Not very familiar with leftyism and I feel like I would ask here since I don't know where else to ask.
Any texts/videos regarding the fetishization of pop culture/latching identity onto consumer products and the causes/consequences of it?
What are your thoughts about it?
Seems like you guys like to talk about the economic/pol side of things, but I just find this interesting. This shit is almost like a religion, made from capitalism, for lack of a better way of putting it.
If you're too dumb to read Century of the Self is a good documentary series about it.
William Ward
kek this. Nerd Crew is some of the funniest shit I've seen on YouTube in a long time. it's basically "fuck reddit: the show"
Brody Baker
You haven't read it.
Charles Powell
Unironically this
Xavier Phillips
unread brainlet here, does Baudrillard have anything to do with any of this?
John Ortiz
It's philistinism, and it extends into politics. Even rad/left politics. The Democrat Cops of America and similar parties are the Marvel movies of socialism.
Xavier Lopez
I have read it and honestly I agree. It is a pretty diffcult read.
Only if you get a shit translation and even then your probably only missing the minutiae. Anyone with a high school level of literacy and half a brain could interpret 80 percent of SotS without any familiarity with Marxism, furthermore I posted a video with further interpretation and clarification and posted an intro guide.
Yes. Baudrillard was massively influenced by Debord and something like Simulation and Simulacra deals with this topic extensively although from a more academic rather than activist angle.
Ian Barnes
Should have said structuralist / post structalist angle rather than academic, Baudrillard also abandoned Marxism /Communism and became a defeatist nihilist I belive
Brody Ross
re. Baudrillard abandoning Marxism. He seems to have thought that having a critique of political economy centred around labour and production could never transcend the limits of capitalism. I'm thinking he picked this up from Debord who made a point about the Spectacle being the 'culmination of separation' of all aspects of life previously united into a coherent whole in pre-class societies. Concepts like 'labour' and a political program with the intent of liberating 'labour' just further cements labour as a separate aspect of human life as it is in class societies and can thus never transcend class society. All this makes me think Baudrillard went full primitivist gang in his later life, wanting to return to a more primitive mode of production where all aspects of human creative activity are united and expressed in each other. The problem with this imo is that I'm pretty sure Marx was perfectly aware of the status of labour as a separate realm/sphere of life in class society. His prioritisation of the category of 'labour' is just a reflection of the real operation of capitalism's class structure in abstract theoretical form. To reach an un-alienated, un-stratified state of society where life isn't parcelled out into separate spheres engaged in by separate groups and is just 'life', is still part of the goal. But right now 'labour' is the sphere where the overwhelming majority of the population are trapped in exploitation, and thus the liberation of labour from capital is priority one. Baudrillard seems to have forgotten that that the emancipation of the proletariat as a class is also the *abolition* of the proletariat as a class, and thus of labour as a separate sphere of society. I am completely open to the possibility that I'm chatting absolute bollocks, and that I should actually read Mirror of Production.
Luis Hill
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Isaac Roberts
I had a friend yell at me and call me feminist scum because I didn't think consumerism was enough to live your life by. People build their lives around this shit. It's crazy. Also kind of sad, because I normally like the same things these people do, but I don't it's also not my entire world.
Is there a book like this but with Japan's mindless consumerism on anime and manga?
Jonathan Watson
why not just read the book you're looking at and just use common sense?
Colton Miller
VERY COOL
These books cover the subject generally. They apply for Japan's extreme consumerism more than anything.
Angel Nelson
I feel like consumerism has ramped up as things like religion have decayed. 50 years ago these people would get thier morality from the bible, not the ninja turtles. As an old school comic book nerd, back when being a nerd actually meant being a fucking loser nerd. I feel like most guys like me have checked out of the whole nerd, comic book, thing. The whole thing consist of normies who have bought into the idea that being a nerd is not only something to aspire to but also means consuming. Mass inifintlization, a sub culture commodifed and normalized, of course capitalism is going to love this shit
Juan Long
Ironic considering that contemporary feminists are exactly the same but even worse because they willfully shape their identities into subservience to capital so that it can market it back to them as a commodity, thus fulfilling the need for recognition of capital and reification. Culture Wars bullshit is just an extension of this when 2 given groups run into conflict
It's like the go-too insult for anyone who's critical of consumerism as a hobby. Some of these people are so politically naive, that they think those are the only people who have an issue with it. I like video games, but people who shape their entire identity around it are usually some of the worst when it comes to this. I once had someone tell me that they couldn't believe I wouldn't mind living in Cuba, because they don't have videogames. This was someone who goes to competitions and reads giefs gym like the fucking bible. Maybe I'm just old, but pro gaming is the most cancerous thing I've ever witnessed arise in my lifetime.
