This is an excellent essay. The "dictatorship of emotions" is hard to ignore and very much resonates with my own experiences. In the past two years, I have felt the pit in my stomach when having to discuss certain topics in-person among peers, like COVID or the Ukrainian War. It was as if I was transgressing some psychic-emotional consensus, even if just a little bit. I would compare it to a feeling of totalitarianism albeit "democratic." It is definitely a new feeling others have confided in me about. The order of the day is never-ending social mobilization. Still, I suspect people will get exhausted at being emotionally whipped into a new form constantly, or so I hope.
Also reading your piece has made me realize I have to pick up Paul Virilio's book "The Great Accelerator." He is so spot on.
oh good, one more rumination on social media contagion that entirely ignores who shapes it and why. If there was any mention of govt-sponsored fakery in those GoPro images from Syria and Ukraine I must have scanned right over it. Apparently this bizarre new phenomenon where tens of millions of people become grotesquely hysterical entirely in line with ruling class agendas is organic. Pay no attention to the algorithmic hive management doling out rewards and punishments second-by-second.
Sorry dude, critique without a class conscious cui bono is merely an unwitting limited hangout, especially when it´s needlessly dolled up in alienating theory-speak. Fewer big words and more unspecified "We"'s would put you right at home in the New York Times.
There is nothing 'subtle' or complex going on here that the software update metaphor misses. It's propaganda doing its thing, for the same ends it always has, under the direction of the same networks. The only thing that's changed is the eternal iron grip on our psyches that social media and smart phones make possible. Reforging the world in the screen's image isn't mere possibility. It's the entire point and well underway. Or did you sleep through 2020?
This is an excellent essay. The "dictatorship of emotions" is hard to ignore and very much resonates with my own experiences. In the past two years, I have felt the pit in my stomach when having to discuss certain topics in-person among peers, like COVID or the Ukrainian War. It was as if I was transgressing some psychic-emotional consensus, even if just a little bit. I would compare it to a feeling of totalitarianism albeit "democratic." It is definitely a new feeling others have confided in me about. The order of the day is never-ending social mobilization. Still, I suspect people will get exhausted at being emotionally whipped into a new form constantly, or so I hope.
Also reading your piece has made me realize I have to pick up Paul Virilio's book "The Great Accelerator." He is so spot on.
In all, thank you for writing this.
a very interesting piece. thank you
Yes.
oh good, one more rumination on social media contagion that entirely ignores who shapes it and why. If there was any mention of govt-sponsored fakery in those GoPro images from Syria and Ukraine I must have scanned right over it. Apparently this bizarre new phenomenon where tens of millions of people become grotesquely hysterical entirely in line with ruling class agendas is organic. Pay no attention to the algorithmic hive management doling out rewards and punishments second-by-second.
Sorry dude, critique without a class conscious cui bono is merely an unwitting limited hangout, especially when it´s needlessly dolled up in alienating theory-speak. Fewer big words and more unspecified "We"'s would put you right at home in the New York Times.
There is nothing 'subtle' or complex going on here that the software update metaphor misses. It's propaganda doing its thing, for the same ends it always has, under the direction of the same networks. The only thing that's changed is the eternal iron grip on our psyches that social media and smart phones make possible. Reforging the world in the screen's image isn't mere possibility. It's the entire point and well underway. Or did you sleep through 2020?