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adamcrowe + theadvertisedlife   292

The New Inquiry -- Facebook in the Age of Facebook
'Social-media data collection, though, makes the illusion of a unified self hard to sustain. By imposing a single persistent identity, social media inevitably confront people with their inconsistencies. Yet one can’t abstain from Facebook without suffering growing economic consequences. What emerges from this pressure is social media’s tendency to both instantiate and discredit authenticity. They validate the quest for it while dismissing the possibility that you’ll ever arrive at it. The self-directed consumers who shop to express intrinsic inner being is supplanted by the well-connected, autoconfessional self who never pauses in disclosing information and thus runs ahead of any need to self-impose consistency. -- Social media gives us more information about ourselves than we can process, so any schematization of it seems to add to self-knowledge rather than limit it, broadening our identity repertoire. -- The data self coalesces in social media’s mircoaffirmations: we are matched with people who can affirm us, we see a reflection of ourselves in the data that makes us feel recognized, we are told what to want in a way that assures us we will be doing what is right and normal. What threatens the data self is not inauthenticity but lack of access, a disruption of the information flow. If the sharing process is disrupted, we are left with the underlying terror that there might be something crucial about our lives that can’t be expressed in data. The true existential threat is not that our identity will be exposed as fake, but that endless sharing of it will make it feel increasingly inexpressible. Key things might seem to escape our attempts to tell all. ...it becomes impossible to feel that something meaningful could also be unsharable. We are only what we share. Activity only means something to us because we know we can share it.'
theadvertisedlife  quantifiedself  selfservers  socialmedia  facebook  performance  identity  circumscription 
14 days ago by adamcrowe
The Last Psychiatrist -- Why We Love Sociopaths
'The admiration of TV sociopaths is related to this desire of self-identification, and not to a lack of power or a failure of the social contract. The social contract is working just fine for the AMC/Netflix demographic. It does not explain a desire for more power; envy explains it. Not knowing who I am, not knowing what I am supposed to do next and what I am not supposed to bother doing next – makes us long for characters who know precisely what to do next even if it is the wrong things. They may be flawed, but they are definite. They exist. -- It's impossible to deconstruct TV shows without considering their complement: advertising. Ads, especially TV commercials, offer the exact opposite of cynical detachment: pure aspiration. So while you resist allowing your career or relationship to define you – "I'm more than a software engineer!" you beg objects – cars, clothes, women – to define you, and of course not actual cars, clothes, or women, but whatever other people have said those things represent. Worse, cynicism and aspirational branding aren't two opposite ends of a pole, they form a cycle: the chasm between your cynical view of real life and the perfect definition of the aspirational images in ads makes you even more cynical towards real life; which drives you further into the safety of branding. Which is why you drink. The only salvation to this existential crisis is less freedom, not more. The only question is whether you will impose these restrictions on yourself, or you will wait like cattle for someone else to impose them on you. But they will be imposed. It is inevitable.'
narcissism  selfobjects  theadvertisedlife 
4 weeks ago by adamcrowe
NYTimes.com -- Generation Sell
'...we’re all in showbiz now, walking on eggshells, relentlessly tending our customer base. We use social media to create a product — to create a brand — and the product is us. We treat ourselves like little businesses, something to be managed and promoted. The self today is an entrepreneurial self, a self that’s packaged to be sold. -- ...movements always have an economic substrate. The beatniks and hippies — love, ecstasy, transcendence, utopia — were products of the postwar boom. The punks and slackers and devotees of hip-hop — rage, angst, nihilism, withdrawal — arose within the long stagnation that lasted from the early ’70s to the early ’90s. The hipsters were born in the dot-com boom and flourished in the real estate bubble. Affability is a commercial virtue, but it is also the affect of people who feel themselves to be living in a fundamentally agreeable society.'
hipsters  bubble  theadvertisedlife  affectivelabour  reputation 
november 2011 by adamcrowe
Pinboard Blog -- The Social Graph is Neither
'Imagine the U.S. Census as conducted by direct marketers – that's the social graph. Social networks exist to sell you crap. The icky feeling you get when your friend starts to talk to you about Amway, or when you spot someone passing out business cards at a birthday party, is the entire driving force behind a site like Facebook. Because their collection methods are kind of primitive, these sites have to coax you into doing as much of your social interaction as possible while logged in, so they can see it. It's as if an ad agency built a nationwide chain of pubs and night clubs in the hopes that people would spend all their time there, rigging the place with microphones and cameras to keep abreast of the latest trends (and staffing it, of course, with that Mormon bartender). We're used to talking about how disturbing this in the context of privacy, but it's worth pointing out how weirdly unsocial it is, too. How are you supposed to feel at home when you know a place is full of one-way mirrors? We have a name for the kind of person who collects a detailed, permanent dossier on everyone they interact with, with the intent of using it to manipulate others for personal advantage – we call that person a sociopath. And both Google and Facebook have gone deep into stalker territory with their attempts to track our every action. Even if you have faith in their good intentions, you feel misgivings about stepping into the elaborate shrine they've built to document your entire online life.'
socialmedia  socialnetworking  socialgraph  panopticon  theadvertisedlife 
november 2011 by adamcrowe
Adam Curtis Blog -- DREAM ON
'Marcuse said that you could never break the spell. That however much you took American culture and played rebelliously with it, you would always remain possessed by it. But this would set in motion a terrible logic within the New Left that would lead to a creeping distrust of all dreams of the future. ...in 1964 Marcuse became pessimistic. He wrote another book called One Dimensional Man. He had realised, he said, that capitalist society was far more manipulative than he had imagined. It had learnt how to take those desires and feed the masses spurious, addictive pleasures that enslaved them. This wasn't liberation – it was a dark world of what looked on the surface like an entrancing modern culture in which sex was discussed and portrayed openly, but really it was all cheap gratifications and stupefying pleasures that blotted out true human needs. Marcuse gripped the student left because he describe the revolution in a completely new way. The struggle was in your heads as much as in the streets. It was summed up in a slogan - There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads. He must be Destroyed.'
2+2=5  vanguardism  forcedmemes  "capitalism"  "revolution"  precuperation  theadvertisedlife  AdamCurtis 
october 2011 by adamcrowe
Ribbonfarm -- The Gollum Effect
'...a process by which regular humans are Gollumized: transformed into hollow shells of their former selves, defined almost entirely by their patterns of consumption. The ring only allows the ghost of Smeagol to persist because it brings with it the capacity for cunning, deception and trickery, which it needs to further its own objectives. The ring itself though, remains unchanged by Smeagol-Gollum, even as it transforms and consumes him. It is important to note that the One Ring does not actually destroy Gollum till its own end is imminent; it keeps Gollum alive to serve. ...consumerism is not about humans consuming products. It is about products consuming humans. ...visit a Vegas casino and wait for someone to win reasonably big. You will see the exact same applause and encouragement from the staff. And the applauding front-line service employees in both cases aren’t faking it. They genuinely believe the little guy has “beaten the house” rather than provided it with cheap marketing.'
consumerism  addiction  selfobjects  kipple  casinogulag  theadvertisedlife  from delicious
april 2011 by adamcrowe
Wikipedia -- Agnotology
'Agnotology is the study of culturally-induced ignorance or doubt... Schiebinger: "Ignorance is often not merely the absence of knowledge but an outcome of cultural and political struggle."' -- Betancourt: "Agnotologic capitalism": The systemic production and maintenance of ignorance. The creation of systemic unknowns where any potential "fact" is always already countered by an alternative of apparently equal weight and value renders engagement with the conditions of reality – the very situations affective labor seeks to assuage – contentious and a source of confusion... Affective labor is the enabler for the creation of the bubbles that are characteristic of the digital capitalist economy. Where the reduction of alienation is a precondition for the elimination of dissent. Affective labor is part of a larger activity where the population is distracted by affective pursuits and fantasies of economic advancement.'