Perhaps there's hope that people will become tired of this shit and begin revolting against it. Or at least that they'll discover that their beloved IPs are abused by the corporations that own them. When you spend enough time consuming capitalist media, you inevitably become cynical towards it, and turn to a Red Letter Media kind of mindset. The predictable garbage pumped out by the culture industry isn't good enough for you anymore. This effect could eventually get hold of the general population.
Elijah Moore
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Nicholas Clark
If you want to see some next-level shit, there are biker-style "gangs" that hang out at Disneyland in California and named after different characters from the Walt Disney extended universe. They also have disputes and drama with each other and I believe they got into the news recently because one tried to blackmail members of another or something.
I have no idea, but I can easily imagine this thing just colonizing the world more and more, like Mega City Two in Judge Dredd (hey there's a comic book reference). It's this big futuristic / dystopian metropolis where everything is Hollywood and celebrity culture but amped up in the most extreme terms possible. The world is one big theme park.
I also think Disney – which again owns Marvel and Star Wars – is going to be the model for more and more things you wouldn't have imagined. Here in Texas, we have this very chain of mega-gas-stations called Buc-ee's which has a Disney-like cartoon character mascot (a beaver). The locations themselves have around 200 employees, 120 or so fuel pumps and around 80 toilets that are kept gleaming. If anyone ever visits I would recommend stopping in on 2 p.m. on a weekend as that's the shift change, and it's like seeing a factory shift march in and out. All they're missing is the whistle.
Anyways it's wildly popular and will take over the world probably. Of course you have Buc-ee's fans now and they wear Buc-ee's merch around. Hats, shirts, socks, pillows, beadsheets, whatever – all with the smiling beaver.
Sometimes you have to use capitalism to get the message out. I'm glad that series was made, I think it can help a lot of people but the anime's ending was capitulationist bullshit
Xavier Bell
Well that answers my lasting curiosity about how America contributes so much to climate change for a country with such a small industrial base.
Americans do not deserve the land they go into diabetic comas on.
Michael Taylor
I'm a grumpy old man so I dropped the video there.
Michael Baker
I went by a buc-ee's once. I'm from Michigan and we're meeting my relatives in San Antonio. We thought it was a mall when we were going by it until someone explained that it was a gas station. That place is bizarre.
Hunter Harris
Buc-ee’s is amazing. It really is a theme park of a gas station. They have billboards for probably up to a hundred miles of the actual locations on the big interstates announcing that buc-ee’s is only an hour or so away. Everybody loves them, they’re like an institution for people traveling between Houston/Austin/San Antonio because they have tons of snacks, fresh and prepared foods, and like you said their bathrooms are a palace. Every toilet has a spacious private stall that is spotless, and the stall itself has solid walls and a heavy door with a doorknob.
Christopher Anderson
Shut fuck up faggot. Why are you even here if you are going to blow your load all over a gas station chain?
Carter Jenkins
Because the thread is about consumption. Buc-ee’s is a wildly successful chain of regional gas stations that absolutely succeeds at winning the good will of its customers on the basis of its heavy brand identity, its dazzling array of food stuff and other goods, and it’s weirdly pristine and individualized bathrooms. You literally get your own room, it’s barely even a “stall” in the normal sense. I like it too, in the same way anybody would like that kind of thing, whether they agree with its existence in some larger sense or not. I recognize it’s an absurd kind of spectacle, but I think it is interesting. It reflects a kind of urban consumer chauvinism because most of them are out in the middle of nowhere between the big cities, so they’re meant to be an oasis of imagery, scale and abundance. I don’t think I’ve ever been to one without it being completely packed.
