Capitalism, Cultural Disintegration, and Buzzfeed
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- Опубліковано 5 кві 2019
- Patreon: / cuck
Twitter: / philosophycuck
Peretti's essay: www.datawranglers.com/negation...
Barbie quiz:
www.buzzfeed.com/h2/osmo/barb...
Sources on Buzzfeed:
nativeadvertisinginstitute.co...
digiday.com/media/buzzfeed-qu...
nymag.com/news/features/buzzfe...
I should mention that if you dislike the use of a clinical term like schizophrenia in the context of cultural theory, I completely understand. The theories here discussed can mostly be understood without reference to the actual mental disorder, and I'm using the term here as the thinkers referenced in the video use(d) it, as it's a well-established term in the literature.
I'm fine with it so long as whoever I'm speaking with could qualify their use of the term. I largely come from a psychology background, and only occasionally dabble in philosophy. Shifting gears isn't too hard but some people do get hard to parse once the concepts are starting to stack.
Hey there i really liked your video. I have a question if you wouldnt mind helping me out. Ive recently found myself falling further to the left but am dealing with an internal conflict. Well i now value concepts such as workers ownership of the means of production, i still find myself valueing free expression and free speech. I ask are these two things reconcilable? On the surface the look like they clearly are but conditioning from the right that has created this assumption that to be on the left and to value anything that may be a individual value and not a collective one is oxymoronic. Can one be a socialist while holding onto certain liberal values or is their some contradiction hidden that i have yet to discover?
Seems arbitrary, primates don't seeks a narrative to fit their experience into, the narrative is a trivial afterthought. Its the innate biological desire for hierarchy and being seen as the top that drives those narratives and what the images are stimulating... we can do away with the narrative speak completely and understand the topic more effectively.
@@brad5696 sorry to interject, just wanted to mention that the goal of communism is actually to free the individual i.e. to be both free from hunger/pain/dependency and free to fully express themselves. Any so-called left-wing theorist who embraces authoritarianism (Stalinists for example) is either willfully or unconsciously misinterpreting Marx' and Engel's theories. In (ideal) communism the dialectic between collective and individual interest would not be this massive divide that it is right now (as self-interest reigns supreme in capitalism).
@@brad5696 I would argue that the left is ready to take liberalism to its conclusion (that being libertarianism, theres a reason this term was initially used for social anarchists). Free expression and free speech are both not only compatible with leftist values, but especially the first one is one of our core principles. This is also why many great artists (such as picasso) were communists. As slavoj zizek once put it "Communism is when everybody gets to live out their stupidity". Leftism, in its core, is the rejection of hierarchy, both economic (private ownership of the means of production) and political (we want maximum democracy or sometimes even more self-determination than that). The only instances of authoritarian leftism were specifically meant to be a transitional stage on the way to true freedom.
The "freedom of speech" bit is of course a little tricky. First of all, fascism too dangerous to be ignored IMO. Cracking down on Nazis, even with violence if necessary, is honestly just self-defense (these people literally want to commit genocide). We should also remain critical of our language. This, however, is something you cannot enforce by law. Finally, and this is fairly controversial within the left, some people would prefer to have protection against speech that is harmful, such as transphobic rhetoric, which (and this is scientific fact) can directly incite violence against vulnerable groups. The rights of the vulnerable not to be put in danger trumps the right of bigots to spout their disgusting crap.
Edit: Collectivism has nothing to do with conformism, individualism has nothing to do with individuality. It is the individualists who will insult you on the street for wearing clothes that society thinks aren`t ok for your gender.
I know that question wasn`t for me, but still, i hope i was helpful in your radicalization ;)
Adopting an elitist attitude towards these types of consumers is an integral part of *my* own ego formation.
I felt this in my soul
you obviously have a huge ego.
Just spent 15 minutes trying to articulate why I am not searching for superiority. Any argument I make supports the idea that I am searching for superiority, just like trying to show a lack of pride reinforces pride.
I've come to the conclusion that, sure, I'm looking for a better ideology. Is that a bad thing? Especially if I'm trying to use it to make everyone's life better.
I just want everyone to have a foundational standard of living, and I'm not afraid to lower my own standard of living to get it. By lottery of birth, I happen to be fairly well-off. I want everyone to have what they need, because I could've been born where they are.
@@aldenheterodyne2833
This is one of those issues inbred in our culture to an extreme. We learn that we need to grow, our societies needs to grow and grow and simply overlook that this is not what it takes to make us more happy (given a certain living standard). We are injected what we "want" and confuse it with what we "need" to be fully integrated and therfore "happy". To say "hey, we have to give up some of our comfort" is like an argument that hits our mentality towards materialistic growth so hard, that basically many people will stop listening. Truth is not being taken well and while I fully sign your position in this as I draw my "happiness" from mostly other things, to argue in such a way is impossible in order to reach change. I can just think of education. Here is a good example, there was media which claimed that young people don't know how to deal with finances well, not having saving strategies for their elder stages. It was suggested that we bring such topics into education, as if that is what we need. It makes me very upset, where is philosophy class, some Socrates in early stages of life to implant a great respect in spouting opinions, some ethics that can teach us how to interpret the world around us? We need education that teaches how to think, not how to best survive or thrive in a system that challenges our very existence.
Asura Heterodyne that’s called self worth,
Just Make sure you rid yourself of evil first before you try and rid the world of it
We truly do live in a society...
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More like a community.
Jesus christ
Barbies rise up
SEIZE THE MEANS OF BARBIE CONSUMPTION
Interesting to me is how modern racial supremacy and nationalist dogma are somewhat of a reaction to these fragmentary identities, in the manner of seeking a somewhat consistent identity.
Yes. this is extremely important to recognize, and is vital to observe how people are radicalized online because of it.
