17 February 2009: "What kind of an ALT is M.I.A.’s baby going 2 be?"

This post is about the generational social reproduction of class hierarchy and its attendant taxonomies, and the integral role of both cultural capital and media surveillance. Carles begins by making a reference to the sale of an image of childbirth, a paradigmatic emblem of how we enter this world already commoditized. Fittingly, an online media outlet -- one which represents the new establishment -- is responsible for provoking this archetypal transaction.

Carles then generates a taxonomy of the different acceptable identities one can assume and still regard oneself as ontologically unique, that is, as "alt." The whole notion of a "type of Alt" exposes the instability of these categories, the untenability of a Alt/conformist dichotomy. We come into this world preformed, bearers of the bundle of social relations our birth functions to reproduce. As Carles wryly notes, "We finally did it. We finally have a Prince to the Alt Throne." Always in publicized births is a replication of a hierarchy,a preservation of power, a reminder of the seat of power and its heirs.