semiotext(e)
The way things calcify and limit the imagination's really frustrating. There are so many formats of some many different things that we take as being the only way of doing those things. It would probably be impractical, but, hypothetically, imagine if Twitter flipped the timeline so it was horizontal rather than vertical. Imagine how people would respond, how jarring it would be for everyone. Imagine if they stopped referring to it as a timeline too and came up with a completely different name for it that didn't associate it with time.
That being said, I do hate change for the sake of change if something already works. Apple removing the headphone jack, for example.
That being said, I do hate change for the sake of change if something already works. Apple removing the headphone jack, for example.
luka
Well-known member
It is frustrating and it's easy to feel like that about the way we interact on here and the patterns conversations fall into, and the old routines and the conclusions we come to and the dead ends we meet. But then something magic happens like pinhead craner. Just out of nowhere, magic, inspiration, genius.
One way of eluding it to a certain degree is not entirely adopting someone else's language. You can read D&G or Baudrillard or whoever and run with their ideas, but if you start talking exactly like them then you immediately trap yourself within their respective projects. You can talk about the BwO or hyperreality without explicitly using those terms and it's easier to take them elsewhere if you uproot them.
Who, or what, is Mummy?
D&G seem to have designed their books with that in mind. I can't see too much reread value once you've acquired the tools in their kit. They want you to apply them. You learn to ride a bike then you go out and ride it.
linebaugh
Well-known member
The absentee Self?
This is probably why the online theory crew seem so stagnant. If all you do is read theory then you can never take it elsewhere and plug it into anything.
What do you mean?
linebaugh
Well-known member
The fact that there's a never ending supply of strangers to talk to makes this hard. Always some new idiot to destroy. Here we can get past that- no one argues with suspended about his quirks anymore except for sickos like tea because we understand that experiment and know its time to turn the dials again
linebaugh
Well-known member
Your sense of identity. Who you think/feel you are. The deluge of avatars you see in an image society is always picking away at that
linebaugh
Well-known member
Which you can assuage by being an authority of things. Fill that hole with curated referential knowledge. I think thats a universal adolescent struggle- I remember watching my younger brother grow up and seeing the desperation for an archetype. One month he was into cars, then baseball, and etc.
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
Yeah I do think this a serious thing. Self-guided guinea pigs, save for whatever guidance was intentionally programmed.
And the internet sends it into overdrive because it's a near-infinite and constantly updating source of information,
I've seen a fair few people complaining about other online people switching political identities like outfits. One week they're a communist, the next they're an anarchist.
I wonder whether what previously made people settle into an identity was simply that they had no choice but to. We've all dreamed of being someone else at one time or another. Something as simple as changing your username or avatar on a site can become a compulsion. I don't know how many names I had on Discord.