“Friedrich Nietzsche established the “declaring things dead” form, when—after trying about 400 other aphorisms in The Gay Science—he struck gold with “God is dead” in 1882. Fifty percent hyperbole, 50 percent trolling. Well played, Nietzsche.”
From “Declaring Things Dead is Dead” Via Slate.
Existentialists were pioneers of trolling.
“One should only write a novel if one has something new to say that no one else can. It has to say something new in regard to the ontology of the human condition; it should disturb the reader…words are humanity’s most effective weapons,” -Gohar Homayounpour, Doing Psychoanalysis in Tehran, p. 36-37
There is so much I want to say about this book: it’s beautiful, stylistic, and severe. It’s the best thing I’ve read all year. Scratch that, it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. Ostensibly it’s about the experience (and politics) of working as a psychoanalyst in Tehran. But really, it’s about so much more: pain, returning home, estrangement, otherness, misery, love, the ‘lightness’ and ‘heaviness’ of the human condition. And Kundera. The precision and elegance with which Homayounpour writes about the human experience, about how “pain is pain everywhere,” is truly unrivaled. Each page is teeming with inspired and inspiring prose.
“As for the noun form, here’s the bottom line: “hipster” is a broad category that encompasses so many different groups as to be utterly worthless. It seems to me that the most common group of so-called “hipsters” are the stylish, artsy residents of urban places like Williamsburg and Silver Lake. However, these kind of bohemians are more or less a permanent part of the urban ecosystem. Aesthetic styles of bohemians shift (e.g., from grunge to alternative to hipster since the 1990s), but the demographic remains constant….With “hipster” being applied to so many hetereogenous groups (bohemians, rich young people, anyone who has ever worn clothing associated the hipster aesthetic), it is a term so vague as to be useless. We can continue to use the adjectival “hipster” to refer to the aesthetic style, but social scientists would be better off being more specific about the group of people they’re describing (e.g., young, rich, educated, fashion forward, liberals, bohemians, music fans, etc.).”
The above is a nice summary of my irritation with the overuse of the term hipster. To tack on to the points about hipster as a noun, I struggle with an analysis of a group that does not use ’hipster’ as a point of self-reference (Granted not all groups use the labels assigned to them as a point of affirmation or reference but many do). I have never met anyone that identifies as a hipster and yet, somehow, everyone is a hipster by virtue of doing something ‘hipster-like’ (e.g., skinny jeans, black jeans, reading Pitchfork, etc) in this esoteric world where ‘hipster’ is a way of putting people down who act like jerks/crack jokes you don’t understand/rub you the wrong way.
Perhaps this is my own baggage coming through because I, as well as many of my friends, have been labeled hipsters for our tastes in food, music, or aesthetic preferences and none of us identify as hipster. Shit, none of us identify as hip- most of us are just nerds whose identities are basically variations of us nerding out about stuff we love (I’ll save the points about taste, class, culture, etc for another post). But in this esoteric world of hipstering/hipsterness, nothing externally delineates our earnest passion for the aforementioned categories as genuine interest rather than just being a hipster or an obsession with coolness. I’m obviously being a bit flippant here but my point is that I too agree that talking about a category of hipsters is somewhat suspect because to all intents and purposes calling a person a hipster is the social equivalent of saying they’re an obnoxious, erudite pariah. It’s a form of othering. I agree with Andrew’s points in the above post that hipster in its noun use is useless as an analytic concept: studying hipsters as a group would be would like a sociology of assholes. To be fair, I think a sociology of assholes would be far more interesting than a sociology of hipsters.
[Note: This link will open up a PDF of the Journal Article]
”’Our findings further extend previous evidence of systematic cultural differences in the offline world to cyberspace, supporting the extended real-life hypothesis,” the researchers said, “which suggests that individuals express and communicate their self-representation at online social network sites as a product of extended social cognitions and behaviours.’”