Xdye What’s your solution to this?
@@aboxintheblack9530 I don't think I can pinpoint a single simple and easy solution to such a complicated problem. I would need to think about it a lot more.
Xdye I understand. It sucks that positive ideas aren’t usually presented on subjects like these.
ounocat Can’t there be another alternative?
Lmao, I got Ballerina Barbie
I got Holiday Barbie. I'm glad I'm still able to enjoy things & not overthink them like a stupid fool.
@Der Einzige honey, it's a joke. calm down.
I got Guerrillera Barbie
I got Malibu barbie. They have to go.
I got Holocaust Barbie.
Shoutout to Tendies123, whose name being read out in a semi serious manner always brings a laugh.
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That's soo realtable lmao
For the non-yanks, there is a brand of dolls in the states called “American Girl Doll”. Children can customize the dolls in any number of ways to reflect themselves and their personality. There are even huge American Girl stores, complete with little doll spas and similar cutesy play areas.
Of course, the entire thing is curated to encourage buying more. These children are being brought up to see themselves in the products they purchase. They begin to see themselves, through their parents, as consumers, and are taught that consumer goods are how they arrive at their identity.
Capitalism is real fucking sick.
Hahahaha. Never been there. Neither have my nieces. Eff you
This is one of the most intellectually fascinating videos I’ve ever watched on UA-cam. I’ve never seen the contradictions of capitalism laid out in such a digestible, philosophical manner. Truly, what a great video!
Agreed. It's pitch-perfect. Learned more in those 20min than from reading entire books on these subjects.
He really knows his stuff and is extremely good at communicating the ideas contained within.
Completely agree. I just started watching Ceika's videos 3 days ago but he is able to explain complex philosophical topics so clearly. It has been a huge eyeopener so far. Defintelely recommend his videos on Miyazaki, the Simpsons and The Matrix as well. I feel like I finally understand why I have been feeling so detached, unfocused and unfulfilled all these years.
@@DE-bs9cf he did one on The Matrix? I've not seen it
In a Vox article about Peretti's paper, this quote really stuck out: "When I reached out again via email, asking whether he saw BuzzFeed as embodying the trends described in the paper or as subverting them, he simply replied, "lol.""
Omg 😅
lol
I imagine capitalism tries to separate aspects of one's self because if everyone had a strong idea of who they are, they would only buy a specific type of thing, you know? By disconnecting people from their experiences, ethics, and culture, you make everyone identify as everything, which means they can buy basically anything, if that makes sense at all. I think this is one reason why capitalism tries to make everything so homogenous. If you're Chinese-American for example, and it's a big part of your identity, you could be more likely to shop at Chinatown or only buy specific foods, instead of shopping everywhere and buying every food like capitalism wants. I think that capitalism wants us to basically be the same, but think we're different so we don't rise up against it. It shaves down really important stuff like ethics and morals and culture, but leaves the trivial differences and even creates trivial differences (like the Left Twix Right Twix shit) so that we have stuff to bicker over rather than seeing the real enemy.
I dunno, this is my half baked take, I might return to it later and make adjustments, but at first glance, this is what I'm thinking.
@@crt1848 Thanks for replying- I usually hesitate to say we're too divided to all come together against capitalism, because a lot of leftists take that idea and run too far with it, letting folks get a free pass for some really terrible words/actions under the claim that we have to have solidarity with each other, but I do agree with the sentiment.
@z g I 100% agree with what you're sayin here- I mean, compare the amount of media attention Nancy Pelosi got for ripping up Trump's speech, "whooooaahh so bold and brave!" (sarcasm), compared to what her policies actually do, most of which are honestly pretty Trumpian. The modern democrat or republican distinction is like trying to define two groups without much of a difference, especially when it comes to things like how much the US gets involved in the Middle East and how. It almost does feel like the modern political parties of today were invented to keep us bickering about the super small distinctions while the larger issues go completely unchallenged.
Capitalism wants us to so that we consume more by being different every day, which makes us all the same in the end.
And what do you guys think of postmoderism?
I think I generally agree and I think the modern US (specifically the middle class in it) is really the end point of this process, the reason why that is, is because the US was a country shaped by capitalism throughout it's entire history. It's pretty consistent that Europeans will accuse the US of having no culture and while this critique is often elitist it's not entirely wrong because it's pretty clear that the US really lacks any significant cultural identity other than capitalism. Like what is US culture? The only thing people can really point to is various corporations and consumption, the American dream for example is literally about being a consumer. There's no American holiday that is not about consumption in some way, Christmas is basically only about shopping and eating, Thanksgiving is too, Easter is barely celebrated, the 4th of July is just about eating and loudly declared loyalty to the state. And the so called "Christian Values" that American conservatives might point to are not even consistent to American Christianity but also are often kinda meaningless, and their own Christianity is also largely about consumption as megachurches advise their participants to consume their religion.
The heavy atomization and colonial violence of the US is what enabled this to form, so it's also found in other settler colonial states such as Australia and Canada. Their culture is hard to see as diverging from the UK's culture in any way other than like having one or two unique brands and then basing everything on that. But that is not to say that this is unique to the US and can't happen elsewhere, I think in general capitalism seeks to erode away culture for the simple reason that anything that is not based on either work or consumption is not beneficial to it. It's clearly happening in Europe too where slowly unique traditions are disappearing and losing their meaning, at which point they become empty signifies that you can argue about forever. For example the whole "War on Christmas" narrative only exists because Christmas has completely lost everything associated with it that is not just consumption, it has not and could not find footing in a country like Denmark where everyone would scoff at the idea because Christmas is understood to mean a lot more than just consumption with a vague connection to Christianity. Basically by their nature as being human things most cultural traditions were communal in some way and often involved taking a break from whatever your daily life was and having fun, this however is unacceptable to capitalism as it is not very profitable. Not working reduces profits and so does not consuming, if Christmas for you is mainly about kindness and community then you might even fuck things up for capitalism by forming something like a mutual aid network. The only part of culture that capitalism will allow to remain is the dressing up of it, the visual elements and the words but the actions it involves can not.
