Hawk Tauh: Greasing The Machine Of Capital
“The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.”
― Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle
“The acceleration of contemporary life also plays a role in this lack of being. The society of laboring and achievement is not a free society. It generates new constraints.” Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society
This may be the culmination of reading too much Byung-Chul Han, YouTube, and overall immersion in other simulacra, but the majority of what I see online is performative. Now, I fully understand that we all put on personas, masks if you will; it’s part of human nature and our own mystique. However, what is nauseating is the commodification of what makes us human.
I understand that content creators are trying to find ways to sustain their brand, push subscriptions, and remain relevant. It pays their bills and most likely halts any existential angst, though that is merely a guess. People are taking some of the most profound and uniquely human experiences and commodifying them. The accelerationists do not need to do a damn thing; we are already past the tipping point. When a pregnant woman makes a YouTube video showcasing her eating all her pregnancy cravings for 24 hours she is taking something personal and turning herself and her unborn child into means of generating capital.
Her unborn child will already have a digital footprint. Instead of one day asking, “Mom, why don’t you like tuna fish?” she will be robbing herself of her mother’s retort, “due to you not liking it when I was pregnant.” Don’t worry it is timestamped, he or she can merely like and subscribe, thus partaking in the commodification a second time, maybe even getting something towards his or her college tuition.
At this moment, both mother and child are merely pantomimes, living appendages for the monstrosity that is late-stage capitalism. Enacting its will.
We are robbing ourselves of what makes us truly human, the most sacred and profound aspects that disclose being itself. Truth is occluded with likes; the trivial and profane win out. Human beings are already being consumed by a new species, one that is parasitically using us to keep itself going. The terminator is here, and we are bedazzled by it, praying that our next video will go viral.
When a twenty-something-year-old woman becomes famous online for mimicking spitting sounds and alluding to oral sex, we take a once private and possibly erotic experience and turn it into spectacle. The internet searched and hunted for her relentlessly, turning her into a modern-day Aphrodite or Cleopatra. Minus the prestige and grandeur. Big Brother is dethroned by Han’s Big Data, which we voluntarily feed with information ceaselessly. Maybe something that you say will relate, and the mystical claw of trending will choose us as its prize, elevating us to the techno-capital Mt. Olympus.
The algorithm curates our opiates, numbing us into submission. Apparently, saliva + blowjob = eudaimonia, the epitome of human flourishing. I must announce to others that I, too, relate, am edgy, and enjoy sex. Essentially part of the current narrative.
Pregnancy and sex go hand in hand (pun intended). When we turn both into a means to an end for fame and content, we are robbing ourselves and our children. Cheap entertainment and content are both reified/deified into existence, ex nihilo.
Humanity has gone the way of the Tin Man, except we have forsaken our hearts entirely and instead rely on the lubrication of content to sustain us.