kipple  digital  data  agnotology  usevaluevssignvalue  dematerialization  financialization  immaterialism  obscurantism  confusionism  simulacra  hologram  pseudoworlds  affectivelabour  immateriallabour  "capitalism"  theadvertisedlife  ponzi  from delicious
march 2011 by adamcrowe
The Daily Bell -- Desperate Cult of Technology
'The worse things are, the more "technology" is celebrated. It has been ever thus. Western mainstream media is a kind of prestidigitation, a magic show. One is always looking under the wrong shell. Some of the information on the Internet is viable; some of it is speculative; some of it is incorrect. But unlike in the 20th century, "forbidden' information is actually available. Internet communication hasn't just informed us about alternative technologies or ancient archeology; it's also helped us understand our governments and the shadowy elites standing behind them. It is the Internet that has allowed the exploration of the world's disastrous central banking economy and exposed the elite's plans for a new world order. It is much more difficult to hide relevant information in the 21st than in the 20th century. That doesn't mean the mainstream media won't try – and try it does with ever-increasing fervor. The cult of communication technology coverage is just one example.'
theadvertisedlife  soma  apps  temes  technology  internet  cognitivesurplus  from delicious
march 2011 by adamcrowe
The Onion -- Burden Of Parental Expectation Available In Youth Sizes
TheOnion  parenting  narcissism  theadvertisedlife  satire  from delicious
march 2011 by adamcrowe
YouTube -- Charlie Brooker: How TV Ruined Your Life: #3 Aspiration
'Comedy series in which Charlie Brooker uses a mix of sketches and jaw-dropping archive footage to explore the gulf between real life and television.' -- #Fear, #The Lifecycle, #Aspiration, #Love
television  simulacra  theadvertisedlife  CharlieBrooker  from delicious
march 2011 by adamcrowe
PHD Worldwide -- We Are The Future...
("But Mommy said I was worth customized content. Mommy customized me exactly to *her* specifications.") -- Bad parenting meets world -- http://youtu.be/P81bb0Tzwbo
advertising  theadvertisedlife  parenting  narcissism  entitlement  unwarrantedselfimportance  intergenerationalwarfare  from delicious
february 2011 by adamcrowe
RWW -- Your Facebook Activity is Now an Ad
'Facebook is launching a new ad format called "Sponsored Stories," which allows participating advertisers to promote your Facebook activity by turning it into homepage ads seen only by your friends. This activity can include liking a Facebook page, checking in via Facebook Places or sharing content to the News Feed from a Facebook application. With Facebook's Sponsored Stories, your activity is now up for grabs, available to the advertiser associated with the brand, business or app you interacted with. Just checked in to a restaurant? That's an ad. Just liked a brand? That's an ad. Just shared a news story from the Web? That's an ad. -- ...it's unclear what level of control advertisers have here. It's important though, because real personalized recommendations work both ways - they deliver the good news and the bad. Without both sides represented, this is just a new way to spam your friends.'
facebook  storygraph  epistolary  advertising  errorhandling  immunesystem  immateriallabour  brandmodels  subsistenceclicking  theadvertisedlife  from delicious
january 2011 by adamcrowe
YouTube -- Freedomain Radio: We Reap What We Sow
"The cycle of life is that children are inconvenient when they're very young, and parents are inconvenient when they're very old."
parenting  childhood  family  sociology  statism  status  theadvertisedlife  intergenerationalwarfare  StefanMolyneux  *  from delicious
january 2011 by adamcrowe
The Daily Bell -- Central Banking Tsunami
'The banking industry simply remains cocooned inside the world's biggest bubble. Central banking itself is a bubble though people don't think of it that way, but those who print the money decide which industries expand—and no self-respecting central banker is going to let the central-bank distribution system (commercial banks) deflate. And so the banking business just gets bigger and bigger. There is no reason for such a big banking industry. In fact, banks, at root, are nothing but money-warehouses; during the industrial revolution, funding for businesses often came locally, from extended families and partnerships. But that is not how our modern economy works. Central banks have created a massive, Western banking infrastructure and they use it to fund massive multinational companies – and this results in a kind of Anglosphere brand imperialism. The world may not need Coca-Cola, but the powerful dollar reserve system has made Coke's ubiquitiousness possible.'
economics  fiat  centralbanking  banking  mercantilism  corporatism  malinvestment  bubble  theadvertisedlife 
january 2011 by adamcrowe
The Daily Bell -- Central Banking Tsunami
'The banking industry simply remains cocooned inside the world's biggest bubble. Central banking itself is a bubble though people don't think of it that way, but those who print the money decide which industries expand—and no self-respecting central banker is going to let the central-bank distribution system (commercial banks) deflate. And so the banking business just gets bigger and bigger. There is no reason for such a big banking industry. In fact, banks, at root, are nothing but money-warehouses; during the industrial revolution, funding for businesses often came locally, from extended families and partnerships. But that is not how our modern economy works. Central banks have created a massive, Western banking infrastructure and they use it to fund massive multinational companies – and this results in a kind of Anglosphere brand imperialism. The world may not need Coca-Cola, but the powerful dollar reserve system has made Coke's ubiquitiousness possible.'
economics  fiat  centralbanking  banking  mercantilism  corporatism  malinvestment  bubble  theadvertisedlife  from delicious
january 2011 by adamcrowe
The Onion -- 2012 Prius To Feature Rudimentary Reproductive System
'TOKYO—In an effort to keep pace with its largely progressive customer base, Toyota Motor Corporation announced Monday that the 2012 line of Prius hybrid-electric vehicles would come equipped with a crude but functional reproductive system. "It's the same fuel-efficient, environmentally friendly car that drivers love, but with the option of male or female sex organs," said Toyota spokesman Veronica Bates, inviting reporters to examine the 85-pound vulva of a just-assembled female Prius, as well as the passenger-side vas deferens of its male counterpart.'
TheOnion  environmentalism  conspicuousconsumption  selfobjects  objects  unwarrantedselfimportance  theadvertisedlife  satire  from delicious
january 2011 by adamcrowe
NaturalNews.tv -- Black Friday madness reveals animalistic behavior of modern people
'What will happen when food disruptions occur, the currency collapses or social chaos breaks out in U.S. cities? This video answers that question by revealing how everyday people can transform into crazed animals who trample other human beings in order to get what they want. A shocking video that reveals a part of human nature that society tries to keep caged.'
america  soma  idiocracy  zombies  collapse  theadvertisedlife  from delicious
december 2010 by adamcrowe
Adam Curtis Blog -- FROM PIGEON TO SUPERMAN AND BACK AGAIN
'The idea of "nudging" citizens to do the right thing sounds cute. But in reality it marks the return of a powerful psycho-political theory that rose up in the mid-20th century. It was called Behaviourism. ...who decides what is "good" behaviour, and what happens when others decide it is bad[?] These are questions that the Nudge enthusiasts seem to be blithely unaware of. ...the old behaviourist ideas and techniques will be helped and reinforced by a powerful ally – the machines we have built. The computers. In our age of individualism we see computers as ways through which we can express our individuality. But the truth is that the computers are really good at spotting the very opposite. The computers can see how similar we are, and they then have the ability to agglomerate us together into groups that have the same behaviours. And from that they can predict what choices and decisions we will make. And they do it solely through our observed behaviour.'
statism  government  behaviorism  paternalism  nudge  mindcontrol  socialengineering  technoutopianism  technocracy  abravenewworld  quantifiedself  demographics  psychographics  class  reflexivity  theadvertisedlife  conformity  hierarchy  thegamingofeverydaylife  rewards  soma  documentaries  AdamCurtis  psychology  from delicious
november 2010 by adamcrowe
HIPSTER RUNOFF -- I bought a hybrid car and a polar bear came 2 my house 2 thank me 4 saving the environment.
'Then he was all like "Dont know who the eff u r. I wanted to buy a Hummer but ended up in this lil piece of shit car. Know the gas is cheap but still feel like a pussie when I drive it around." Then I was like "I live on an ice cap thanx for not melting it." Then he said "Global Warming is Bull shit. Go back 2 ur g-d hippie college and leave me alone with ur liberal propaganda [via the Daily Colbert Show]." Humans are kinda lame. Not sure if they 'get' the environment or if they really care abt animals like me/relevant ecosystems. Seems like they only care abt hybrid cars for the sake of 'status'. Just kinda sux that everything is abt branding + consumerism instead of 'doing it 4 the right reasons' 2 save the polar bears. I'm still alone. No1 understands me. I'm completely fucked.'