In for a ruthless piss-take of Buzzfeed, out with a tutorage of late capitalism.
Fascinating.
UH MAZIN!
They really had us in that first half
i've lost count of how many times i've watched this, it introduced me to deleuze and guattari and it's one of the best videos on youtube for me
Same, for me it was the societies of control video, completely different way of looking at the world!
be gentle, daddy
This is maybe the most intriguing video title I’ve ever read
I actually have more respect for Buzzfeed knowing just how deliberately they're playing to the system
@@yurinabesima honestly I didn't realize anyone likes buzzfeed unironically lmao
I mean I do a quiz or watch a video from time to time for funsies but who on earth is out here like "YEA buzzfeed that's my dudes"
@@yurinabesima even more to the point, Peretti should be aware of how his company isn't really accelerating any cultural breakdown; they're clearly just participating in the profiteering. The guy has been deep in theory throughout his life- and I don't think that excuses becoming a capitalist to own the libs.
Accelerationism sounds like the perfect pretext to behave like a psychopath.
@@Agora13 that's usually what it means yeah
Trump is the greatest Accelerationist.
As Baudrillard said somewhere (I think), there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.
Saturation, threshold, reversal. Something like that.
@@TWD66 Explain please?
@@prod.by3zko It's a classic pattern in Baudrillard's late works. He applies it to very many different fields.
In a historical perspective, he uses thresholds or breaking points to describe the change in meaning (or the abolition of meaning) of different things.
Inversion.
Example : freedom.
At first there was a will for freedom (Ancient Regime / feminist movements), then there was the actual emancipation (Revolution / Civil rights), then there is an imperative to be free (Modernity).
In the last stage - the imperative - there is a reversal or abolition of the meaning of the previous stages. (ex : the will is a collective desire ; the imperative is an individual burden)
So, here it is : desire, event, imperative. The imperative contradicts the desire, with the event as a breaking point.
Applied to information : the abundance of information in modern societies abolishes the fact.
Threshold : information has become integral (encompasses all). When integral, information becomes its own end and its meaning is reversed. Example : there is no hierarchy in information anymore. It becomes a self-serving system.
Sorry for the maybe not so enlightening answer,
I believe The Intelligence of Evil and Simulacra and Simulation are the two works in which those concepts are taken to the extreme. If you frequent a public library...
:)
@@TWD66 It was thick (I've just begun to dip my toes into this sort of thing), but no, your answer was excellent! Thank you for taking the time to write that!
I don't read too much hard literature at the moment, but I have a list of books I intend to read, I added them to that. Thank you again friend.
And this is why Metal Gear Solid 2 is the greatest game of all time.
UA-cams clever algorithms, driven by profit motives, identified and fueled my aspiring ego formation to become an anti-capitalism intellectual, suggested me this video, consumed my attention and therefore forced me deeper down the rabbit hole of selling my time and labour to exploiting capitalists in order to purchase the goods and services (from other exploiting capitalists) required to finalise my new identity.
God, I hate capitalism
PS love my new AirPods, never has the consumption of knowledge about internal contradictions of capitalism has been so effortless
This is the best reply
Capitalist Realism was a horror story, not a libertatory text
I thought you had bought some grey sweaters and cartons of cigarettes?
Christopher Stanley I don’t think he was arguing against the potentiality of non capitalist societies. I think he was instead arguing that engaging in capitalist systems for the purpose of survival while living under a capitalist system is not a hypocritical thing to do. He isn’t saying other systems aren’t possible, rather that while working towards creating those systems, you are forced to acquire the material needs for your survival by selling your labor power. I read his point as a simple restatement of Marx’s central thesis, not a statement of fatalism
@@huckthatdish He isn't arguing that, he's been on other threads, but I really like your argument defending his potential argument. It was clever.
Jokes aside, this was one of the most important videos that I have ever watched in my entire life. It has enabled me to finally understand what was going on in my psyche.
As a Business Executive Barbie i would say we should intensify the acceleration!
Hi, I have absolutely no experience in philosophy, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
However, it seems to me that the societal schizophrenia that was described here can be readily applied to meme culture. In fact, using it as an analogy was the way I was able to attempt to wrap my head around this video. The way that identities and egos are quickly created and destroyed reminds me of how quickly tastes in memes change. And the deterritorialization that was discussed reminds me of how memes originally have specific meanings, then often lose them quickly, or there are 'crossover memes' that are created simply to reference another meme.
So, I thought it might be a good discussion: why do memes seem so applicable? Is it that memes reflect society as a whole? Is it that meme culture has become a sort of microcosm of capitalist society, and is simulating the conclusion of capitalism? Or should I not compare meme culture to the theories of the philosopher's presented, due to some oversight on my part? I would like to have an opinion of someone who's read my comment this far.
Hi from one Paul M to another, you're definitely on the right track here. You may not have much experience in Philosophy but you have clearly thought about the content of the video and applied it your own experience. Memes are a good example of how signs work in a cultural sense. Therefore they are definitely representative of society as a whole. May I suggest Roland Barthes 'Mythologies' if you're interested in the semiotic aspect of this video?
F. Jameson, Post-modernism or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. It might shed some light on this. Basically explains how items become more and more separated from their signifiers as they're cited from author to author and can then get an entirely new meaning or absence of meaning.
