#INTO THE TRASH IT GOES MEME TV#

This is the intriguing part of Kobek’s DIY philosophy, which he presents as a science fiction of the present.

Throughout the story, set in the gentrified streets of San Francisco, computers coordinate the exploitation of “the surplus population into perpetual servants.” What happens once the realization sinks in that “all the world’s computers were built by slaves in China” and that it is you who is using those same devices? What happens when we’re personally addressed as the guilty partners, “suffering the moral outrage of a hypocritical writer who has profited from the spoils of slavery”? 4 The guilt and frustration is both personal and political, on a global scale. “We’re terrofucked.” That’s how Jarett Kobek sums up the general feeling in his 2016 novel I Hate the Internet. After they’re written off, being online is their last refuge. Users are under constant risk of financial collapse, and once they’re poor, they will be subjected to the post-money economy in which only imaginary entities circulate.

The guilt is produced by the pressure to perform. The online Other cannot possibly be classified any longer as a “friend”: “If people in the outside world scare you, people on the internet will downright terrify you” is a general warning applicable to all websites. What some see as a relief is experienced by many as frustration, if not hatred. What is techno-repentance? What comes after the Exorbitant Detriment? Once the love affair with apps is over and the addiction reveals itself, the mood flips to cold turkey. The question is how the current discontent will ultimately play out on the level of internet architecture. It is no longer the “wretched of the earth” who revolt, because they’ve got nothing left to lose, but rather the stagnating middle class and “young professionals,” who face permanent precarity.Īfter hubris come guilt, shame, and remorse. What’s collapsing right now is the imagination of a better life.

Every piece of information is self-promotion, crafted by public-relations managers and spin doctors-and by us users as well (we are our own marketing interns). 3 There is no BBC World Service anymore, the moderate radio voice that once provided us with balanced opinions and reliable information.

#INTO THE TRASH IT GOES MEME TV#

As Žižek explains in a British TV interview, the Big Other has vanished. 2 Chomsky’s process of “manufacturing consent” has taken hold completely. The multi-truth approach of identity politics, according to Slavoj Žižek, has produced a culture of relativism. 1 But since this is not happening, we feel trapped and console ourselves with memes. If “truth is whatever produces most eyeballs,” as Evgeny Morozov states, a general click strike seems like the only option left. We’ve started to unfriend and unfollow, yet we can’t afford to delete our accounts, as this implies social suicide. Swiping, sharing, and liking have begun to feel like soulless routines, empty gestures. The once fabulous aura that surrounded our beloved apps, blogs, and social media has deflated. Yet again, enlightenment does not bring us liberation but depression. Our disenchantment with the internet is a fact. A meme featuring Jean Baudrillard posted at .

Into the trash it goes meme