Now Available on Imgur: Memes as Branded Ad Units On one hand, I think selling memes as a branded unit is kind of brilliant, in a deeply misguided way. Given the kinds of audiences that develop and share memes, branding a meme is a pretty risky and bold move for a company. Imgur’s Promoted Image Ad Unite is basically the equivalent of Facebook’s “Sponsored Stories” for the 4chan crowd, which could potentially d/evolve into a really interesting critique and parody of online advertising. And I hope that it does because this parody/’cultural jamming’ could actually teach online advertisers about the inefficiency of branding and turning everything into ad unit-I’ll save other points about culture and capitalism for another post. As someone who works in strategy and online advertising, I really struggle with the corporatized branding of consumers in the name of advertising. On an ethical level, I think many digital outreach efforts (i.e., engaging online influencers to promote products or brands) veer into exploitative territory, bordering on unpaid forms of digital labor. I do, however, recognize that there are consumers for whom this kind of relationship with a brand is desired because of the potential affect on a person’s social capital or Klout (pun intended) within their social networks. But beyond my ethical qualms, there’s another more pragmatic point that I struggle with: if everything can become an ad, then aren’t we as an industry training consumers to stop seeing ads? Aren’t we anesthetizing consumers to online ads, making them and our efforts somewhat worthless? Are we not shooting ourselves in the foot in the long term? We’re essentially creating a model where we have to continue to up the ante in order to get a consumer’s attention, requiring levels of creativity I’m not entirely convinced our field has to maintain long term. Personally, I think the most radical thing a brand can do to get a consumer’s attention right now is to suspend advertising for a year and pour the money into meaningful, in-depth consumer research and product development. Stop building obsolescence into products. Start solving problems. Value should be more than just a brand talking point; it should be a philosophy that informs product design and utility.
Best definition of the word ‘content’ I’ve seen yet. Industry colleagues, take note.
“In our phone survey, we asked SNS users a variety of questions about their close friends on and offline, the kind of support they received from their friends, the level of diversity of their social circles, and their civic and political activity. We matched the answers to those survey questions to data in these users’ Facebook logs and then analyzed the relationship between certain activities on Facebook and the social lives of these users. One key finding is that Facebook users who received more friend requests and those that accepted more of those friend requests tended to report that they received more social support/assistance from friends (on and offline). There was also a weak, but positive relationship between receiving and approving friendship requests, as well as posting status updates, and higher levels of emotional support, such as help with a personal problem.”
From “Why most Facebook users get more than they give”
Via Pew Internet
My immediate thought on the above, albeit interesting, correlation is that more gregarious and social people (i.e., the kinds of people who are more likely to receive and accept friend requests) are probably more likely, due to their social nature, to ask for/receive more emotional support from friends. Other than acting as another communication tool between people, does Facebook actually affect the process or encourage people to reach out more? My inclination would be to say that in certain situations that is the case but it’s contingent on the willingness of people to publicly share their feelings or needs. But what of people in need but who are unable to communicate those needs? Does FB empower them to give or receive more support?
A Sorrow Beyond Dreams
I recently finished Peter Handke’s A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, a short but incredibly dense and affective work. Handke’s writes about the suicide of his mother, a woman who lived through Nazi Europe and its aftermath. The book is as much about her life, the cultural context in which she lived and was shaped, as it is about her death and its impact on Handke. In short, the book is truly remarkable. It is also heartbreaking. This is not a book to read on the bus. You cannot half-assedly read this book. You must give it your undivided attention. The book demands, even requires it of you. But the tradeoff for reading a book that is a tome in its emotional scope yet brief in its physical form is that Handke’s writing will move you, arresting you with its ability to articulate the erasure of individual identity, namely the erasure of his mother.
Most compelling is the empathic yet clinical tone Handke takes when discussing his mother’s life. He pieces together her story: lost dreams, stolen moments of joy, frustrations and ultimately the nervous breakdown before her suicide. What remains is a portrait of a woman going through the motions of life, occasionally exercising agency when she remembers that she is an actor in her own story. And yet, fleeting moments of joy only seem to steal her away from the memory, the burden of the unyielding sense of oblivion she carries within herself. Beyond feeling alone in a crowd, she goes outside to run from the gradual, yet unending sense of disintegration that waits for her at home.