Concretely, imagine a photographer makes a famous photo of, say, a meeting; then film director A cites the photo in movie A; some years later film director B cites the scene from movie A into a movie B; some time later again a painter paints a piece inspired by the scene in movie B; and so on. So the scene becomes frequent in pop culture but time after time it becomes another symbol entirely than what it represented originally (a meeting). Well, read Jameson, he explains it better than me XD
TL;DR: Yes, memes are totally a post-modern language.
Paul M nothing wrong with not having a serious experience with philosophy so long as your thinking and engaging with the ideas presented to you!
The more difficult and challenging the better!
The more your current thoughts and ideas subvert your previous notions, and teach you a deeper truth and perspective about the experience of being alive the better!
To me that’s always been my use of philosophy! To find a better way of seeing the world that makes me excited to think about the world.
I used to be depressed, but philosophy and exploring new ways of looking at my experience, and the world, and other people really changed that for me!
Keep it up!!
@J R It will stabilize eventually, or evolve into something else, or stop brutally. Depends on a lot of things. Genres and schools coexist and go with the changes in society. If I take Cinema as an example, modernism lasted roughly 50 years, it's still there marginally.
You dont need to be experienced in Philosophy to form your own thoughts. You have language, and you should use it, no shame or self doubt. Leave the doubting of your thoughts to other people.
I have picked up the slight notion in leftist intellectual circles that people get shamed if the dont use "the right terminology" and simply speak whats in their mind with the tools (language, etc.) they inhereted. This imo often leads to sect like structures, suprisingly also in leftist groups that indentify themselves as libertarian, antiauthoritarian or anarchist.
"im a barby girl, im plastic, its fantastic" gets a whole new meaning
Aqua started off as a parody of ultrapop groups, but then they were assimilated by the very system they were mocking.
Never understood how people could take the song to be anything but ironic. The mockery is obvious.
@@oftinuvielskin9020 Barbie's unwillingness to answer Ken's calls for nighttime entertainment with anything but postverbal cheers is clearly reminescent of Barthes' application of linguistics to the post-modernist analytical framework. In this essay I will-
@@decepticonne Go on
@@decepticonne continue
Targetting specific NIETZSCHES
u so silly >:^)
I really chose a wrong video to half listen to omg
Ikr I’m doing laundry and I am so lost .
Damn. Now I *really* want to give some anecdotes of mine. Three things:
First is that around 8:59, when the quote ended, I got an advertisement (yeah, I know, no adblock) saying something like "Viking Lottery". I don't use a VPN, so it's clear that this ad played into a sense of nationality and/or ethnic background. Something, something "True Scandinavians do this". The timing of both the quote and the advertisement is kinda funny.
The other thing is regarding a classmate. He is someone you could call a supergeek. Buying merchandise from UA-camrs who base their content about other properties (such as Sonic and Super Smash Bros.) and all of that. In class breaks, I like to draw and put on some youtube stuff like this in the background. One of the only things I consistently draw again and again is the character Punchy from Animal Crossing. His face and dress fit along with what I want to draw and he's just some simple shapes. Problem is that since he is a part of that intellectual property when this classmate of mine noticed the character, he immediately formed an ego around being an Animal Crossing fan. Jogging towards me, then looking over my shoulder he asked: "Are you drawing yourself as a villager?". With him probably having watched a countless amount of videos with some being about AC (all being advertised to him by playing to the geek persona) he has developed an identity around a series which, by his own admittance, he hasn't played or been interested in playing. He's grown an attachment to something by virtue of it being proxy to geek culture without otherwise caring for it at all. To his question, I answered back "No, this is Punchy, a lazy, big-eyed cartoonist cat" and his response was "Oh, my favorite is either Isabelle or Ankha". Having had nothing else to contribute than to prove he knew what Animal Crossing was, he walked away. Back when this happened his enthusiasm about Punchy seemed very weird to me.
This third thing is something that connects both of these anecdotes. In our History of ideas class (Idéhistorie), we talked about how 'Viking' has become less and less of a term to describe a historic occupation and more of a concept that ties into one's national identity. (There was also something about how we construct history, but that's not relevant now.) When class was dismissed, our supergeek classmate unironically called himself a Viking. Unironically. Due to his Danish ancestry. Just after we talked about what Viking really meant and how it's now a cultural phenomenon. The level of fragmentation of identity was so fucking absurd from him. A Viking that's into Overwatch and Lego. It was like he was a quantum fan. In a state of being both a real fan of one thing and of any other thing that sounded cool to him. It's like he becomes a different person as soon as someone mentions an IP. Oh, so NOW you're this and that. In the beginning, I just assumed it was the symptom of a bloated ego from someone with a geek history. Now I think I have another reason for this psyche of his:
The day after our conversation about AC, he asked me to name a character he should get an Amiibo of. The first thing he did when our class traveled to Scotland was to buy two figurines of characters from a videogame. The day he joined the drawing club I went to, he brought this comic( i think?) character I haven't seen before. He spent a lot of time trying to draw her even though the poses in the drawings were way too difficult for a beginner. Someone who's had zero hours with the warmup or anatomy training we do. He has on multiple occasions told about his universe of fan characters that fit into the Animaniacs universe. The main fan character is also just a projection of himself and uses a commission piece of that character as a discord avatar. His ego is his fandom; a cultivated identity. His worth is his consumption. Being a collector of at least one thing from *every* fandom to be used as proof. Even when it doesn't fit in with being a geek, he will try to use his vast quantity of media and information he's bombarded with to become a "Viking" or artist or comic book writer or professional gamer or an intellectual outcast (as one Facebook post put it) or whatever else that makes his brain go "this is so me".
He's a true collector whose worth is determined by the completionist's philosophy. The "Gotta catch 'em all" taken to a capitalist extreme with all internet culture. I just hope he's happy doing this.