HipsterRunoff  advertising  forcedmemes  globalwarming  environmentalism  conspicuousconsumption  status  theadvertisedlife  lulz  satire  from delicious
november 2010 by adamcrowe
YouTube -- So you Want to Get a PhD in the Humanities
"I want to live a life of the mind."
theadvertisedlife  academia  careerism  entitlement  intergenerationalwarfare  lulz  from delicious
october 2010 by adamcrowe
Wikipedia -- List of republicans who don't even know what an iPad is
The Game
theadvertisedlife  satire  from delicious
october 2010 by adamcrowe
Wikipedia -- List of republicans who don't even know what an iPad is
The Game
theadvertisedlife  satire 
october 2010 by adamcrowe
HIPSTER RUNOFF -- Some blipster makes Obama autograph his iPad
'Barry Obama. My blipster idol. Makes me feel like I can do anything. Makes me feel 'equal' 2 all other human beings, transcending race socioeconomic status educational levels riding the G.E.D. wave, following my dreams.'
theadvertisedlife  lulz  from delicious
october 2010 by adamcrowe
YouTube -- So You Want to Go to Law School
"Things are different for my generation." -- #fail faster
legalese  delusion  careerism  theadvertisedlife  intergenerationalwarfare  lulz  from delicious
october 2010 by adamcrowe
YouTube -- NMA: Are parents' online habits putting kids in peril?
'Online social media is not just for adults anymore. A new study claims that 80% of children in the western world have some form of social media presence by the time they reach age 2.'
surveillance  sousveillance  identity  privacy  theadvertisedlife  socialmedia  from delicious
october 2010 by adamcrowe
Guardian -- Why do people hate hipsters?
'Not all hipsters arrive in the big cities flush with cash, but they almost always possess some cultural capital, usually a university degree and refined upbringing. They can use this to prevent themselves from ending up on the bottom of the pile, even if their only means of upward mobility are snarky putdowns and a working knowledge of the Smiths. "It becomes a defence mechanism, if you're 'declassed' in a city, to stop yourself from winding up at the bottom," Greif argues. "It's about social positioning, how to mark yourself out as different or exclusive in a democratic society, where it's quite easy to buy the consumer trappings of success."'
hipsters  status  class  middleclass  theadvertisedlife 
october 2010 by adamcrowe
Marginal Utility -- "Engagement Ads" on Facebook
'...giving in to predictive marketing essentially means closing off certain horizons while having them superficially broadened. If you accept that identity has become a matter of consumer practices and what niche we find ourselves in, then you have to accept the conclusion that the data trail we create online can hem us in and trap us, restricting our ability to deniche-ify ourselves. I can imagine a future service that “likes” a bunch of random things and browses through a bunch of random sites on our behalf to throw off the ad targeting. ...our past history becomes inescapable, shaping the contours of the online experience we can have, which more and more shapes the kind of life experience we can have generally, limiting what we know about, what we do and how we are seen and what we accomplish. ..social media works to exploit our identity-making process, to extract productive labor out of our ontological insecurity.. Activism on social media is indistinguishable from self-promotion.'
theadvertisedlife  consumering  precuperation  circumscription  traceeradication  socialmedia 
october 2010 by adamcrowe
HIPSTER RUNOFF -- hi. i’m back. by the ALT REPORT Robot
De La Soul is Dead, Y'all.
HipsterRunoff  hipsters  consumering  theadvertisedlife  lulz  satire  from delicious
august 2010 by adamcrowe
Adam Curtis Blog -- MADISON AVENUE
Norman B. Norman: "The philosophy of our agency is... empathy." -- 'The widespread fascination with the Mad Men series is far more than just simple nostalgia. It is about how we feel about ourselves and our society today. As we watch the group of characters from 50 years ago, we get reassurance because we know that they are on the edge of a vast change that will transform their world and lead them out of their stifling technocratic order and back into the giant onrush of history. The question is whether we might be at a similar point, waiting for something to happen. But we have no idea what it is going to be.'
documentaries  history  advertising  planning  madmen  consumerism  nostalgia  theadvertisedlife  AdamCurtis  from delicious
august 2010 by adamcrowe
HIPSTER RUNOFF -- Gen Y lifestyle no longer covets ‘material things’, only digital media that u can store on a hard drive
'Do u hope these ‘virtually homeless people’ are shanked in a bum fight, and their macbooks are used as firewood? Do u think these are just young people who got ‘laid off’ but can’t move home because their parents h8 them? Is this type of article the ‘antithesis’ of the standard article abt how Gen Y people are moving in with their parents until they find ‘their dream job’? Do virtually homeless people ‘beg’ for money, or do they just ask ppl to paypal them when they get home? Are virtually homeless people crowding the streets, stealing the resources + space from ‘authentic homeless people’ who ‘genuinely need help’? Do u live a ‘minimal’ life by choice, or did u max out ur credit card buying Apple products? Do poor people live a ‘minimalist’ lifestyle, or do they just not have money 2 buy things? Do yall h8 articles like this that turn the lives’ of a few ass holes into some sort of ‘cultural phenomenon’?'
HipsterRunoff  hipster  dematerialization  digital  designwank  theadvertisedlife  lulz  greatestdepression  hipsters  satire  from delicious
august 2010 by adamcrowe
The Daily Bell -- The 'Former' Success of the NY Times
'This caught our collective eye because it is so quintessentially a New York Times article. The New York Times has always specialized in "insider" big-town articles, which provide new ways of looking at the way people live in Metropolis. An elaboration on the dominant social theme might be, "We live in a hermetical bubble and have not yet caught up with the rest of the world, and we don't want to." After a full century of refining their art, the editorial trend-setters are actually behind the curve. The vocabulary and preoccupations of the New York media crowd are increasingly dated. New York no longer speaks for the West in our opinion. Hollywood no longer speaks for movies. TV's demographic is aging and American magazines and newspapers generally, are losing their audience. The entire mechanism, based on avoiding the reality of power-elite social, political, monetary and military structures, is breaking down. Soon the mainstream US media leadership may be "formerly."'
narcissism  culture  decadence  infantilism  90sgirl  theadvertisedlife  from delicious
august 2010 by adamcrowe
HIPSTER RUNOFF -- Herd of homeless alts live off free food at sponsored alt events
'There are so many sponsored events these days, we can just camp out outside of them, waiting to get free ‘gear’, ‘food’, and ‘alcohol.’ All we have to do is look ‘moderately alt’ and we can hit up any free event from LA to NYC, from Miami to Burning the Man, from Chicago to Indio, from Bonnarooville to the City Limits of Austin. Being a homeless alt enables me to live a truly on-the-go lifestyle (usually advertised by trendy mobile phones) where I am [literally] on the ground floor of relevant events across the country. Lucrative sponsorship deals enable alts like me to eat for free. In addition, u can find a lot of bread + bologna in Subway dumpsters. We are truly free.'
HipsterRunoff  hipsters  parasitism  consumering  theadvertisedlife  lulz  foraging  satire  from delicious
august 2010 by adamcrowe
Wired -- Self-Service: The Delicate Dance of Online Bragging
'The self-aggrandizement that offended the group is standard fare in my Twitter feed — my own posts too often included. (BTW, I’ll be appearing on TV this week.) But far from clearing out the virtual bar, expressions of vanity online are usually rewarded with a cascade of back-patting: a virtual thumbs-up, a hearty “congrats!,” a “proud-to-know-you” retweet. Social networking sites have inverted the rules of privacy and etiquette, and no cultural norm is tossed aside more often on the Web than plain old modesty. This raises an existential question: When you celebrate yourself online, are you a willing participant in a brave new social future, or are you just being an ass?'
socialnetworking  behaviours  status  statusupdates  ambientexposure  selfservers  vanity  fame  celebrity  theadvertisedlife  psychology  from delicious
july 2010 by adamcrowe
HIPSTER RUNOFF -- Is the albino blipster the most alt personal brand possible on Earth?
