become increasingly comfortable to inhabit. You start noticing that you are now acting out the role so well that you are actually as good or better in those roles than people you previously considered “authentic” non-actors. This leads to the epiphany that everybody grows into roles this way. #11 Fluidity: Jumping among the set of point-like roles in the space of personas yields to continuous movement. You become aware of the gradual expansion of the space you can inhabit. It starts acquiring, through its growth, a shape and character. #12 Brandhood: The integrated, growing space which you can inhabit with fluidity starts acquiring an overall sum greater than the parts consistency, that has only one analogy: the notion of brand.'

'"I always thought that if I kept searching and exploring, I'd discover who I truly was," said Speth from his Wrigleyville efficiency. "Well, I looked deep into the innermost recesses of my soul, I plumbed the depths of my subconscious, and you know what I found? An empty, windowless room the size of an aircraft hangar. From now on, if anybody needs me, I'll be sprawled out on this couch drinking black-cherry soda and watching Law & Order like everybody else." "Fuck it," he added.'

'We tend to imagine that a time existed when our consciousness was pure and untainted by cultural strictures and expectations; Carles suggests that for most of us, that time is adolescence, when we learn the painful art of compromise and confront the reality that we frequently don't subscribe to our own ideals, which in themselves often prove not to be our own but some else's idea of what constitutes the good. "Back in high school, there was no such thing as ‘authenticity’ because everything ‘just was.’ U could be bold, and u could ‘feel things.’ U could do drugs/drink for the first time, and be convinced that no1 had ever felt this way before." Only with age do we recognize our own unique experience is actually second-hand, that our creative impulses and insights are hand-me-downs. The condition of postmodernity is such that these past feelings are suddenly invalidated by their lack of originality; we efface our own past when we deduce that it was not sui generis.'

'I walk down the street and people stare at me. They wonder ‘what is up with that bro.’ They would never be able to understand what is up with me. “I” do not “exist.” I am just sort of here to ‘challenge’ people and their ‘realities.’ I make you uncomfortable because I do not exist for the same reason you exist. I am a conceptual bro. I want to make u ‘think’ about ‘the big picture.’ Want to make u ask ‘why?‘ I want to be noticed. I do not want to be noticed. I am a think piece.'

'Rubin held three sessions with his patient over the phone. “Please don’t abandon me!” Nordstrom said during the third session. “I’m staring at an empty couch. You are the one doing the abandoning. Are you abandoning yourself the way you have always been abandoned?” ....he [had] devised what Rubin termed “a self-cure." He sought to protect himself against the trauma of further abandonment by pre-emptively abandoning himself. If he wasn’t there in the first place, he wasn’t in a position to be cast away. The Zen concept of no-self was like a powerful form of immunity. ...he used Zen to assuage the pain of the past, hiding the pathological aspects of self-abandonment and neglect in the rapture of Zen vacancy; how he hid from his own neediness, anger and grief in the ecstatic abnegation of enlightenment. "One of the most important insights I got from therapy is that subconsciously I want the depth of my suffering to be witnessed by someone. ...I [had] embraced an aggrandized narrative."'

'Being on TV helps give damaged people the illusion that they matter, that they’re noticed: "Hey! I’m on TV so I must be important. People want to hear what I have to say." So people will tell the camera what they’d never tell a friend or family member or clergyman. That camera lens is seductive, people will reveal instantly what it would have taken a year of treatment to tell a therapist. It’s like shooting up a fix of self-esteem. Problem is, just like shooting heroin, the “fix” doesn’t fix anything. When the red light on the camera goes off, you’re left with yourself and all your problems still intact. Television reality shows open wounds which no one can suture so after your appearance, you’re left to bleed to death. We live in an age of disposable people. The producers don’t care about the players, they care about the sponsors who want eyeballs, confrontations, meltdowns....the highest-rated shows are the ones where people get crushed emotionally.' -- Disposable people

'Mental-health workers have discovered that often people who compete on shows like “Survivor” and “Big Brother” -- even those who win -- suffer severe and often long-lasting psychological trauma as a result. “The obsession to be on TV is like the obsession to use drugs and alcohol,” Miami psychologist Dr. Jamie Huysman told TheWrap. “It’s just a symptom of a much deeper emotional problem, and the sufferer’s malaise infects the entire family.”' Callahan added that often contestants don't realize how much scrutiny they will have to endure even after their time on the show has ended. "Your persona on the show extends back to your real life." -- "The only difference between so-called reality shows and dramatic shows is that they get real people to play the roles. You may think you’re the smart, sexy one, only to see yourself portrayed as a calculating bitch when the show airs. That’s why so many winners suffer a type of post-traumatic stress syndrome."' -- Even those who WIN

'Psychologists and former contestants discuss what some are calling the 'Truman Show Syndrome.' ... the reality of reality shows is not nearly so benign: at least 11 reality-show participants have taken their own lives -- and two more who have tried to -- in tragedies that appear to be linked to their experience on television shows. Certainly, many of these people had pre-existing problems, which may have been why they were looking for such instant TV fame in the first place. But mental-health workers have discovered that many contestants on shows like “Survivor” and “Big Brother” -- even those who win -- suffer severe and often long-lasting psychological trauma.' -- I see dead people—everywhere.