This was too long and I wrote this for myself. This is also for you three who care about UA-cam paragraphs. Thanks for listening to my TED-talk. :^)
RoboLamp bit of an elitist attitude
can't wait till you hear about the gacha culture
It's the notion of teaching people how to think critically. Some people do want to, and others take it so far it becomes a fault.
As the most controversial media critic of last decade said, it's okay to enjoy media while understanding it's problematic or pernicious aspects.
I have friends who are avid game collector nerds. I myself adore certain franchises while completely aware they are made to sell me more stuff. I don't think it's necessary to judge the victims of this process, as they were never given the tools necessary to detect these problems, and really, why should they care? What are we telling them: even when they are told they can still enjoy Pokemon, or the Avengers, or Game of Thrones, they feel something is being taken from them when they are pressed to recognize the faults created by a late capitalism nightmare.
The blame is with the advertisers and the producers for creating false insecurities and needs, for capitalizing, really preying on human emotional needs. With the government for allowing education to become a commodity for those that can afford it. The victims, there are worse things to pity people for, I would sooner say people who don't have access to a job they loved if only they could have if education and money were easier to come by sooner deserve pity than any ignorant hardcore geek. At least their passions, as valuable or silly as they are, are being filled.
@@antonevan443i was also thinking about gacha culture, i do play but at least i dont put any money on it
probably my favorite of your vids yet. keep em comin.
on another note - it's interesting to see "schizophrenia" being used as a byword for "lack of identity formation" in these philosophies. From a clinical perspective, borderline personality disorder is actually considered to be more closely related to identity formation difficulties than schizophrenia is.
You explained the difference between the 'limit of capitalism' and 'capitalism itself' quite brilliantly, especially so for a UA-cam video. Also, loved the dramatic intro of Deleuze and Guattari. They were truly revolutionary in thought.
18:28 pretty sure you activated a brainwashed sleeper agent somewhere
"Capitalism deterritorializing and commodifying objects and things that previously weren't commodities." I think is a very important point to bring up because it explains much of the mindset behind reactionary politics and why they want to 'go back' to when territorialization ordered the world in a way that made much more sense than it currently does. It also explains why most modern reactionary movements are destined to be completely ineffective in the long term; they seek to scale back the pernicious effects of 'globalism', without realizing that the globalization of culture, and likewise people, is inevitable so long as capitalism still exists. Thus, they are doomed to failure, and their feeble attempts to implement their vision of returning to 'tradition' or the 'good old days' will overtime always decay into nothing, so long as they allow capital to influence society unimpeded.
I have noticed that the reactionaries/right wingers are beginning to reject capitalism. Some are even referring to "cultural Marxism" as cultural capitalism. While the "left" is increasingly becoming occupied by Neo-liberals.
@@grandmastersreaction1267 theyre NazBols
So you're saying we need National Socialism?
@@noumena9463 Yes.
@@accelerationquanta5816we need socialism period
I'm currently working on an essay about social media. What really sparks the interest for me about the topic is the manufactured identitificacion that those social media try to start. Peter Coffins video had helped me a lot to see and identify the core dimensions of the problem. But I needeed this kind of framework, to describe the correlation between ads and the ego formation. Thanks!
I am in high school and in my class we have problems to connect points and concentrate. I also used to think that it was just desmotivation.
listening to this while finding out which Tom Hiddleston character I belong with
Oh yeah! Notification squad. So buzzfeed was created by a traitor to the cause? Awesome.
people who learns the sword uses the sword.
bilibiliism this requires one to rebuke their ideals and accept the pull of profit and power.
@CountFenrir its a win in every outcome, either you overthrow capitalism or die rich.
No one does capitalism better than anti-capitalists.
That's funny, but we should still be critical of these ex-leftist capitalists.
He's not holding Communism back or furthering Capitalist propaganda, he is just taking part into the system he is forced to take part into, the same way any wage worker does
I really appreciate your continued analysis of the differences between marxist and postmodernist philosophy.
Revolutionary video! I have been waiting for someone to explain this coherently for such a long time.
I liked how many people I recognized when you scrolled down your blurred twitter feed. And I also liked the rest of the video, of course, but that part just made me smile.
same lol
I really liked the information presented in this video, so I tried to rave about it in my journal, essentially trying to summarize the information here in my own words.
It's a lot harder than I thought, and it makes me realized how good your scriptwriting for your videos are. It must have taken a lot of effort. So thank you!
This is still the most fascinating video essay on the internet inho. I regularly blow minds with this little known peretti lore. Love it
Does this have anything to do with what Focault called " the disappearance of man" ? . He said that after the " death of God" opened up new research and examination of the world. And now we are witnessing the disappearance of man which will also open up new opportunities. I dont know much so if anyone is kind enough to give a brief account of it.
And of course: sorry i am not good in english.. so bear with me a little.
I am not that much aware of the notion that you are mentioning, however I'll investigate it and come back to you as to give my own opinion. Hopefully someone else might help better than I can at the moment, because the connection that you mention reads as a very interesting one.
@@YowaneHakuu okay.. Thank you. I will be waiting.
Here is a piece on it: philossophy.wordpress.com/2010/04/18/the-disappearance-of-human/
Also, your idea was very well communicated & your English was perfect (Actually better than Alicia's lol.)
I think there is a relationship. I have my own interpretation, i am not a Foucault scholar but read his work.
I think there is something specific with Foucault. The death of God that Nietzsche explains was the death of a social order that centered around a specific grand narrative.
Gradually we gained another narrative which could be called humanism which tried to understand the essence of what it means to be “man”. And yet our humanistic ideas are equally structurally bounded.
There are certain set of Episteme which uphold the idea of “Man” similar to a certain set of Episteme that upheld the idea of God.
So the way I interpret Foucault is that a certain point the “myth of Man” will disintegrate.
