Lol! I appreciate that. I'm sure someone more academically inclined than me would nitpick my description but I tried to be as straight forward as I can.
Great thoughts. I hear your call to be more self aware. I admit it's an unpleasant pill to swallow in my virtue signalling complacency. I am a tax-paying, craft beer-enthusiast, anarchist after all.
My understanding is BoardwalkLeotard doesn't offer a way to get back to reality. He doesn't advocate smashing the simulacrum, because at this point we wouldn't even know reality when we touched it. Perhaps BilboBard is articulating an inevitable human condition that we can lean into. (I have not read BilliardBall, so welcome correction. In any case, I have an open ended question)
Virtue signalling is our greatest tool toward big change, and virtue signalling is mediated through simulacra. Since we are building the greatest simulacra that has ever existed, our virtue signalling should meet action and change more than ever. But as you mention, this enormous energy is reinforcing capitalism, if not merely wasted.
So as we discuss what it means to smash the simulacra, I'd like to ask, how can the inevitable simulacra that follows connect to action?
I have heard calls to nationalize social media companies, which doesn't seem impossible with a national security pretense. Governments probably ought to start their own platforms to improve citizen engagement. But these aren't especially anticapitalist.
To more directly address your question though, I believe I see what you're getting at. I'm not so sure about "nationalizing" social media companies, though they could use some trust-busting.
And the model that social media runs on has become absurd; it's all about mining information, marketing, and pushing sensationalism. The Cambridge-Analytica scandal from years back was noteworthy, as it revealed how Facebook is engaged in that rather oppurtunistically.
And unfortunately as of around 4-5 years ago, the public caved to what I'd call "Internet 2.0.", where anonymous censors determine what's valid information for us, the internet has been largely scrubbed of alternative sources and information from the past into the "memory hole". That's been used against the left as much as the right in the end. My algorithm is dead on FB.
A platform such as this one at least provides somewhat more of an independent space, but it seems more tailored for intellectuals and media professionals, not the average person.
I think there need to be a campaign for media literacy and critical thinking in general. That comes down to a question of our educational institutions.
And more generally, regarding the internet, I think it should be turned more into a "digital commons" than whatever the heck it is now. In some ways it originally was a digital commons, but it got corporatized to the max in the last decade.
To be clear, some of the more difficult parts of this, like the criticism of progressivism, weren’t without growing pains and difficulties on my part. My parents were progressives. I’ve always been socially liberal. It’s easy for me to morally reject conservatives. I still do.
But I came to appreciate the leftist criticisms of identity politics over time. C Derick Varn was helpful in me being able to distinguish between the smart critiques of this stuff, and just plain sliding over into some post-left or right-wing territory. I still maintain that critique in some of these articles: you see a whole contingent of leftists who effectively have argued themselves into being conservatives in some regards without admitting it. Through anti-idpol contrarianism.
Not gonna lie you explained Baudrillard better than any of my Professors, Text Books, or Baudrillard himself. Lmao.
Lol! I appreciate that. I'm sure someone more academically inclined than me would nitpick my description but I tried to be as straight forward as I can.
Great thoughts. I hear your call to be more self aware. I admit it's an unpleasant pill to swallow in my virtue signalling complacency. I am a tax-paying, craft beer-enthusiast, anarchist after all.
My understanding is BoardwalkLeotard doesn't offer a way to get back to reality. He doesn't advocate smashing the simulacrum, because at this point we wouldn't even know reality when we touched it. Perhaps BilboBard is articulating an inevitable human condition that we can lean into. (I have not read BilliardBall, so welcome correction. In any case, I have an open ended question)
Virtue signalling is our greatest tool toward big change, and virtue signalling is mediated through simulacra. Since we are building the greatest simulacra that has ever existed, our virtue signalling should meet action and change more than ever. But as you mention, this enormous energy is reinforcing capitalism, if not merely wasted.
So as we discuss what it means to smash the simulacra, I'd like to ask, how can the inevitable simulacra that follows connect to action?
I have heard calls to nationalize social media companies, which doesn't seem impossible with a national security pretense. Governments probably ought to start their own platforms to improve citizen engagement. But these aren't especially anticapitalist.
To more directly address your question though, I believe I see what you're getting at. I'm not so sure about "nationalizing" social media companies, though they could use some trust-busting.
And the model that social media runs on has become absurd; it's all about mining information, marketing, and pushing sensationalism. The Cambridge-Analytica scandal from years back was noteworthy, as it revealed how Facebook is engaged in that rather oppurtunistically.
And unfortunately as of around 4-5 years ago, the public caved to what I'd call "Internet 2.0.", where anonymous censors determine what's valid information for us, the internet has been largely scrubbed of alternative sources and information from the past into the "memory hole". That's been used against the left as much as the right in the end. My algorithm is dead on FB.
A platform such as this one at least provides somewhat more of an independent space, but it seems more tailored for intellectuals and media professionals, not the average person.
I think there need to be a campaign for media literacy and critical thinking in general. That comes down to a question of our educational institutions.
And more generally, regarding the internet, I think it should be turned more into a "digital commons" than whatever the heck it is now. In some ways it originally was a digital commons, but it got corporatized to the max in the last decade.
To be clear, some of the more difficult parts of this, like the criticism of progressivism, weren’t without growing pains and difficulties on my part. My parents were progressives. I’ve always been socially liberal. It’s easy for me to morally reject conservatives. I still do.
But I came to appreciate the leftist criticisms of identity politics over time. C Derick Varn was helpful in me being able to distinguish between the smart critiques of this stuff, and just plain sliding over into some post-left or right-wing territory. I still maintain that critique in some of these articles: you see a whole contingent of leftists who effectively have argued themselves into being conservatives in some regards without admitting it. Through anti-idpol contrarianism.
That makes it a careful tightrope to walk.