"It was as if there is this other form of ‘authenticity’ that I didn’t even know about that has nothing to do with the arts. I feel like there is ’something wrong with me.’ I feel like my ‘alt’ perspectives might have crippled me forever. I feel like my ‘global perspectives’ and the required 2-year core courses at my university made me ‘know too much’ about life, and possibly enabled me to think that ‘nothing matters.’ I feel trapped. I feel like I just wish I really knew a lot about computers, and could have just designed CollegeHumor/vimeo/twitter, or something. I sort of just wish I could have a job where I am ‘paid to have opinions on things that seem important’, and make me feel like I am ‘behind the scenes’ in important decisions regarding meaningful brands. I feel worried. I feel like there is a ‘real world’ that I have always told myself that I will be able to transcend, but it might have just been a gimmick." -- :*(

'Narcissism is just the user interface for nihilism, of course, and with artfully kitschy services like Twitter we're allowed to both indulge our self-absorption and distance ourselves from it by acknowledging, with a coy digital wink, its essential emptiness. I love me! Just kidding! The great paradox of "social networking" is that it uses narcissism as the glue for "community." Being online means being alone, and being in an online community means being alone together. The community is purely symbolic, a pixellated simulation conjured up by software to feed the modern self's bottomless hunger. Hunger for what? For verification of its existence? No, not even that. For verification that it has a role to play. '

"Afraid. Afraid of losing everything. Afraid of my site ‘dying.’ Afraid of losing sight of ‘what’s important in life.’ Scared of who I am finding out I amIs the internet ‘my prison.’ Not sure if I have a healthy sense of self [via the internet]"

'... the absence of marketing that targets me specifically has left me feeling oddly and disturbingly bereft. Who knew that advertising was so critical to my knowing who I am? Maybe Judith Williamson was right about the interpellating force of advertising discourse—they call out “Hey, you” to me, and when I respond, I know just who I am. Without my being aware, I think that consumer culture has persuaded me that shopping is a natural way to conceive and express not only desire but creativity—the ability to know what to want, how to want it, and how to daydream and fantasize through it, and ultimately how to put it to use. I’m discovering that without comprehending ads, without understanding why certain things are being sold and who they are supposed to be for, I’m without desire, and without desire, I don’t seem to exist.'

On services that... 'attempt to transform everyday life tasks into games by assign values to them and keeping score. ...a world in which collective experience is systematically abrogated, a world in which only competition can “unite” us and corporations reap the profits from our combat. We end up sharing only the ideal of measured achievement: how many more points we can score, how many people are reading our updates, how many more things we can own or add to our list of experiences. Services [that] meet the need we now have to have our social experiences more rigidly structured by an outside party, a referee, some sort of mediator. We seem to have worked ourselves into a corner where we must outsource our ability to be motivated. We need outside parties to generate motivational schemes and point systems to drive us through life activities that were once rewarding enough in and of themselves. ...nullifying the quality of experience and reducing it to a point value.'

'The survey is a disguised expression of his will to power, since its outcome is irrelevent. By asking the question Carles has proved his relevence in a culture that hypocritically worships the forms of democracy while clinging fast to the social hierarchy that makes the cherished ideal of social mobility legible and meaningful. Carles emphasizes the pseudo-democratic gesture as a bourgeois-making fait accompli by rendering the words "Am I 'making a difference' in the lives of smart/educated/wealthy/culturally-aware/authentic/meaningful people?" into an image that cannot be manipulated digitally as text, but only as a bloc. The question becomes an image of cultural capital itself, which is evident in the habitus that enables Carles to conceive of the question itself... The words seem open to alteration, but they are fixed, in the form he determined. The openness toward which they gesture is always already an illusion, a ruse, a tactic.'

"A lot of people ask me ‘Carles, is ur blog relevant?’ I thought I’d ask the ppl who know best–yall! It’s kinda hard to understand ‘how important’ ur blog is after you’ve ‘come so far’ and become ‘a blog worth blogging about’ or maybe ‘a blog that is a bloggable meme. Sometimes I just need 2 ask my readers if I am meeting their expectations. Am I 'making a difference' in the lives' of smart/educated/wealthy/culturally-aware/authentic/meaningful people? //// OPEN POLL ////" -- Comment: thetruthyall: "oh, but if ur asking WHAT u should be blogging about, maybe u could be more vulnerable. sometimes it seems like ur authenticity has too many rules, which is not authentic (altho it is relevant)" -- Comment: Carles (not HRO) -- "you fuckfaces will just keep reading this shit.. fuck any one who reads this blog. you should be ashamed of yourselves and your parents should take away your internet for a year and make you live on the streets" -- LOL KILLAR