For example we have come to believe a myth of universal attributes of “Man” which we fantasize to be universal across time and culture. And yet upon closer inspection the myth does not hold.
I think what Foucault was doing with the idea was criticizing our notion of universal humanism in the same way that Nietzsche criticized Christianity.
Humanism “Man” becomes just another narrow concept that has nothing to do with the real potentiality of man, just as Christianity became a perversion of conformity and slave morality described by Nietzsche a perversion of what Christ might have originally taught.
I think that when F. talked about the "disappearance of man", he was referring "man" as a category, a concept, in the abstract, and not the subject of self-experience. You can still have an operational concept of "man" when analyzing what is the target of identities. Even if the subject doesn't experience herself as a unity, the fact that we can still have a discourse about individuals as totalities is the proof that the category has indeed not disappeared.I think it would be more accurate to point that the category of "man" would have taken a real blow if psychoanalysis had had a greater longevity in social studies and would have had less the tendency to inherit the dogmatism of Freud. By breaking the unity of "man" the concept would have become useless outside of the legal sphere. It would have shown how historically contingent the idea of "man" is, just like how the idea of "atoms" as the smallest individual particle is.
I love these videos, keep up the great work man, I love seeing a new video from you pop up on my feed.
excited seeing everytime new episode comes up. Keep up with these videos. just love it
Great video. Glad you finally got around to talking about Fredric Jameson
waterguyroks Check out his other videos on postmodernism/postmodernity. He discusses Jameson in depth there as well.
Thoroughly interesting :) Glad I stumbled across your channel when it was just beginning. Good to see it going places ^^
Thank you for making such quality content. I am a poet and I feel like exposure to these ideas has helped me immensely with reaching into crevices that are often overlooked in modern poetic writing. These videos are deeply fascinating.
Coming back to this video because It's of great help for an essay I'm writing. Just to say that putting 'Cuck Philosophy' in the references is amusing and I await my teachers reading through it.
participate in capitalism in order to accelerate it into its own destruction. I had heard the idea before but did not realize there were people already purposefully, and successfully doing it. mind blown a liddle bit.
I know this is an old comment but this actually seems like a good idea. Better than some of the other methods
@@vincentstark7093 What's a single advantage of this framework?
This is also illustrated by modern museum practices and the reduction of time something needs to be considered "classical". Now we have things like "computer history museums" and "classic memes".
Hermann Lübbe's "Im Zug der Zeit" is really great.
in defence of computer history museums: without curation and maintenance, by the time computers would hit the age of typical museum relics, there would be no curation possible. computers _absolutely require_ regular restoration, as capacitors can and regularly do 'blow' or 'explode' without direct power over a matter of time, and the battery acid that leaks will devour the components. while it may be possible to restore to a workable condition even after heavy corrosion damage, it wouldn't be possible while maintaining the same appearance and useability as preservation can do. and i would argue this is a legitimate pursuit, this maintenance, because the computer, for better or worse, has such a wide spread cultural significance, one which, looking back at the earliest computers and personal computers, is hard to understand _how_ they caught the kind of interest they did (of course, we take it for granted, but beyond a lot of quoted promises from the industry, it is almost impossible to understand how these machines were beneficial, especially PCs that only offered a text interface that only took BASIC input).
against the defence of computer history museums: some of these fucking displays are absurd and show a lot of nothing that truly matters, such as the original semi-translucent imacs, which, other than having eye-catching designs, mostly seem only to be on display so that anyone who is sceptical can affirm that it is all driven largely by nostalgia for archaic nerd tech. yes, yes, i too wanted the pretty purple grape imac 'monitor' over our beige box monitor, but it is hardly a substantial point of the history of these computers which dominate our lives.
but again, i think computer history, and the maintenance of working early models, can be extremely helpful in critical analysis of the development and drives behind its acceptance--something even the most staunchly wary critics of the computer technology often do not take the time to detail in their criticisms. they, too, take it as a given that the computer was always significant, always going to change the world, but it is extremely hard to see the appeal of a device which, in its early iterations especially, seemed only good at doing what calculators and typewriters already did, and mostly business garbage if anything else.
i also find the entire notion of 'classical meme' curation to be repulsive if it is not a small display in the corner of current art display sets. (which do happen, mind.)
an aside: one thing worth noting is that mark fisher in particular points to this dissolution in context of generation-binding music in particular, a phenomenon that is only applicable to a very short subsect of human history, and only got significant importance after the spread of reliable and easy music recordings (particularly vinyl records; reel to reel is too finicky, very expensive, not as embraced as the record). before that, even, music on local radio was the domain of the 'radio star'; this wasn't so long ago, my grandmother was one such 'radio star', her occupation was literally singing the lyrics over a classical music reel-to-reel, as reel tapes don't tend to have clear vocals). so, not too long before fisher's foundational binding of cultural identity through common music in his youth, the common music binding people was situated within the voice of the radio stars of one's community as well.
i'm not saying this to discredit fisher, but pointing out that these ideas of time-and-place for identity foundations _were already unravelling_ by the time fisher found identity as etched in record needles.
this also dissolved in 'commercial art' as the photograph became easier to produce quickly, as tv took the dominant advertisment vehicle. my 'radio star' grandmother had a brother who was a professional commercial artist, i own his textbooks from the fine arts school which he attended to be at parity. while ads today can quickly jump from trend to trend as quickly as possible (thanks to photos and preferences away from drawn depictions to filmed acted ads), the field of commercial art could be argued to bind a culture within a familiar artistic style (often a semi-realism based on extremely idealised proportions). while it may be remiss to say 'ah, ads are A Good Art, Actually!' it is worth pondering that the reason we can identify an early 20th century ad so extremely easily is _an explicit consistent stylisation_ that situates it by purpose (commercial art is distinctly commercial art), time (the period of handdrawn and painted newspaper/magazine ads) and place (the specific stylisation that is meant to appeal to the culture). that this style is also appreciated in a curiously nostalgic way is also telling.
there is a primary focus shift on ads recorded on VHS showcasing the ~90s period of less appreciation of the artistic representation and more as commentary on the trends of the time period. this continues even up to now (the ubiquitous ukelele ads of the last decade come to mind). identification comes less from a binding representation of time-and-place to the fashion and colloquial trends by the 1990s, and further to generating 'weird' ads in the 2000s and 2010s to grab attention. confusion was the goal in most successful ads (and now, it seems, corporate nihilistic quips on twitter).
