Stray thoughts under partial quarantine

Leo

Well-known member
I was about to ask whether there was much point coming up with new ads then remembered this is projected to last months...

some brands definitely put marketing on hold, depends on the industry. but in general, they are all trying to figure out what makes sense for this time. ad agencies can still create loads on content using computer graphics and stock photography/footage, but aren't able to go out on new shoots that require a production crew.
 

luka

Well-known member
I probably expected time to slow down but instead I've found it to have sped up
 

luka

Well-known member
I made up a new rule today. Switch off the internet for six hours straight every day. Today I did it from 11-5 and I feel it worked really well. I was getting very unhappy with myself the way I was just on the sofa doing Internet joylessly and compulsively all day and night. Not wanking, before Barty makes that joke, I have to make that clear. But just pointless Internet staring at a screen like a loser.
 

luka

Well-known member
Deaccelerationism

Though the virus imposes it's own brute logic of acceleration (each moment's hesitation counted in lives lost) it simultaneously imposes, as a condition of salvation, a radical deacceleration. To save ourselves and our human world we are forced to stop producing, stop consuming, stop travelling, stop interacting, to stop everything and slow down to a virtual standstill.
 

luka

Well-known member
I was saying to Kumar how the virus literalises all sorts of arguments and metaphors and models and what was at the forefront of my mind was the way it undermines the libertarian individualist position. The extreme arguments for untrammelled individual freedom are exploded by the virus. Which is why it took care to infect Rand Paul.

You just can't get free of other people. They're like chewing gum stuck to your shoe.

image.jpeg
 
For years, over a decade, definitely since I got back from travelling and been in London i've had this feeling, not quite an understanding or something too ideological but an actual floaty feeling that permeated most of my interactions and decisions. I've felt that we're all adrift, and most of what we're doing is pointless. Most of what we're making, and working on, and thinking about is rootless and a bit confused. I put it down to smart phones and the internet like everyone else, and also just getting older, at a liminal point in my life, and some of the things I talked about it that long post on dematerialisation. But this situation is validating that feeling a bit
 

luka

Well-known member
I think that it seems frenzied, manic, delirious, insane. So much frantic activity that has no real purpose.

Now that is, during this enforced planet wide pause. It's scarcely believable. Doing mad shit like making a billion keyrings
 

luka

Well-known member
Just as an example of something fairly superfluous produced under capitalism
 

luka

Well-known member
All these factories full of all these people all over the world doing all these totally pointless things.
 

luka

Well-known member
There's something about this situation that makes you go what the fuck was all that about? Some collective fever dream. Totally mental. Weird.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
All this stuff that you think *has* to exist doesn't have to. Also this apparently invincible, inevitable way of being can be almost toppled (to be hyperbolic) in weeks. I've never been able to really believe that our society won't just keep going as it has been, more and more people, better technology, etc. forever. Only climate change is there to put an end stop on it. But then you realise that if something really major happens it could crumble quite fast.

I think people have woken up to that stuff but at the same time they're now more immersed in the internet than ever before. Also I think there's a desire for life to return to "normal" for many people because "normal" life is full of delicious distractions that stop you from thinking about how fragile everything is and how we're all heading down the long slide into oblivion.

Think of the supreme pointlessness of the Marvel universe, e.g. and how watching those movies makes me feel (at times) totally confident in and comforted by the strength of consumer capitalism.
 

version

Well-known member
I made up a new rule today. Switch off the internet for six hours straight every day. Today I did it from 11-5 and I feel it worked really well. I was getting very unhappy with myself the way I was just on the sofa doing Internet joylessly and compulsively all day and night. Not wanking, before Barty makes that joke, I have to make that clear. But just pointless Internet staring at a screen like a loser.

I've been outside reading a book most of the day and it's great.
 
The long slide into oblivion is a beautiful phrase corpsey. Good name for a dark ambient release that droid might enjoy
 

Leo

Well-known member
I thought the same, on a smaller scale, when 9/11 happened. life in NYC changed in a heartbeat, forever.

and less than a year later, people were back to buying $3 million apartments within blocks of the pit, the stock market was up and people were shopping for expensive cool new outfits to wear at their beach houses that summer.

you'd be surprised how short many people's memories are, either out of human nature or denial.
 

version

Well-known member
I thought the same, on a smaller scale, when 9/11 happened. life in NYC changed in a heartbeat, forever.

and less than a year later, people were back to buying $3 million apartments within blocks of the pit, the stock market was up and people were shopping for expensive cool new outfits to wear at their beach houses that summer.

you'd be surprised how short many people's memories are, either out of human nature or denial.

It changed your airport security.
 
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