In a small way, the book is a kind of feminist analysis of the impact of socio-political culture-in this case, german fascism- and its manifestation in the institution of marriage. Here we are provided with an example of how the lack of viable alternatives can result in internalized shame, self-perceived failure and regret. How a life unlived can yield a loss of humanity:
“I talk to myself, because I can’t say anything to other people anymore. Sometimes I feel like a machine. I’d like to go away somewhere, but when it gets dark I’m afraid of not finding the way home again. In the morning there’s dense fog and then everything is so quiet. Every day I do the same work, and every morning the place is a mess again. There’s never an end to it. I really wish I were dead. When I’m out in the street and I see a car coming, I want to fall in front of it. But how can I be sure it would work? [A letter from Handke’s mother to Handke, p. 64]”
It’s difficult not to be reminded of Hannah Arendt’s discussion of the banality of evil in her work Eichmann in Jerusalem. Banality takes on a double meaning when applied to Handke’s mother: there is the (marco and) micro evil of German totalitarianism looming over Europe and trickling into daily life, as well as the even more micro evil of Handke’s mother’s home life. Yet there is the oblivion that Handke’s mother carries inside of her and there is the aftermath that Handke articulates as a witness. There is a passage from Arendt’s chapter on evidence and witnesses in Eichmann in Jerusalem that speaks to this relationship between witnesses and oblivion quite well:
“The holes of oblivion do not exist. Nothing human is that perfect, and there are simply too many people in the world to make oblivion possible. One man will always be left alive to tell the story. Hence, nothing can ever be “practically useless,” at least, not in the long run…Politically speaking, it is that under conditions of terror most people will comply but some people will not, just as the lesson of the countries to which the Final Solution was proposed is that “it could happen” in most places but it did not happen everywhere. Humanly speaking, no more is required, and more can reasonably be asked, for this planet to remain a place fit for human habitation [p. 232-233].”
Although Arendt is discussing the erasure of a class of people, the significance of her point about witnessing the erasure of an individual or individuals can be applied outside of a discussion of The Holocaust. To watch the nervous breakdown of another is to, in a way, witness their erasure, even if it’s self-perceived. It is the disintegration of their humanity. Toward the end of the book, Handke writes of narration and memory, penning one of the most compelling and riveting sentences I have ever read:
“Obviously narration is only an act of memory; on the other hand, it holds nothing in reserve for future use; it merely derives a little pleasure from states of dread by trying to formulate them as aptly as possible; from enjoyment of horror it produces enjoyment of memory [p.72]”
A Sorrow Beyond Dreams is perhaps a kind of protest against the conditions that gave rise to his mother and ultimately led to her death. Handke articulates oblivion in order to curb the growth of its reach and depth.
“We’ve also provided a sample “field guide” which is a booklet that participants of the HDL Studios use when venturing into the field to see the reality of a system as it is lived and experienced on the ground. It is intended to be the minimal starting point for this kind of activity. We supplement this document with group discussions to prepare participants and adjust the booklet as needed in different situations.”
It’s a great, simple introduction to ethnography.
Note: The document linked to is a PDF. The Document is Available in both English and Finnish.
“
Imagine arriving home to find a package on your doorstep. Is it a surprise gift? Chocolates or something similar? Instead, you find a wad of documents, covered in single-spaced small type. As the thrill of surprise rapidly disappears, you realize that these pages are all about you. More particularly, all about your life as it exists on Facebook. Every friend you’ve made—and every friend you’ve deleted—is there. So is every event you’ve been invited to and invitations you’ve accepted. There are the log-in details of the many locations where you’ve accessed your Facebook account, as well as a list of who you’ve “poked” and everyone who’s ever poked you. All this information is covered in the first 50 pages. This is not some random, futuristic scenario. Sadly, it is a present-day reality.
The United Kingdom is one of the first countries to introduce a law enabling social media-users to access their historical data captured by sites like Facebook. All information is required to be supplied to the user on a CD within 40 days. Needless to say, within hours of the law being passed, Facebook was inundated with thousands of requests. It is hard to see how they will be able to comply with the “40 days” requirement.
