Saturday, February 21, 2009

19 February 2009:"H4X0R3D - fuck hipster runoff i hacked this blog. readers of this blog are idiot lemmings"

This post is about the persistence of socially constructed identity. As a tactic, Carles adopts an alterego diametrically opposed to the persona he has created for lingustical-philosophical-cultural space of HRO in an effort to problematize the identity that has been constructed therein and which perhaps has begun to deconstruct his subjectivity outside of the delineations of that space. Though Carles writes HRO, there is clearly a sense that it has begun to write him; this post presents a dialectical challenge to that lexico-graphical inevitability, as demonstrated by the text entirely being struck through, as if it is trying to deny its own textual status and exist as anti-text. The strike-through poses the possibility of text being both under erasure and enduring simultaneously, a homology for the process of identity always in the process of denying its construction and positing itself as an ontological a priori incapable of contingent constructedness.

Within the defaced text are some pointed attacks at Carles' audience, who are revealed in their disciplinary aspect, circumscribing the potentiality of expression: "fuck all of the readers of this stupid site. do you realize that this site is complete garbage? what do you people even value? why do you support this site?" The audience is blamed for the commercialization of expression, as if the terms of any kind of communication exchange have been ineradicably infected by commercial exchange, which no structures all efforts at reciprocity. The pseudo-Carles challenges the notion of creative consumption and derides a culture transfixed with surfaces: "you stupid fuck faces are just looking for the next big thing. but your lazy. get up off your a$$es and actually DO something. you probably come to this site because you think you’re a creative type. but your lazy and stupid and only care about how things LOOK-not what you actually are inside."

But this scatological and profane return to depth psychology is itself another tactic; by adopting this new persona, Carles tries to demonstrate the manner in which identity itself is surface, easily supplanted with its opposite. This is borne out in the way the hacker persona accuses Carles of "social terrorism" while in the midst of enacting (in theory) the arguably social terroristic act of hacking, of online impersonation. The critique is always in the process of invalidating itself, striking itself through -- this makes it of course a testimony to the site's imperviousness to criticism and to Carles's recognition of his precarious position beyond validation.

And this explains teh barely submerged contempt Carles has for his readership bursting to the surface, where it may be examined and purged by becoming itself the object of philosophical scrutiny rather than its submerged amimus -- a thanatopic assault on the concept of the thanatopic drive itself.

The post concludes with some efforts to muddy the epistemological waters with some game-theory inspired conundrum mongering: "you may think that this is just a charles joke gimmick, and he might even pretend that it is one after he contacts hsi blogger host. but i jsut want you all to know from the bottom of my heart that i fucking hate everything to do with this website and you fuckers are going down. trust me." The implication: no matter what we believe about the ontological status of the "hacker" identity, we will lose -- we will be able to be proiven wrong (unlike Carles himself in the realm of HRO) and we will be "going down." But this is a most fortunate fall. We can enjoy the sense of existential freedom that Carles's notoriety has curtailed for himself.

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