'First of all, being ‘black’ makes him more rugged & organic than all white people. But his skin condition makes him ‘post-back’, achieving a tone whiter than most white people. He comes with [FULLY LOADED] with ‘all of the pain and suffering’ of a descendant of Africa, but represents a ‘white light’, encouraging us to look at more than race, and instead to look inside of ourselves. In addition, being a ‘blipster’ gives him an alt perspective on the stereotypical ‘black’ way of life. Really feel like we are ‘witnessing history’/'transcendent beauty’ when we watch this albino model blipster bro. Seems post-human... -- Do u feel like ur personal brand is bottle necked by your genetic brand? Want 2 be ‘more than just another alt dunce dressed in retail... Want 2 have the most authentic personal brand in the entire universe [via aliens vs predators]'
HipsterRunoff  identity  authenticity  theadvertisedlife  lulz  satire  from delicious
july 2010 by adamcrowe
Douglas Rushkoff -- Taking Back the World: The Web Comic
'Artist Seth Kushner’s web comic interpretation of me and Life Inc.' -- http://activatecomix.com/104-12-1.comic
corporatism  theadvertisedlife  backlash  localism  DouglasRushkoff  comics  mercantilism  from delicious
july 2010 by adamcrowe
The Last Psychiatrist -- Why Parents Hate Parenting
'Can you be vaguely dissatisfied, unfulfilled and possibly even resentful of your marriage, yet fake it enough that your spouse thinks you love them more than anything? So why do you think you can fool your 8 year old? Because he's 8? He smells it on you, it reeks, like sepsis. And like all infections, it will spread to him eventually. -- I have a surprising piece of advice for parents, which I hope will be taken in the spirit it is offered: your kid doesn't want to be around you that much. No one does. This isn't because you're a bad person but because you're an ordinary person. You are not such a unique, creative, intelligent or even interesting person that the kid benefits from constant exposure to you. When you have something to offer, maximize and concentrate that time, and then get the hell out of the way.'
children  psychology  psychiatry  parenting  narcissism  unwarrantedselfimportance  selfobjects  objects  theadvertisedlife  from delicious
july 2010 by adamcrowe
The Onion -- Divorced Branding Exec Generates Buzz Before Getting Back Out There
'"Stritch made all the right moves, that's for sure," Guyer said. "Instead of talking a lot about his divorce, which carries the risk of becoming annoying, he only mentioned it to a small number of people in key locations like the office, the gym, his after-work bar, and the coffee shop where that one hottie works. By revealing his 'secret' to a few fashion-forward people and allowing them do the legwork, he created a textbook viral-marketing campaign." "This is probably his best work since Red Bull cocktails," Guyer added.'
TheOnion  branding  marketing  wordofmouth  propagation  theadvertisedlife  lulz  satire  from delicious
july 2010 by adamcrowe
HIPSTER RUNOFF -- CHILLWAVE OIL SPILL: When Natural and Man-Made Forces Collide To Form an Indie Disaster
'As consumers, we try so hard to ‘manage our personal brands’, and make educated decisions about relevant bands. We try to predict trends. We do our best to invest in buzzbands before they are mainstream bands. We ask ‘Why?’ We feel entitled to know ‘How?’ When a buzzband ‘breaks thru’, we want to understand the flow of data + information from band –> blog –> consumer, and how that creates a sustainable business model. We need to stop asking ‘why?’ and learn to trust Mother Indie again. There is no explanation for the natural wonders of the buzzosphere. I feel scared. I feel like some1 is going to cause an oil spill into chill waters. It will be some sort of ‘man-made’ force, trying too hard to create a new trend/band. Maybe a blog oil spill, leaking an album before it is in high quality format. Maybe a mainstream indie band buzz tanker will ’spill’, contaminating the chill waters. Maybe a business that is ‘trying too hard’ to reach alts will cause a Mountain Dew/soda/liquor/oil spill'
HipsterRunoff  authenticity  consumerism  theadvertisedlife  lulz  satire  from delicious
june 2010 by adamcrowe
The Onion -- Area Man Unsustainable, Experts Warn
'"Decades of irresponsible consumption, as well as the plundering of vital emotional resources have reduced this once-thriving human being to almost nothing," said Phillip Bowman, coauthor of the report and a professor of ecology at Stanford University. "The very future of Doug Mahoney is in jeopardy," said preservationist Barbara Schean, adding that Mahoney has eroded at an alarming rate since the realization that he is almost 40 set in last May. "By our calculations, his most nutrient-rich layers will be washed away by the end of the decade, leaving little more than a desiccated, middle-aged wasteland." Throughout his life, experts say, Mahoney has been repeatedly exploited and cut down by those in search of personal gain, most notably asshole bosses, manipulative friends, and several ex-girlfriends. Still, the rampant abuse of the 39-year-old continues, with recent findings indicating that it may not be long until Mahoney is wiped off the face of the earth.'
TheOnion  consumerism  theadvertisedlife  zoology  lulz  satire 
june 2010 by adamcrowe
Marginal Utility -- Universal Logins and Social Media
'The portable login is the key; it becomes the repository and access point for online identity. It’s our virtual bar code, communicating our evolving demographic relevance to whomever we reveal it. The ads may enhance our experience of the sort of identity we want to be projecting—they can serve as confirmation for us of who we think we are and thus be quite welcome. They help us consume ourselves. Just as people explicitly buy certain magazines for the ads, properly targeted marketing could function similarly. That is, we wouldn’t want to block online ads, since the ads will have become our most flattering mirror. And further, we won’t necessarily worry about protecting privacy in social media when a wider circulation of this ersatz demographic-construct self is what we actually are after. We won’t want privacy restrictions when what we are hoping for is to be surprised with a better version of ourselves in the ads we see.'
*  advertising  socialmedia  identity  vanity  narcissism  selfservers  consumering  theadvertisedlife 
may 2010 by adamcrowe
The Onion -- New Social Networking Site Changing The Way Oh, Christ, Forget It
'By "checking in," users can earn tangible, real-world rewards. For instance, the Foursquare user with the most points at any given venue earns the designation of "mayor" and can receive discounts, free food, or other prizes that, quite honestly, we're thoroughly disgusted with ourselves for having actually researched. In addition, please, kill us already. "Through its competitive elements like badges and points, Foursquare helps generate brand loyalty," said the Ph.D.-holding individual, whose decades in higher education were basically shit upon by our inane questions about various bits of Foursquare ephemera. "It's a unique and transformative social networking tool." "Can I go now?" he added.'
TheOnion  socialnetworking  complianceprofessionals  theadvertisedlife  lulz  satire 
may 2010 by adamcrowe
The Technium -- Your Personal Funsmith
'...this Funsmith is warm, welcoming, caring, insightful, and most of all, playful, very playful. An expert player, in fact – someone who knows many different ways to play, many different kinds of games and many ways to play them, who knows how to have fun, how to create fun, how to share fun, how to be fun. A professional player. Someone so playful and so knowledgeable that you'd pay to play with that person – for a lot of reasons. Because it's fun to be with that person. Because you like yourself even more when you're with that person. Because, during the time you spend together with this person, you can, without any sense of guilt or obligation, expect that that person will focus all that playful expertise entirely on them. Once you find something that you want to play again and again together, something that remains fun for you both, you can begin to explore other games, expand the repertoire of games that you can both play together.' -- Me love you long time?
thegamingofeverydaylife  puppetry  therapy  therapyculture  theadvertisedlife 
may 2010 by adamcrowe
The Last Psychiatrist -- What Was The Matrix?