'FEel like s0 many people try to ‘find meaning’ on the internet, or they think they deserve to ‘get paid’ [via advertising revenue] for just sharing their memes. They are s0 out of touch with reality. It’s kinda weird how not even that many people want to be ‘mainstream famous’ any more. A more authentic version of fame comes with being ‘microfamous’ via the internet. Some people also want 2 b ‘macro-anonymous.’ -- Just want to be comfortable with who I am [in real life AND on the internet]. ////I want 2 be famesies. Just want to ‘get paid’ and be ‘critically acclaimed’ for ‘being myself’ and ‘living life’ by ‘being on the internet for 70% of my life.’

'What is real? What is virtual? What is living? What is nonliving? Of the many selves I am, who is he real me?' -- 'Computing would offer [Turkle] endless moments of sweet epiphany when theories that had seemed right but abstract were suddenly right and manifest. Constructing the self with language and the notion of permeable boundaries? There it was on the screen. You could almost substitute computing for terms of Lacan's manifesto: computing is constructed as a set of languages; language (the relationship of terms to each other) is the structure that forms computing; the boundaries between data and execution are blurred; and so forth. What in other contexts has seemed like the gibberish of postmodernism–decentering (oh, you mean multiple users), intertextuality (oh, hypertext), fragmentation (oh, me in the Parenting conference, me in the Eros conference), blurring (oh, object-oriented languages)–is rendered clear at last.'

"James Parker dissects two of Jim Carrey's most unnervingly subversive onscreen moments, and contrasts them with a scene from the Bill Murray film Groundhog Day."

"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind imagines a pair of lovers, played by Carrey and Kate Winslet, in the heat-death of their togetherness: bored and disgusted, each submits to a disreputable clinical procedure in which the whole relationship is expunged from their memory banks. It works, but somehow, as freshly minted strangers, they meet again; they are drawn to each other; they begin to fall in love. Then the attempt at mutual erasure comes to light: they learn that they have been through all of this already. What to do? In an overlit, discolored hallway, they stare at each other, grim with foreknowledge—and decide to go for it all over again. How beautiful! Ghastly as they look under the fluorescent tubes, the lovers stand together in this instant on a scuffed little summit of human dignity: by embracing their situation (and each other), they have transcended it." -- YES! (Love this movie.)

"Jim Carrey will loom large in our shattered posterity, I believe, because his filmography amounts to a uniquely sustained engagement with the problem of the self. Who knows how the self became such a problem, or when we began to feel the falseness in our nature? Carrey’s dream sequence of movies is a prophecy, a warning that this clanking ego-apparatus in which each of us walks around, this fissured, monumental self, half Job and half Bertie Wooster, cannot be sustained. Out of his own seemingly bottomless disquiet, Carrey writhes and reaches into the bottomless disquiet of his audience. An oracular bum holds up a handwritten cardboard sign in Bruce Almighty: LIFE IS JUST. We know we’re frauds; we fear a reckoning is due."

#1. We don't have enough annoying strangers in our lives: The more we're able to edit the annoyance out of our lives, the less we're able to handle it. #2. We don't have enough annoying friends, either: The problem is that peacefully dealing with incompatible people is crucial to living in a society. In fact, if you think about it, peacefully dealing with people you can't stand is society. #4. Online company only makes us lonelier: When someone speaks to you face-to-face, what percentage of the meaning is actually in the words, as opposed to the body language and tone of voice? ... in Text World, all that is stripped away... absent a sense of the other person's mood, every line we read gets filtered through our own mood instead. #5. We don't get criticized enough. #7. We feel worthless, because we actually are worth less: There's one advantage to having mostly online friends, and it's one that nobody ever talks about: They demand less from you.'

"One of the first rules of business is to protect your investment. I like the idea that we do the same with our personal philosophies. Once we have decided what’s right, irrelevant of whether we are right or wrong, the more energy we will invest to protect that. Which is basically how conmen work. They get you to invest a little bit, then a bit more. They never tell you to buy something, just take a look. Even looking’s an investment. Once you’ve contributed some of your energy to looking - appraising a certain article - then a small investment has been made. From a small investment comes a larger investment, from a larger investment comes a greater investment until eventually you’ve invested so much that you can’t be wrong. Because if you are wrong, it must mean you’re stupid and nobody can admit that they’re stupid."

'"...the main emotion behind most people's politics was hope..." That sentiment has now been replaced, he argued, by indignation. "People are more interested in bearing witness to their personal moral righteousness" than in engaging in open-minded debate.'

"An arrogant insouciance might, for example, seem more fitting to an age of imperialism than this wilting, debilitating malady; and enlightenment, another well-known theme of the era, might have been better served by a mood of questing impatience."

"Google Juice" FFS!