"The notion of the offline as real and authentic is a recent invention, corresponding with the rise of the online. If we can fix this false separation and view the digital and physical as enmeshed, we will understand that what we do while connected is inseparable from what we do when disconnected. That is, disconnection from the smartphone and social media isn’t really disconnection at all: The logic of social media follows us long after we log out. There was and is no offline; it is a lusted-after fetish object that some claim special ability to attain, and it has always been a phantom."
The spylike pursuit of information rather than knowledge makes us function less as thinkers than processors, personal computers — and inefficient, low-powered ones at that. We are not the subjects who know things or intentionally produce knowledge; we are instead means of circulation — objects through which information passes with more or less noise in the signal. We become not only part of a network but part of a circuit. We are pawns in a larger game, “a fly caught in the cog-wheels” as Vandassy, the narrator of Epitaph for a Spy, puts it.
LMFAO’s is a peculiar, insular world where they evoke the “New 80s,” their phrase for a time of perceived prosperity and frivolity where you can “lose your mind.” The group is keen on marketing not just their albums or countless cross-branded products but an entire immersive party experience. With the endless party supplements and staged environment, the show at the Marquee was less like a party than a simulacrum of a party: the careful work of LMFAO to simulate larger-than-life party moments. The nonstop confetti never marks a climax, just the continuation of an epic party with no real cause for celebration.
This is a pretty interesting essay, but I will make one note:
At the Marquee, LMFAO’s party simulacrum helped some reach a palpable peak: “Tonight we are young, so we set the world on fire,” was one Twitter user’s nihilistic cry.
That’s not a nihilistic cry, that’s a lyric from a really shitty song.
To extend the life span of neoliberalism, it needs ideological justification. Facebook explicitly wants to be that. It sustains a subject that is not inauthentic and opportunistic in its perpetual networking but liberated to be and do more. Quantify yourself, increase that quantity.
“Facebook in the Age of Facebook,” by Rob Horning | Read More.