David Kelly
Marx was a great admirer of the productive possibilities of capitalism. Buc-ee's is merely large-scale industrial production applied in the form of individual gas stations.
I'm also a fan of Thomas Bayrle's "Marxist-Leninist Cowboys" which was something of an ironic commentary on the mechanization of American individualism.
All of this. Although I think they might be starting to creep towards the cities. One opened up practically down the street from me and I go in there all the time now.
No reason not to give credit where credit is due. Never heard of Bucc-ees before since I'm yuropoor, but if they offer something beyond the ordinary then it should be fine to compliment that IMO. Criticizing capitalism =/= knee-jerk condemnation of everything produced under capitalism.
Sebastian Reyes
Which is the problem, even WWII armies were more logistically efficient in fuelling vehicles. In the picture it seems less then 1/8 of the pumps are being using plus no queue.
Bentley Clark
Why would a queue be more efficient? The point is there are no lines so you always have a spot, so you just have enormous numbers of people churning through the place. I think that photo was taken early in the morning. Even more wild: they don't allow semi-trucks. I believe the one about a mile from me literally has the cheapest fuel in the United States right now at $1.69 per gallon.
I talked to a manager there and asked him in this "aw shucks" kind of way about how they keep everything stocked. I wanted to tease out stuff about their logistics systems but he just shouted "payroll!" Meaning workforce. A lot of companies go public and expand all over the world – imagine Taco Bell – but as the rate of profit has a tendency to fall, to appease shareholders the company starts to cut labor. The result is you have all these Taco Bells with two overworked, stressed-out employees. Buc-ee's just hires 200 employees per store who are buzzing around like busy bees.
But the point I was originally making was about the branding and the Disney-fication of something unexpected. I expect this to happen more in other areas.
Thomas Myers
Not sure why this would happen. Getting fascinated by gas station bathrooms sounds like a very American thing. America is big and empty compared to Europe. You have to drive massive distances to get anywhere. Of course you guys will start worshiping gas stations. It isn't that weird of an outcome.
Julian White
It is a utilization and traffic flow issue. Most rest stop gas stations are situated so you just pull off into a line of pumps, then pull back onto the highway. Queues would be in line with the on ramp so you'd see the gas station is busy before even trying to get off the highway (this also makes it easier for trucks to maneuver in and out). I don't see Bucc-ee's setup being any more efficient in throughput despite them having far more pumps as by the time you have all pumps occupied you have traffic congestion as the cars gets in each others way due to them all crossing each other's path.
Also, US public transit is poor compared to Europe. You drive around a lot. We're more likely to take the train.
Brandon Brooks
It's all just social engineering that has nothing to do with the right-left dichotomy. Look at the Soviet Union. Or even Russia as it is today. It's about centers of power.
In the US, the media has coalesced into just a few centers of power, just like power in Russia is all gathered in Moscow. It's this high concentration of power that is the problem - in the media, in politics, in finances, whatever. Regardless of the socialist or capitalist ideology that surrounds it, the media bubbles that are formed creates an intelligentsia that gives people within that group a distorted view on reality.
It's the Jews that made it happen.
Dominic Barnes
New York was America's largest city since the beginning and had more industry (the whole state not the city, to be specific) than the entire confederacy.
Sorry you don't like big cities but they will always be influential. You might as well stop using Roman letters.
Nathaniel Jones
We're not talking about concentrated media idiot. Yes, it is bad. We need decentralized sources of information and so on. But this has nothing to do with consumerism, outside of the fact that consumer identity is a much stronger centralizing force than Jews will ever be.
Ask yourself this: Can we blame the Jews for doing what they did, if it was us who gave them the opportunity to do so? If you found yourself in their position, part of a closely connected, highly educated and rich sub-population, capable of making new wealth in a rising industry, would you leave this opportunity aside? Would your wanna-be entrepreneur neighbor? If you answer "yes" to those questions, Jews aren't the problem. It's the material dynamics of capitalism. Laborers need to be in control of society themselves, not a small corporate elite, whatever be their ethnicity. Capitalism will keep giving the same results, not because of a conspiracy, but because that's the nature of the system. Corporations do what is profitable to them. They're forced to.