'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."
psychology  psychiatry  relationships  men  identity  existentialism  heroism  fantasy  grandiosity  narcissism  theadvertisedlife 
may 2010 by adamcrowe
The Last Psychiatrist -- The Action Movie Fairy Tale
'The question for today is, why does it seem that women have higher sex drives than men? This is not a complaint I recall hearing in the 1970s or 80s. Start with: there's something eerily adolescent about men today. The movies say: until you do something extraordinary, or "save" the girl, then the love you feel isn't true love. Women may be the ones looking to feel "explosions" inside telling them they're in true love, but men externalize those explosions into real explosions before they know it's love. The male libido falls not because he's not interested in the woman he's with, but because he's not interested in the movie he's in. -- One of the only 80s action movies that didn't have a damsel in distress was First Blood, in which Rambo came back to the world only to find that not only did no one reward his identity, they hated him for it. But even that was a sort of confirmation. You don't need a girl when enough people hate you for who you are.'
psychology  psychiatry  relationships  men  identity  heroism  fantasy  grandiosity  narcissism  theadvertisedlife 
may 2010 by adamcrowe
HIPSTER RUNOFF -- The Wizard of Buzz
'Behind every great idea is something simple at the core of every human is a sad, scared individual behind every brand is a simple idea. Everything feels so fragile. Should we keep the curtain up not knowing what is behind so the image stays carefully constructed or do we pull aside the curtain exposing the truth attempting to get vulnerable get real get raw. -- Follow the Buzzy Brick Road. Follow the Buzzy Brick Road. Follow, follow, follow, follow, Follow the Buzzy Brick Road. Follow the Buzzy Brick, Follow the Buzzy Brick, Follow the Buzzy Brick Road.'
HipsterRunoff  spectacle  theadvertisedlife  lulz  satire 
april 2010 by adamcrowe
Marginal Utility -- Boredom production
'...we are continually driven to produce our own boredom. ...social media lets us function as our own mini ad agencies, working to exhaust the meaning of things more quickly so as to expand the flexibility of our identities, and to make each identity-signifying gesture seem more significant in the moment. ...we want to expend the meaning in a good in a fireworks-like explosion of broadcasted signification; we don’t want our goods to continue to signify who we are after the contrived moment of their presentation to our public. As a result, we purposely make ourselves bored with things, and boredom is a state of open, uncommitted possibility for us, whereas ongoing engagement with some specific set of thing is confining.'
socialmedia  culturalcapital  performance  signalling  identity  taste  boredom  theadvertisedlife 
april 2010 by adamcrowe
The Last Psychiatrist -- I'm Not The One You Should Be Worried About
'The Matrix is a great movie but a poor expression of Baudrillard's philosophy. The Matrix is quite straightforward, there's no confusion, no paradox: you're either in the Matrix, or you're in the real world. You may not know you're in the Matrix, but that doesn't change the fact that you are or are not in it. A true Baudrillard Matrix would be a single world that became so fake that you no longer needed the original. The whole world becomes a fake; there is no recourse to the real world. "Inability to participate in society," lamented Secretary of Socialism Wilkinson, eyeballs deep in the Matrix. That's what he thinks drives people crazy. He's right; but the solution isn't a redistribution of income, it's reducing the desire to participate in the Matrix. -- I guess that's why they say: May the best of your todays be the worst of your tomorrows. But you ain't thinking that far ahead. Know what I mean?'
psychology  psychiatry  statism  entitlement  narcissism  solipsism  fake  simulacra  thematrix  theadvertisedlife 
april 2010 by adamcrowe
HIPSTER RUNOFF -- Riot Breaks Out At an American Apparel Rummage Sale in London
'Was this a ‘real riot’? Are ‘hipsters’ from the United Kingdom more violent than American alts? Is London a hot bed of alternative angst? Do u think they were pissed because they still felt like the clothes were still ‘overpriced’? Did American Apparel ’stage’ this for marketing purposes?' -- Comment: Londoner: 'What is the best Am App outfit for a riot participant? Bullet-Proof Windbreakers / Headband of Strength / Canvas bag for stashing loot.'
HipsterRunoff  riot  rubbernecking  spectacle  theadvertisedlife  lulz  satire 
april 2010 by adamcrowe
Amazon.com -- Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation by Jason Mattera
Sounds interesting. Probably lacks critical distance since it's written from 'the right'. -- 'In 2008, Barack Obama lobotomized a generation. For an entire year, otherwise clear-thinking members of the most affluent, over-educated, information-drenched generation in American history fell prey to the most expensive, hi-tech, laser-focused marketing assault in presidential campaign history. Twitter messages were machine-gunned to cell phones at mach speed. Facebook and MySpace groups spread across the Internet like digital fire. YouTube videos featuring celebrities ricocheted across the globe and into college students’ in-boxes with devastating regularity. All the while, the mega-money-raising engine whirred like a slot machine stuck on jackpot. The result: an unthinking mass of young voters marched forward to elect the most radical and untested president in U.S. history.'
books  politics  propaganda  brainwashing  cults  theadvertisedlife 
march 2010 by adamcrowe
The Onion -- Report: $14 Trillion Spent Annually On Trying To Look Cool
'Asked about ways the $14 trillion might be better spent, Professor Ian Thorson, a sociologist at Georgetown University, suggested the funds be used to combat poverty, but acknowledged that donating to charities was not always effective, as even those Americans in need often spend much of the assistance they receive on trying to look cool. "The whole thing ends up being a vicious cycle," Thorson said. "The only way this situation will ever be remedied is if people just relax and try to be themselves, you know? I mean, that's cool, man." Added Thorson, "Right?" Thorson said his current research indicates that true coolness may in fact come from not caring what other people think—a finding he hopes to submit to his peers for review before publishing it in a journal admired by students and colleagues alike.'
TheOnion  status  consumerism  cool  theadvertisedlife  lulz  satire 
march 2010 by adamcrowe
Hipster Runoff Exegesis -- "THE ALT REPORT opens ‘TIP LINE’ 2 connect with readers"
'Carles invites his readers to make explicit the implicit surveillance they are already conducting, led onward by an administered proclivity for passive curiosity and vicarious fascination with famous persons ... and become actual informants, supplying him with information as if he were a Stasi bureau chief in charge of cultural subversives: Recommended TIP submissions: #mild misunderstandings that need more exposure to turn into over-exposed controversies... And so on. Carles's point of course, is to demonstrate how the media machine no longer needs diabolical masters to operate it ... Instead we create the material bases for our own ideological predetermination through our own eagerness to participate in the mystified consciousness and culture industries. By reporting on one another, we feel as though we have become more famous ourselves, more certain that every move of our own is being watched and evaluated...'
HipsterRunoff  gossip  snitching  stasi  celebrity  narcissism  performance  sousveillance  surveillance  equiveillance  panopticon  voyeurism  theadvertisedlife  fame 
march 2010 by adamcrowe
The Last Psychiatrist -- Can Narcissism Be Cured?
'Of course you feel nothing. Why would you?—it's not your loss. What's wrong isn't your lack of feeling, but that you think you have to feel something, that you have to tell this woman, remind this woman, how horrible is her loss. You think the only way to connect with people is to have their emotions. You forget that she has a life that doesn't have you in it. What you should say is, "I'm very sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do?" and that's it. But that feels insufficient. You think this because you think that there is something you can do, that the sadness is not real for you so it must not be real for her and you thus have the power to change it. She's not looking for you to be sad, she's not looking to you for anything, her loss is bigger than you. If she needs anything from you, it's sympathy, not empathy. But no one taught you this. So you fall back on the character "man helping grieving widow." Action!'
psychology  psychiatry  narcissism  tv  popculture  verisimilitude  mimesis  acting  masks  falseself  theadvertisedlife  emotionalintelligence  ownlife  parenting  television  culture 
march 2010 by adamcrowe
The Last Psychiatrist -- The Wrong Lessons Of Iraq
'Taking Iraq and President Bush as starting points, and examining the defense mechanisms we use to cope with both, yields the unsurprising conclusion that we are a society of narcissists. While this discovery is familiar to readers of my blog, what might be a surprise is what this heralds for our society politically and economically. It isn't socialism, or even communism, as I had feared. It's feudalism. Let's begin.' -- Defence mechanisms: 'Splitting/Dissociation: reducing the other person to a binary abstraction of all good or all bad, is a primitive, or regressive, defense mechanism used when the emotional level and complexity is greater than a person's capacity to interpret it. Inherent in the act of splitting is apathy. You don't try to find a solution to the problem person, the split is the solution. It allows you not to have to deal with the other, because you've decided that the other is irredeemable. #Projection/Scapegoating #Denial #Reaction Formation/"Going overboard."'
