This post is about the collapse of diachronic into synchronic analysis, or how we transform anxieties about time into the mastery of space, or in this case, how being first in line allows a moment of transcendence amidst our inevitable mortality. We anchor lost time in a place of unquestioned priority to succor the illusion that time's arrow doesn't fly in only one direction.
Carles notes, in a somewhat Socratic ruse, that he wrestles with the question of value, of which he pretends to know very little: "Sometimes it is hard for me to evaluate what I truly value, and how much I value it." What he's suggesting is that desire is experienced as a kind of demonic possession, inhabiting our consciousness and allowing us no point from which to assess it objectively. As a result we rely on the social mirror: "Wonder if I could ‘bond’ with the people who wait in line for new products, since we basically value the same stuff." We know our desires from the reflection we see of them in the desires of others. Hence the formation of lines, lines of desire between one another in physical queues, with the lines making a kind of net within which to catch fleeting moments of eternity. The moment of utter satiation in possession which can suspend death.
However, this net is rent by the competitive impulse that capitalism introduces into society, in the social mobility that prompts invidious consumption: "Feels weird when ‘everything feels like a toy’, but there are still these adults who ‘really want to buy a kewl new toy that will make people think they are kewler.’" The jouissance that might have resulted from free play amongst desiring machines is negated by the mechanico-rationalistic interplay of tactics, of strategies we adopt to end the game. To win once and for all.
"Have yall ever ’sacrificed’ ur time 2 ‘wait for the right’ to ‘buy something fuckin awesome’?" But the irony is the jouissance -- "the fucking awesome" -- evaporates as the triumph is secured -- the line disappears behind us; we are alone again, with our inescapable death, hoping merely to join another meaningful queue that is not the one for the last judgment.
Clearly though, one can have an 'ironic detachment' with respect to consumerism without that being critically-oriented: the comments section of HRO is full of evidence that hipsterism's lack of concern is far from the, if I must use the term, "postmodernism" of say, Deleuze, who you implicitly cite above. You must read Gavin McInness' writings in The American Conservative about VICE, et al before taking HRO at face value, if it is post-post-ironic.
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