Leo Brooks
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Carson Martin
(me) Further, you need to ask yourself: Why are they engaging in social engineering? Is it part of a nefarious plot to destroy the very civilization that made them rich, or is there a simpler explanation? Well, there is a simpler explanation. It's called the profit motive. Creating false consumer identities is very profitable. Appropriating cultural products and charging people rent to access them, incredibly profitable. Spending massive amounts of advertising forcing these cultural products onto people, you wouldn't believe how profitable it is. You don't need any idealist conspiracies to make sense of this. It's all informed by direct material interests, driving people away from authentic culture and into a mass-produced spectacle. Rotting their brains with distractions, making them unable to pursue their personal artistic destinies. All the wealth of our advanced society is sucked into this meaningless pursuit of consumer products.
I'm not against your concern that the Jews are up there, my problem is only that whether they're Jews is irrelevant. People shouldn't be in their position altogether. If it isn't Jews it'll be the Irish, or the Italians, or something entirely new. You can't fix this shit by putting "your group" up there. The moment they're up there they're no longer your people. Whoever it is their actions will be virtually the same, informed by the interests of capital accumulation. The only way to fix any of this is to make the people in charge of industry equal to the people working in that industry, I mean their immediate delegates. It's the only way to guarantee freedom and prosperity in the long term for all nations on earth.
Nathan Gonzalez
(me) should be (me)
Angel Martin
I'm just saying "its the Jews" for the lulz man. Don't get your panties in a bunch. I don't really disagree with anything you're saying. I don't know much about answers when it comes to stopping power from coalescing. I once thought the internet would do this - but we see now that tech corps and the government are teaming up to strike down the people. bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-16/facebook-is-said-to-seek-staff-with-national-security-clearance Imo the identity-based social engineering is the same thing as the Russia investigation and its coverage. It's all being used as a way to keep power from being sapped away from 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧them🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧. All the data that they're using to further these consumerist plots and political power grabs - and apparently there's plans to bring all that data (along with the NSA data they already have) directly into the hands of the government. Sounds like a swell plan. Democracy Street, the longest running soap opera with the added illusion of audience participation. I think we're just fucked and will heading in the same direction that China has gone.
Nicholas Reed
I wouldn't say it's very difficult, I would say it's pretentious horseshit. Once you brush away the layer of obscurantism (which was put there deliberately), it's Peter-Coffin tier "capitalism is when I'm sad :(".
That's a fair statement since it's the kind of work that can be written without having any familiarity with Marxism.
Tyler Peterson
I don't believe that The Jews is a thing anymore. I think religiosity and tribal loyalty among jews at the top of the food chain eroded some time ago. There was always a split between Zionists, Diaspora and Orthodox jews but I don't think there's any way of distinguishing jewish elites from non-jewish elites apart from over-representation which is because they mostly live in cities and are taught as children how to accumulate wealth much more than gentiles because of their culture.
There was a fuckton of Jews who got ratted out by their own family members and other Jews and alot of it was to steal their shit and take over CEO positions. If the learned elders/holohoax ZOG Occupied Government rothschild shadow government was ever a real thing the evidence suggests it sure as hell isn't in place anymore.
Why do people think the super-rich and powerful give a fuck about immigration or 'the white race' or antisemitism or feminism or black lives mattering? They don't care, they're not even in the same mental universe and they're more nihilistic than ever before.
Does anyone here seriously believe Trump cares about 'the white race' or illegal immigration or that Hillary cares about immigrants or feminism? When you own an empire that just looks like weird trivial peasant shit and you only pay lip service to it to win votes.
Kayden Roberts
wtf is ZOG Occupied Government Occupied Government a wordfilter for ZOG Occupied Government?
Samuel Morales
oh, it is, must be a meme I missed
(Zhawg with 'occupied government' added on the end)
Landon Martinez
IIRC, some nazi said ZOG Occupied Government once, was made fun of for it, and it's been wordfiltered that way in his honour ever since.
Jace Collins
You don't understand the antisemite. If a jew reaches a position of power, it's because of in group loyalty, and of he stabs family members in the back, it's because he is inherently shiftless, predatory and treacherous. There is no contradiction in the mind of the antisemite; whatever has to be explained, the Jew morphs to fit the bill.