”From “Facebook’s 880 Pages About You”
Via Fast Company
“It seems that my tribute to Edward Said on the anniversary of his death has turned away from tribute and towards analysis. That’s exactly my intention. For, while it is hardly my right to tell anyone the proper way to mourn, I would maintain, with what I hope is a touch of Saidian intemperance, that there are in fact ways of missing Edward Said that miss his point. One such way would be to offer up sentimental remembrances of the man while allowing his work to be forgotten. This is always a danger with intellectual and political figures whose careers, and lives, are interrupted by early deaths, leaving us with the sense that they have been stopped mid-sentence. All too easily, they are transformed from intellectual and political interlocutors into statues: Saint Fanon, Saint Foucault, Saint Malcolm, Saint Martin. We need to resist simply offering pieties upon the altar of Saint Edward and then proceeding as though the difficult questions raised by his work no longer exist.”
I’m a few days late on posting this reflection on the anniversary of Edward Said’s death. I will say that Representations of the Intellectual was one of the most life changing books I have ever read. Similar to Adorno’s Minima Moralia, both books changed the way I understood what was at stake in living a philosophical and intellectually engaged life.
Perhaps that sounds terribly pretentious and maybe on some level it is. But if given the choice (and there is a choice) between a life of critical inquiry and occasional melancholy or one of minimal introspection and constant happiness, I’ll take the path of critical thought and crushed idealism.
Baym’s comment on an article about Spotify’s recent change in policy requiring all new users of the service to create a Facebook account.
This quote from, Ethan Kaplan, a former of SVP of Emerging Technology at Warner Music Group is pretty spot on as well:
“I don’t think its hyperbole to say I was reminded of this (video of Steve Jobs in 1984) when I was watching f8. It seems simple: verbs.But it’s also a statement: Identity is now externalized, completely and holistically.And it will reside on Facebook. And you are either a part of this, or you are not.We’ve now reached our red pill/blue pill moment on the Internet and this will not be as easy of a decision as Mac or PC.”
I recommend Baym’s article, Embracing the Flow for a nice introduction to the impact of emerging technologies on music distribution and the industry at large.
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The first time I laid eyes on the forthcoming Facebook Timeline feature, I immediately thought of Gawker. And then of TV. And then of how Gawker was trying to become TV and how apparently now Facebook was, too. I think going mass, and — better — becoming a mass of infinitely individualized niches is probably good business, but I don’t enjoy it. That’s about the time I start looking for the door. I might just be an early-product-life-cycle consumer, if there is such a thing. (In the early days of alt rock, I think we used to call these people pretentious assholes.)
Why might that be? Where do they lose me? I think part of it might be that what I’m really interested in is writing. I say that in the lowest-brow way possible. I like snarky writing. I like informal writing. I like long writing. I like short writing. I really don’t care, but my expertise — and thus my fandom — lies in the written word. And there’s a point in the life of every website where it makes business sense to go beyond writing, to other, more expensive, supposedly more compelling media. This is the idea behind enhanced ebooks — that books really contain platform agnostic stories that can be elaborated in a dizzying variety of other media
”“
Dave Winer wrote a timely piece this morning about how Facebook is scaring him since the new API allows applications to post status items to your Facebook timeline without a users intervention. It is an extension of Facebook Instant and they call it frictionless sharing. The privacy concern here is that because you no longer have to explicitly opt-in to share an item, you may accidentally share a page or an event that you did not intend others to see.
The advice is to log out of Facebook. But logging out of Facebook only de-authorizes your browser from the web application, a number of cookies (including your account number) are still sent along to all requests to facebook.com. Even if you are logged out, Facebook still knows and can track every page you visit. The only solution is to delete every Facebook cookie in your browser, or to use a separate browser for Facebook interactions.
”Read this.
From “Logging out of Facebook is Not Enough”
It’s unclear if Facebook has responded to this, but given FB’s history of disrespecting user privacy and experience, the assertions made in the above article do not surprise me in the least. Frictionless sharing seems to benefit Facebook and only Facebook because I don’t know a single person who finds value in the onslaught of banal bullshit streaming on the righthand side of the homepage.
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Modern & Im/material Things
I'm Christina Dennaoui. I like cultural analysis, technology, and electronic music. I make beats. I drink bourbon. I'm a nice lady, so you should talk to me. Content Areas: Electronic Music, Critical Theory, Media Studies, Technology, Digital Culture
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