I am the SleepyHeadBro.
This bro is me.
This is my youtube presence.
Online sharing is in the porcess of reaching its logical endpoint, in which identities become collective, and watching/consuming another's youtube presence becomes equivalent with becoming that presence. The technological miracle of transubstantiation takes place via hosts (IP hosts) that connect us up to the great cloud computers. Our displaced identities cannot be fixed in any particular place, disembodied we emanate and manifest in many servers at once; online we are legion. Naturally our boundaries dissolve -- we become what we regard on our screens, that with which we interact.
The consequence is that sociological labels or subcultural identifications shift perpetually in meaning, become unstable and uncertain, verge on meaningless: "Sometimes I get the feeling that ‘being alt’ is just some sort of game," Carles notes. The free play among the endless chain of signifiers means that "alt" can ultimately mean anything; the acceleration of the cycling of meaning online means that it means everything at once.
Interesting ideas, yet I think that you didn't cover some of the most poignant ideas discussed by Carles in the post: (1) Not sure if ppl even really like music, or if ‘enjoying music’ is just aligning your personal brand with shifting aesthetics over time to represent ‘personal growth.’ (2)Was ‘alt’ just some sort of ‘defense mechanism’ 2 keep from feeling like ‘just another brick in the wall’?
ReplyDeleteBoth of these statements can be dissected to further illuminate Carles' philosophy. Those statements thoroughly intrigued me, and I am interested in your take on them.
I will take them in order, though with the codicil that I am only speculating on their possible interpretation and making suggestions for further lines of inquiry. The material is obviously too rich to be exhausted by any one exegete.
ReplyDelete1. Carles seems to be saying that the object of our perception is fatally severed from the mind perceiving it -- the noumenal and phenomenal world have been bisected, the connective tissue which once existed between them, the persistent self, has dissolved. Sans the self, we have the brand, which roots its continuity in the commercial sphere and is subject to the whims of economic cycles. The growth we once might have perceived in our pursuit of the authentic self has no conceptual or ideological basis in a post-internet society. The internet, Carles implies, has removed some of the categories from Kant's deck of a prioris.
2. The offhand reference to Pink Floyd's opus The Wall suggests we understand the fate of the subject in Watersian terms -- molded in the crucible of conformity, prone to bouts of escapism, continually findign itself guilty of the crime of being born (to paraphrase Schopenhauer) and condemning itself to producing synthetic concepts (or concept albums, as it were). Alt menas not alternative but alternation. What Carles points the way toward is the oscillating self, or the dissolution of subjectivity into the online hive mind, in which every avatar is another mask we can wear. But this may only leave us, metaphysically speaking, comfortably numb.
Thank you for your time Rob! Your work here at HR Exegesis is certainly appreciated.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first encountered Hipster Runoff, I was a self-loathing 'hipster' in denial. I am fairly well-read, and had a (so I thought) deeply ingrained self-concept. I felt assured that I had a philosophically justifiable existence, and was proud of it. Carles sent me spiraling into an existential crisis. Your site organizes and clarifies many of the new ideas I am grappling with. Carles has some very powerful and revolutionary ideas that possess grave importance to society--many I feel personally. For example: "Sans the self, we have the brand, which roots its continuity in the commercial sphere and is subject to the whims of economic cycles. The growth we once might have perceived in our pursuit of the authentic self has no conceptual or ideological basis in a post-internet society." This idea has vast implications for the entire industrialized world, yet very few people have even considered it. You are one of the enlightened few, and for this, I commend you.
Also, your comfortably numb remark made me 'lol.'