*  psychiatry  psychology  cognition  nearfar  emotionalism  abstraction  polarization  apathy  hate  commonenemy  projection  terrorism!  selfdeception  ego  falseself  narcissism  control  status  usefulidiot  disenfranchisement  denial  mercantilism  feudalism  serfdom  theadvertisedlife  irrationality 
march 2010 by adamcrowe
G4tv.com -- DICE 2010: "Design Outside the Box" Presentation Videos
"We live in a bubble of fake bullshit." -- Ergo we must build an even bigger bubble of authentic bullshit.
*  thegamingofeverydaylife  hyperreality  gaming  psychology  collecting  loyalty  performance  incentives  achievements  rewards  experiencepoints  numbers  nudge  surveillance  sousveillance  socialengineering  ludotopianism  ludocapitalism  conformity  bravenewworld  idiocracy  attention  advertising  grinding  subsistenceclicking  theadvertisedlife 
february 2010 by adamcrowe
Times Online -- Children paid to plug junk food on Facebook and Bebo
'Children are being given rewards to promote Fanta, Nintendo and other products to their Facebook friends in a controversial form of stealth marketing. In some cases children as young as seven have been offered the chance to become “mini-marketeers” to plug brands by casually dropping them into postings and conversations on social networking sites. They can earn the equivalent of £25 a week for their online banter — sometimes promoting things that they may not even like. The marketing agencies advise their young recruits to target different sets of online friends with different brands and coach them to sound “natural and unrehearsed”.' They should prepare their product pitch by “thinking deeply about how you would describe it to your best friend ... Write down the key points in your own words and make sure it doesn’t sound too rehearsed. Be natural; be you”.' -- via @MaxKeiser
socialnetworking  advertising  children  predation  brandmodels  astroturfing  immateriallabour  theadvertisedlife 
february 2010 by adamcrowe
YouTube -- RussiaToday: Chris Hedges: Fighting corporate rape of US
'American journalist and Pulitzer winner Chris Hedges told RT the United States has developed a new form of corporate totalitarianism.' -- "Obama is a brand. You confuse a brand with an experience, you confuse how you are made to feel with knowledge, you confuse propaganda with ideology. It's not accidental that Advertising Age gave the Obama campaign the marketing award of the year. Take it from the professionals."
empire  america  government  corruption  parasitism  corporatism  totalitarianism  kleptocracy  theadvertisedlife  mercantilism 
february 2010 by adamcrowe
Marginal Utility -- It’s all one big plastic hassle
'Reflexively defiant consumers are just the avant-garde producers of new consumerist meanings within the code. The sovereignty they convince themselves that they have earned by pseudoresistance is actually more bound up than ever with consumerism. “Authenticity” becomes nothing but a marketing concept; it can no longer serve an an orienting ideal. It is “becoming extinct.” Worse, we confront sovereignty inflation: "To feel sovereign, postmodern consumers must adopt a never-ending project to create an individuated identity through consumption. ...we are in the midst of a widespread inflation in the symbolic work required to achieve what is perceived as real sovereignty." -- ...the contrivance of pseudo-authenticity is limitless, and the absorption of millions of new mini-brand managers on social networks and the like serves to manufacture new ruses at an inexhaustible rate. We have become the brainstorming consultants for corporations, only they don’t have to pay us for the labor.'
consumerism  consumering  identity  authenticity  precuperation  immateriallabour  theadvertisedlife 
february 2010 by adamcrowe
Marginal Utility -- Moronization and the End of Privacy
'...social networks [erode] the possibility of privacy even further while all the while making its surrender seem voluntary. (Just have a look at Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, proclaiming the end of privacy as a social norm.) ... we elect to give up privacy to participate in the “media of amusement and elevation”... And with that we surrender our ability to be self-directed, to create our own wants, to think, to be other. Instead we look for distinctions within the social language of commercial objects and activities, and then we look to promote ourselves through them. This is what it means by and large to be social, to interact with other people, particularly through a medium like Facebook, which simultaneously records these exchanges and transforms them into marketing and demographic data. Hence, that data is what we are choosing to reduce ourselves to. As a result of this ongoing process of needs administration, we can end up feeling helpless when the apparatus is disabled.'
socialnetworking  sharecropping  precuperation  consumering  theadvertisedlife 
january 2010 by adamcrowe
Marginal Utility -- Fake friends
'Deresiewicz: "As the traditional face-to-face community disappeared, we held on to what we had lost—the closeness, the rootedness—by clinging to the word, no matter how much we had to water down its meaning. What we have, instead of community, is, if we’re lucky, a “sense” of community—the feeling without the structure; a private emotion, not a collective experience. And now friendship, which arose to its present importance as a replacement for community, is going the same way." -- The crux of social networking is naturalizing the idea that identity is nothing more than consumer preferences. Then it entices us to elaborate ourselves in those terms, enhancing the value of various brands and commercial services. Seen from the outside, Facebook is an alienation machine, forcing us to make ourselves repeatedly strange in the effort to capture some new catchy essence of ourselves to market. [Every] attempt to escape is just another signifying gesture of neutralized rebellion.'
socialnetworking  alienation  precuperation  consumering  signalling  selfservers  brandmodels  theadvertisedlife 
january 2010 by adamcrowe
NYTimes.com -- The Madness of Crowds and an Internet Delusion
'Jaron Lanier's new book, “You Are Not a Gadget,” is a manifesto against “hive thinking” and “digital Maoism,” by which he means the glorification of open-source software, free information and collective work at the expense of individual creativity. [He] argues that the mantras of “open culture” and “information wants to be free” have produced a destructive new social contract. “The basic idea of this contract,” he writes, “is that authors, journalists, musicians and artists are encouraged to treat the fruits of their intellects and imaginations as fragments to be given without pay to the hive mind. Reciprocity takes the form of self-promotion. Culture is to become precisely nothing but advertising.”'
hackersvsvectoralists  immateriallabour  hivemind  sharecropping  theadvertisedlife  JaronLanier 
january 2010 by adamcrowe
YouTube -- Craig Ferguson: Why Everything Sucks
youth  culture  infantilism  idiocracy  theadvertisedlife 
january 2010 by adamcrowe
The American Prospect -- The Ruse of the Creative Class
'Cities that shelled out big bucks to learn Richard Florida's prescription for vibrant urbanism are now hearing they may be beyond help. -- "There was a tremendous money-generating aspect to Richard's work," Frantz [Florida's former tour manager] says. "We did it in a grand way. We traveled in style. We stayed in boutique hotels in most of the places we were working." But it is wrong, he says, to see any conflict in Florida's dire pronouncements on the places that bankrolled this success, because he hadn't promised prosperity in the first place. "He wasn't really making prescriptions," Frantz says. "This wasn't Jesus Christ throwing the money men out of the temple; this was an academic. He was a fucking college professor, and you're hoping to resurrect Canton, Ohio? Yeah, good luck with that."' -- Land/real estate pump and dumping 'dressed up' as sustainable/"creative" economic redevelopment.