I discovered you yesterday and you're already the best philosophy channel in yt
I keep coming back to this tasty video. Thank you for all your work
oh my god i aLSO got astronaut barbie !
i know this is a fragile identity but at least i share it with you
your videos always do my existential dread good
I saw an amazon ad just today that was this mirror stage concept to a T. A man at a bar is shopping on amazon and upon viewing the product, this doppelganger appears next to the person wearing a leather jacket, the item the man is exposed to. There were other subtle differences between the person and their double, like not having on glasses and slicked back hair, and music began to play that suggested to me an almost lusting after this new identity. It seemed to me like an excellent illustration of this concept. Thank you for giving me a tool to help defend against this kind of advertising.
Favorite video of yours so far. Wonderful stuff!
Seriously fantastic content, well done!
Ohhhhh, it's like when Vegeta blew up Android 20 when it tried to absorb his power by overloading it instead of resisting.
Your job is amazing. Seriously, it is really good. Easily on of the top 3 channel's on my list.
This channel is just outstanding. Thanks for your work.
Bro I clicked on this video bc I hate capitalism but as a dumb non english speaking teen just reading the comments is a pain because of the complicated vocabulary aha
I am so glad I never heard of Buzzfeed until now and more reasons not to engage with it. At this point in my life I no longer have the need to be part of the paradigm and do things because everybody do it. People need to feel part of the society by engaging in every new creation that becomes a new trend disregarding it's purpose. I have skype, I don't need hangout or whatsapp just because it is the new fashion but what's the point to have all the apps when people have low communications skills? My idea of entertainment is learning and I can't tell you how much joy I am having watching your videos.
This was exactly the video essay I needed. very very eye-opening!
Your series are genuinely brilliant
18:24
Did anyone else black out and wake up in the woods outside of a chicken farm?
My clothes were torn almost completely off, I was surrounded by feathers and blood...fresh chicken blood in my mouth. And fur...wolf like fur I think I might have shed.
What did you do to me?
I woke up by a desert road covered in a weird orange dust that smelled of citrus, with a strange gas canister right next to me and what looked like a blown up camper van a few hundred yards down the road. Come to think about it, I remember briefly hearing a helicopter fly overhead before losing conscious again.
all i got was this dank sense of consumer-dread
Dude! I’m in space! My spacesuit is made of fish scales and the sweet scent of jasmine floats lazily in the atmosphere of my fishsuit.
...how do I get down from here?
I'm still in my room, but there's a boa constrictor in my hosiery drawer and there are no longer any windowpanes in my windows.
what if i accelerate my depression
This is a truly fascinating, well put together video. Thank you.
First time seeing one of your videos. You earned a subscription.
it feels weird, watching it now while I'd been writing a poem about modern media's effect on sense of self, ability to focus, creativity and marketable personal information. They basically talked about what I've called "ego of sand". Actually now I think I can finish it faster, since this essay has given me a clearer picture of what I'm actually writing about. This is the paragraph I was
talking about if anyone cares haha
An ego of sand trickles down
each grain a like on a tweet, a watched video.
Aren't they really smart,
the people who make these things?
Promised to make me golden,
And I am, indeed.
Just as cold and saleable as that.
I have never seen a better examination of Marxist vs. Postmodernist theory as applied to the modern world. Excellent work, this really opened my eyes.
Really great work. You explained and combined all the philosophical theories presented in an understandable way.
Hi there, I appreciate all your effort and the amazing way you have to explaining things so easy to understand. Thank you again, I love your videos.
Once again, illuminating diagnosis but question begging cure. Your conclusion perfectly illustrates why most leftism is intrinsically a doctrine of despair and a force of chaos. If the only way to escape the endless disintegration that is symptomatic of capitalism is by changing the entire system, then those who believe that are condemned to its pathologies until that day comes. Broadly conservative and Christian minded people on the other hand recommend a more empowering and practical method of liberation: unplug from the soul crushing propaganda machines and work towards starting a homestead or some other local world that's free from the filth. It's wiser to put on a comfortable pair of shoes than it is to try to carpet the world.
If you think that changing *one aspect* of the current system, that distributing material resources communistically as opposed to capitalistically, is going to reach deep enough into your life to grant you *unconditional*, invincible peace, satisfaction and contentment then you're dooming yourself to liefelong misery as a matter of logic. It's a contradiction to seek to establish external conditions you believe will lead to a peace and happiness you currently lack because the fact that you require those external conditions in order to have peace and happiness means that your internal state is *dependent* on conditions not *necessarily* granted by reality. In other words, any mindset that places all of its hope in the realization of a very specific set of worldly conditions in order to be satisfied is a logically precarious and despairing mindset. It is in the same logical space as the drug addict who is logically incapable of satisfaction because he's emotionally committed to the twin beliefs: a) I desire to be in state of mind x, b) I can only realize x if I take drug y. What the drug addict really wants is not just x but x *unconditionally*. Anything less is intrinsically. precarious and prone to the spiraling dialectic of satisfaction (taking the drug) and dissatisfaction (the drug wearing off) that is addiction.