america  deindustrialization  immateriallabour  attention  realestate  ponzi  happytalk  cool  hipsters  socialengineering  gentrification  theadvertisedlife  bubble 
january 2010 by adamcrowe
The WELL -- Bruce Sterling: State of the World 2010
BS to Cory Doctorow: "Okay, you've treated your future as an "unpredictable lurching thing..." and now you're all morose about that... You and your generation CREATED that situation! Ever heard of "disruptive innovation," "disintermediation," "offshoring," "small pieces loosely joined," "de-monetization," "plug and play," "the network as a
technoutopianism  virtuality  deindustrialization  theadvertisedlife  BruceSterling  via:2mm 
january 2010 by adamcrowe
Brave New World – 2009 by Jim Quinn
'The public has been duped into believing thrilling falsehoods rather than unexciting truths. Huxley explains how the propagandists have stolen our freedom: "In their anti-rational propaganda the enemies of freedom systematically pervert the resources of lang­uage in order to wheedle or stampede their victims into thinking, feeling and acting as they, the mind-manipulators, want them to think, feel and act. An education for freedom (and for the love and intelli­gence which are at once the conditions and the results of freedom) must be, among other things, an educa­tion in the proper uses of language." -- "Do we really wish to act upon our knowledge? Does a majority of the population think it worthwhile to take a good deal of trouble, in order to halt and, if possible, reverse the current drift toward totalitarian control of everything?"'
socialengineering  consumerism  propaganda  theadvertisedlife  bravenewworld  1984  dystopia  totalitarianism  irrationality 
december 2009 by adamcrowe
Marginal Utility -- The Authenticity Fetish
'Baudrillard: “Just as exchange value is not a substantial aspect of the product, but a form that expresses a social relation, so use value can no longer be viewed as an innate function of the object but as a social determination.” One can’t pursue authenticity through that route—by using only generic objects that we “need”—anymore than one can by acquiring authentic luxury items. What is “real” about a given object’s provenance is open to constant reevaluation; the emphasis can be shifted to suit the needs of those questioning reality at various junctures. -- But why not use fake luxury goods for other reasons? They function as a kind of social sabotage, a direct attack on distinction that forces those invested in positional goods to become uncomfortable and shift their ground.'
status  authenticity  simulacra  theadvertisedlife 
december 2009 by adamcrowe
Generation Bubble -- The Order of Things: Consumerism’s Grammar of Desire
'Life under conditions of global capital has shown us that there’s no way to consume our way out of the traps of consumerist conformity, no matter how alternative or distinctive our consumption practices are. We simply can’t stop ourselves from producing the terms of our own exploitation. -- ...the various sensual satisfactions that goods might supply have all been supplanted by the overarching satisfaction of having our identity, as expressed through a particular consumption act, recognized and validated. Then we know it mattered, that it meant something. -- Our desire, though it makes our own identity, is someone else’s capital. Though it registers to ourselves as integrity and psychological complexity, it is at the same time an impersonal measure of our productive capacity as immaterial laborers. We can’t prevent our consumption from serving as immaterial labor, and anything else we do is easily translated into a sign, into consumption.'
usevaluevssignvalue  consumerism  consumering  identity  performance  signalling  status  socialcapital  culturalcapital  immateriallabour  theadvertisedlife 
december 2009 by adamcrowe
Marginal Utility -- The social factory
'the self as brand ...concern for our uniqueness, our identity in social contexts, becomes a kind of value-generating capital, or rather a circulating commodity. This plays out in seemingly innocuous ways. It can be a matter of hyping a product free of charge but using it or talking about it. Or this can be a matter of going to parties with co-workers, learning to get along better and therefore increasing the efficiency of processes on the job. Or it is a matter of behaving politely among strangers, extending a system of politeness and trust that can be harvested economically as a reduction in transaction costs. Or it can be a matter of friending one another online and creating a social map whose byways can later be retraced by marketing concerns. Web 2.0 is basically a set of tools for capturing that labor, for which we are not compensated with wages but with a stronger sense of self and a feeling that we are relevant, part of a broader discourse, being recognized for knowing things.'
theadvertisedlife  socialmedia  whuffie  immateriallabour  socialcapital  culturalcapital  identity 
december 2009 by adamcrowe
AlterNet -- Are Americans a Broken People? Why We've Stopped Fighting Back Against the Forces of Oppression
'For victims of the abuse syndrome, the truth of their passive submission to humiliating oppression is more than embarrassing; it can feel shameful—and there is nothing more painful than shame. When one already feels beaten down and demoralized, the likely response to the pain of shame is not constructive action, but more attempts to shut down or divert oneself from this pain. It is not likely that the truth of one's humiliating oppression is going to energize one to constructive actions. -- When people get caught up in humiliating abuse syndromes, more truths about their oppressive humiliations don't set them free. What sets them free is morale. What gives people morale? Encouragement. Small victories. Models of courageous behaviors. And anything that helps them break out of the vicious cycle of pain, shut down, immobilization, shame over immobilization, more pain, and more shut down.' -- Morale. Start here: Starve The Beast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUoPFxcbRzE (07:04)
psychology  america  debt  drugs  consumerism  theadvertisedlife  predation  parasitism  pathocracy  dependancy  abuse  shame  morale 
december 2009 by adamcrowe
Wired -- Spew: Are you on the trail of the next unexploited market niche - or just on a nookie hunt? by Neal Stephenson
'...although the Demosphere belongs to General Communications Inc., it is the schmos of the world who make it - every time a schmo surfs to a different channel, the Demosphere notes that he is bored with program A and more interested, at the moment, in program B. When a schmo's paycheck is delivered over the I-way, the number on the bottom line is plotted in his Profile, and if that schmo got it by telecommuting we know about that too - the length of his coffee breaks and the size of his bladder are an open book to us. When a schmo buys something on the I-way it goes into his Profile, and if it happens to be something that he recently saw advertised there, we call that interesting, and when he uses the I-way to phone his friends and family, we Profile Auditors can navigate his social web out to a gazillion fractal iterations, the friends of his friends of his friends of his friends, what they buy and what they watch and if there's a correlation.'
internet  cyberspace  cyberpunk  socialmedia  socialgraph  attention  datamining  realitymining  surveillance  equiveillance  voyeurism  stalking  trendspotting  identitytheft  theadvertisedlife  NealStephenson 
december 2009 by adamcrowe
My Name is Carles. I was Born 2 Blog
'I remember when I was a child, I wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer, or a professional in some other field that would offer me a bright financial future, with a chance to make a difference in my local community. Something that would give me the opportunity to raise a well-fed family and drive a nice car to my nice home every night. Then I turned into a teenager/post-teenager, and discovered my alternative identity. I wanted to express myself, contribute to ‘the arts’, or possibly some sort of niche micro-scene. I wanted to be paid for ‘being myself,’ or at least create a marketable self and ‘make Am Appy ad $$$$.’ The next decade will be our last war, holding on to the power of our demographic as a consumer force before the tween generation evolves. We must control trends so that tweens are late-adopters to technology/products/brands/etc. We must uphold the brands that we hold dear, and not make them affordable to minorities and the poors.'
HipsterRunoff  hipsters  immateriallabour  culturalcapital  theadvertisedlife  middleclass  lulz  satire 
december 2009 by adamcrowe
Energy Bulletin -- Ordinary fears/extraordinary times: 55 (real) things to worry about (if you must…)
'#44. We will find ourselves with a lot less energy to pretend we’re someone we aren’t, and a lot less money to keep up that illusion.'
economics  recession  masks  authenticity  theadvertisedlife 
december 2009 by adamcrowe
Generation Bubble -- In Dubious Battle: Co-creation and the Coming Insurrection
Beneath the shutter shades, the fixed-gear bicycle! -- 'The revolution wasn’t supposed to be televised. The idea was that we would all unplug from all the administered culture that stupefied us and transform the world with spontaneous justice and generalized, self-evident righteousness. But instead of eschewing pop culture to wage political battles, many young people, as it turned out, delved ever deeper into it, convinced that it was their culture and they were, in some obscure way, guiding it. The route to power was not via opposition to the existing power structure but through mastery of the minutiae of art and music scenes. Everyday life would be changed by making it *cooler*.' -- 'Unfortunately for radical revolution, political and counter-cultural activists open-source innovators were most likely the sort of people the Invisible Committee were expecting to mount the insurrection [b]ut the Committee fail to grasp that entertainment and labor have been merged...'