True internal freedom is indifferent to external surroundings. The only reliable source I have found for that freedom is Christ as He manifests Himself in the wisdom of the Orthodox Church. “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
Not a Christian, but you nailed this. This is what drove me to Stoicism and keeps me grounded.
12:27 I like how surreal this image is when you dont know the context behind it
This might be the smartest video I've seen in quite a while.
Excellent video. IMO your best to-date.
"I am large, I contain multitudes"
i got veterinary barbie and i accept this as my new fragile cultivated identity. thanks barbie.
i will happily put off going to bed to watch this! thank you for more awesome content 😍😍
Have you thought of making a video addressing contemporary literature and its relation to philosophy? Something like an analysis/explanation combo you do in most of your videos regarding the works of authors such as Tao Lin, Thomas Pynchon, and especially David Foster Wallace and his concept of New Sincerity? I'd love to see a video like that and I think it'd fit in well with your channel even if it may be a bit less accessible to people who haven't heard/know of those writers (although I've noticed a lot of people into philosophy are also into literary novels/series as well).
Another great video. I learn so much cool stuff on this channel. Keep 'em coming comrade.
> most theory dense video
> discusses the work of Buzzfeed CEO
👌👌
I love this video just because how perfectly it ties together what multiple philosophers thought of one aspect. I'm studying/reading Deleuze at the moment and giving me a foresight like this was really interesting to me. You could've spent more time on Lacan, but considering what an asshat he is to read and how many twists his theory has, you did a pretty good job. This is one of your best videos so far and I sure hope you keep up the good work.
This channel overall has been a big help and inspiration to me, honestly. I'm a big fan of philosophy and because of you I've read through a lot of post-structuralist theory and your book recommendations have helped me a ton.
Also, if you make another political theory video on Deleuze, it would be really interesting if you addressed how some marxists accuse him of being pro-capitalist or even fascist.
The concepts discussed in this video frightened me more than any fleeting horror movie squeezed from the pimple of capital.
Pol Pot will save us from Schizophrenia.
That wasn't real schizophrenia.
Picking castration as biggest fear, nice touch!
My new favorite philosophy channel, along with Dr. Gregory B. Sadler’s channel ;)
The beginning of the credits is priceless ❤️
while covering relatively simple philosophical concepts i think this video is really well made. i appreciate how you've tied all your sources together and also explained why is source is relevant to the overall topic of the video. are you intending to follow this up with a video on ego formation applied to late capitalism - as just a nice in depth dissection of it - at all? either way, really well done
This video unironically helped my with me existential crisis. I'm not saying it solved all my existential problems, but I feel much better now. Thanks!
What's with the use of the word unironically?
@@bozoc2572 There's so much irony on the internet that is frequently easier to highlight what is not irony.
Fantastic video! Always great to have someone help me understand lacan better lol
So glad I read "the supreme identity" by Alan Watts before this. excellent video. Now going to read some Lacan.
Darn it, now I'm compelled to go take a stupid Buzzfeed Barbie quiz. Thanks a lot.
Postmodern antiheroes like Billy Pilgrim from Slaughterhouse Five and Yossarian from Catch-22 are insane. Heller and Vonnegut were well aware of the revolutionary potential of schizophrenia.
I know this may be out of this channels realm but you should really do a video on Guenons critique of modernity, it fits right in with your most recent videos;Also fitting a bit of traditionalism and Eastern thought of the state of modernity in the west would be a cool perspective for this channel.
Just might be your best video yet. Pretty terrifying stuff but the most interesting topics on your channel usually are ;)
There's something rather Platonic about the descriptions of Capitalism in this. Puts me in mind of Republics account of the 'perfect' democracy with people flitting from idea to idea without being able to form a controlled and concrete self before everything lapses into Anarchy... I'm not sure I agree with the dystopian characterization he has but I do find it interesting that these sorts of observations keep coming around over and over again.
1:42 Mirror stage seems oddly specific. I don't understand how one could possibly tell whether this is true or not - babies being bad at talking after all. I would highly suspect that there are some "hard coded" aspects to identity - identifying the things that you have control over, concepts like property, tool use etc. Perhaps there should be a word "developobabble" analogous to "neurobabble" for ideas based on a questionable model of child development.
the ads on this video fit it almost perfectly
whadja get
Thank you for being a worthwhile UA-cam channel. I live in pretty ghetto public commission housing, so I often hear the dumbest shit around my neighborhood. You provide me with intellect while I'm surrounded by moron junkies, when I'm able to afford it I would like to donate to your Patreon. Your content is invaluable to me, I hope you go very far in life.
Hope you’re still doing alright chief 👍
Left tube needs to pay more attention to D&G. Great video!
Faark, that's a difficult one between Jameson's response to capitalism and Deleuze & Guattari's. I'm admittedly much more familiar with Jameson's work, and I find convincing his idea that capitalism is a totalising system and therefore we need a totalising response rather than a fragmented one. But maybe a schizophrenic destruction of capitalism could lead to a counter-totalising response? I don't fucking know.
Radical versions of deleuzianism, or the most vulgar ones at least, pave the way for nomad decentralized primitivists who like to hippie all day long in their fragmentary chambers. Others like Nick Land take it into cybernetics. Jameson's view is still modernist and progressive, in the sense that in still cherishes civilization, progress, and social order.
@@lupo-femme Yeah, I've been thinking about this a bit more and the sort of accelerationism argued for by Deleuze and Guattari according to this vid (I've read very little Deleuze myself) seems treacherous. If the Buzzfeed guy is supposed to be engaging in this process of acceleration, then he is also engaging in capitalist exploitation at the same time. How do we know exactly what the limits of capital are and how do we accelerate them in a way that won't lead to awful outcomes? Maybe there are similar problems in Marxist theory and praxis, too. Again, I don't know.
I really love your channel. Thank you!
this was wonderful. amazing work!