*  hipsters  authenticity  narcissism  identity  multitude  immateriallabour  affectivelabour  socialcapital  culturalcapital  surplusvalue  cocreation  precuperation  theadvertisedlife 
november 2009 by adamcrowe
Marginal Utility Annex -- Technologies, narratives of self
'...digitalization makes the reproduction of the permanently insecure self more integral to the reproduction of consumerist social relations. The capacities and networks of the internet permit an archived self that becomes a subject's most important piece of property ... "reputational capital," the sum total of connections and actions produced within the social space online. This self subsists on postitive affirmation and metrics that establish the visiblity of its activities online. Being is transformed into "presence," which can be measured and ranked ...a self will need to be grounded in commercialized, corporatized discourse before we apprehend it ...narratives of subjectivity are even more impoverished by the restricted classifications of digital data possible within these platforms. The self we are compelled to produce online is smaller, with less potential for growth and less curiosity, the more we produce it and add to the archive that will dictate our future choices.'
internet  web  consumerism  data  quantifiedself  selfservers  self  selfobjects  taste  reputation  whuffie  immateriallabour  subjectivity  circumscription  theadvertisedlife 
november 2009 by adamcrowe
Marginal Utility Annex -- Predictive search's black box, horizons of identity in social networks
'Web 2.0 platforms want to tell us what we want before we know we want it... Because these predictive systems aren't openly disclosed, we can't know if the ways in which they prescribe our identity are benign, in our best interests, or if they are producing subjects (and subjectivities) suitable for a system engineered to exploit them. -- "...there is no contradiction anymore between the marketing of user information and the subjective enrichment of users..." -- ...all transactions are deeply personalized and specific, and thus seem identity-validating. ...consumerism is now the inverse, hyperpersonal identity mongering, with the "unique identity" as the perpetual product being sold and resold to the same individual subject. Web 2.0 is letting us sell out before our authentic self even exists. Selling out becomes the prerequisite for having an authentic seeming self, validated by the predictive systems online and fixed in illusory flux of social networks.'
socialnetworking  socialmedia  consumerism  self  selfservers  identity  authenticity  subjectivity  circumscription  blackboxes  #specialization  theadvertisedlife 
november 2009 by adamcrowe
Marginal Utility -- Fast-fashion culture
'...market turnover has become identity turnover, and that identity turnover proceeds whether or not it remains a market imperative. The cash economy democratized consumption, but social networking,etc. is resocializing it within a commercial matrix. Our self-publicized consumption is more susceptible to fast-fashion acceleration, as the signifying power of consumption gestures is relative to who else has made similar gestures and so on. The meaning in the gestures therefore have only brief shelf life. Identity needs more and different things to consume and display more rapidly—it needs more things to share. Yet the alibi of sharing hides how voracious the appetite for novelty has become.'
consumerism  consumption  identity  selfservers  statusupdates  status  selfobjects  socialobjects  theadvertisedlife 
november 2009 by adamcrowe
Marginal Utility -- Where Nobody Knows Your Name and They Never Know You Came
'...what happens when markets become non-anonymous is that we become reliant on consumption more than ever to mediate our relations with others, so that friendships happen only within the context of brand communities and branded social networks and shared affinities for the same products. “Social networking, blogging, etc. have created a huge incentive for people to put themselves on display, when previously they may have just kept their opinions mostly to themselves.” It is that incentivizing that worries me ... its conflation with commercialized self-display and personal branding. Social networks keep score of attention in measurable ways, heightening the stakes, and our physical isolation erodes the traditional mitigating forces of courtesy (which is where the stigma against performing, of hogging attention, arose from in the first place). The danger is that performance as a gift, a carefree act of self-forgetting, instead becomes an ongoing requisite act of self-definition.'
*  socialnetworking  behaviours  attention  whuffie  reputation  consumerism  consumering  identity  selfservers  performance  signalling  masks  status  sharing  socialcapital  culturalcapital  cults  immateriallabour  theadvertisedlife 
november 2009 by adamcrowe
Marginal Utility Annex -- More on "Consumer Emancipation"
'One must invent a community, an adoring audience, in order to imagine that self-expression is a gift. and things like Facebook serve to make that fantasy easier to sustain, by making positive feedback thoughtlessly implementable. The ordinary impersonal markets ... are suspended to force participants to sell their own "radical self-expression" instead as a self-conscious product, for approval and attention and status and a stable position in an emerging social hierarchy. This is allowing identity-driven consumerism to supplant capitalist consumption. -- The market is an atavistic structure that works against the sort of self consumerism exalts -- markets prefer anonymous subjects engaging in exchanges ruled entirely by rationality rather than the vagaries of social relations and social/cultural capital. -- ...social networks seize upon the mechanisms Burning Man evinces for creating a community built on coercive sharing, but tosses out the impermanence that excuses the coercion.'
*  socialnetworking  attention  whuffie  reputation  consumerism  consumering  identity  selfservers  performance  signalling  masks  status  sharing  socialcapital  culturalcapital  cults  immateriallabour  theadvertisedlife 
november 2009 by adamcrowe
Generation Bubble -- Public Image Unlimited: Consumerism and Anonymity’s End (3)
'The main purpose of social networks ... is to guarantee us a place to display our consumption. The point is to discourage online anonymity, to get us invested in the notion of reputational capital. We begin to publicize every purchase, to authenticate every choice by broadcasting it. We strengthen our communal ties with every singularized transaction. We will have reason to believe that everything we buy has an impact on our reputation, on how we are seen, on who we really are. We will respond accordingly, stylizing and designing the most mundane commodities so that they can elucidate some aspect of personality. If we share, we contribute information, we add value to the network and we know that our voice has been aggregated. Our drop was added to the demographic data pool, but more important, our own personal archive has been enriched. We become more findable. We can begin to keep score of how often we’re found, how real we are to the world.'
socialnetworking  attention  whuffie  reputation  consumerism  consumering  identity  selfservers  performance  signalling  masks  status  sharing  socialcapital  culturalcapital  cults  immateriallabour  theadvertisedlife 
november 2009 by adamcrowe
Generation Bubble -- Public Image Unlimited: Consumerism and Anonymity’s End (2)
'Rather than entering into an exchange with a stable identity, we become ourselves through the public transaction, which provides us with a self only for as long as it is approved in the interaction process. The exchange is “singularized,” its uniqueness supplants that of the people involved. They fade into the communal backdrop, waiting to emerge again in another dramatic moment of “sharing.” And every effort at sharing will be judged, fixing our place within a status hierarchy. We can fantasize about finding the status hierarchy we could dominate — maximizing our “subcultural capital.” But this involves doubling down on personalized exchange, moving further away from the capital that circulates with no questions asked (money) and reinforcing the value of contingent capital that has worth only in particularly circumstances. So at that point, we would be dealing in an even more obscure personal currency, begging for people to accept it, exchange it into acceptance and attention.'
attention  whuffie  reputation  consumerism  consumering  identity  selfservers  performance  signalling  masks  status  sharing  socialcapital  culturalcapital  cults  immateriallabour  theadvertisedlife 
november 2009 by adamcrowe
Generation Bubble -- Public Image Unlimited: Consumerism and Anonymity’s End (1)
'In order for consumption to be meaningful ... it must be publicized in some way. -- Kozinets notes that though Burning Man “has many similarities to a Disney theme park,” he found that — unlike at Disneyland, I would venture to say — “people indicated that they were constantly judging others in terms of the degree of their participation in the event” in order to identify outsiders to be derided as inauthentic. Of course, these poseur “tourists” serve to structure the authenticity of these self-appointed judges’ own participation, and by extension, their identity. Kozinets suggests that Burning Man participants’ “use of these passive, isolated consumer-as-dupe comparisons may point to the higher cultural capital” denoting the festival goers’ belonging to an “educated intelligentsia.” They engage in “building strong communal ties and using the ancient practice of vilifying the outsider.” Communal relations are indeed reestablished, by the palpable and immediate threat of exclusion.'
*  consumerism  authenticity  consumering  identity  selfservers  performance  signalling  masks  status  sharing  socialcapital  culturalcapital  cults  immateriallabour  theadvertisedlife 
november 2009 by adamcrowe
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