9 ms·

A psychoanalytic reading of social media and the death drive

75 points by axiomdata316 6y ago

polishdude20 6y ago
I liked this :)
quickthrower2 6y ago
With a name like Max Read there is only one calling!
082349872349872 6y ago
> "online celebrity is only ever 240 characters away from online infamy" Horace, about 2'000 years ago, suggests a (long to modern eyes) embargo[1]: > "You will have it in your power to blot out what you have not made public: a word once sent abroad can never return." cautions against seeking internet points from astroturfers[2]: > "As those who mourn at funerals for pay, do and say more than those that are afflicted from their hearts; so the sham admirer is more moved than he that praises with sincerity." and even agrees with TFA's psychoanalytic reading[3]: > "And whomsoever [a mad poet] seizes, he fastens on and assassinates with recitation: a leech that will not quit the skin, till satiated with blood." [1] http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0065%3Acard%3D347 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%... [2] http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0065%3Acard%3D419 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%... [3] http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0065%3Acard%3D453 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%... Amusingly, footnote 3 in the perseus text is a rosetta stone for the scholar's leisurely manner of saying "like and subscribe": "I must beg to recommend to the reader's notice my translation of Aristotle's Poetics, with a collection of notes, as the two treatises contribute to each other's illustration in the fullest extent." Bonus tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKftOH54iNU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKftOH54iNU
- Real_S 6y ago
  From [3] >I shall wonder if with his wealth he can distinguish a true friend from a false one The state of social media?! A thousand "followers" but none that can be called on in times of need.
  - ses1984 6y ago
    Gofundme?
  - trhway 6y ago
    >A thousand "followers" but none that can be called on in times of need. in the attention economy the followers aren't friends, they are consumers.
ycombinete 6y ago
I was hoping, from the name, that Book Forum would have a web forum.
discreteevent 6y ago
"That we want to waste our time. That, however much we might complain, we find satisfaction in endless, circular argument." "But political and economic and immunological crises pile on one another in succession, over the background roar of ecological collapse. Time is not infinite. None of us can afford to spend what is left of it dallying with the stupid and bland." But in the past we had plenty of crises and yet we used to spend our downtime shooting the shit, going around in circles, with stupid and bland people just like ourselves (there's not many geniuses in any particular locality, and they usually aren't the ones shooting the shit, just as they don't now). At least it was face to face, I suppose. And at least you could go home and leave them behind to watch tv! Edit: I will admit that there was more time to think and daydream (and be bored) then. Probably because you didn't have a tv in your pocket and, even if you did, there was often really nothing to watch.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >But in the past we had plenty of crises and yet we used to spend our downtime shooting the shit, going around in circles, with stupid and bland people just like ourselve Past people were much more involved in societal change and day to day history than we are.
  - enkid 6y ago
    You can't make a broad statement like that. In most places, for most times, people have been pretty passive. The mass of people being involved is the exception, not the rule, and even then, it normally was not a majority, but a local minority that acted at the right time that changed things.
    - 411111111111111 6y ago
      I think both statements can be true. It's just when there are only two hundred people around, each voice has more influence then even an enthusiastic politician nowadays. So just by living like we do today with having opinions and voicing them you've already influenced your society back then. If you do the same today, nothing would've changed.
Ygg2 6y ago
Psychoanalytic is as discredited as theory can get. It might as well as deriving particle theory from of Aristotle four base elements. Plus the article is riddled with sentences like "telos of the clickbait economy is fascist kitsch." It's just empty claptrap, that could have been written in half as many words, if the writer wasn't trying to be as pretentious.
- coldtea 6y ago
  "Psychoanalytic is as discredited as theory can get" - you'd be surprised. People saying such have in mind some caricature of 19th century Freudian analysis. >Plus the article is riddled with sentences like "telos of the clickbait economy is fascist kitsch." Which basically means "the final state the clickbait economy moves forward as its inherent tendency is fascist kitsch". >It's just empty claptrap, that could have been written in half as many words, if the writer wasn't trying to be as pretentious. In other words, if we talked down to his audience, assuming them to being half-illiterate Joe Sixpacks.
  - Ygg2 6y ago
    > People saying such have in mind some caricature of 19th century Freudian analysis Article mentions Freud's desire for death. Freud theory is bunk. It's unprovable, can't be verified, useless and outdated model. If psychology as a whole has a replication issue. Freud psychoanalytics has a deeply existential issue. > Which basically means "the final state the clickbait economy moves forward as its inherent tendency is fascist kitsch". I know what it means. In the end you didn't explain much, just explained what telos is. Let me help - Clickbait economy is a rage generator. > other words, if we talked down to his audience, assuming them to being half-illiterate Joe Sixpacks. I read my fair share of philosophers, I understand what he's trying to say. However it's all been said better and more eloquently by CCP Grey in his video on memes. https://youtu.be/rE3j_RHkqJc https://youtu.be/rE3j_RHkqJc Any halfwit, pompous, rudderless, telos lacking humanities reject could have written, a long, detalied, baroque word salad if the whippersnapper in question was so inclined - much like this sentence. Real artistry isn't saying as much as you can, but saying as much as you can in as few and understandable words. To quote a poet "Brevity is the soul of wit".
tremon 6y ago
And correct: the telos of the clickbait economy is fascist kitsch I'm not sure how to parse this. What does it mean for something to have kitsch as its ultimate aim, or for an economy to have an aim? I think I understand what the author is getting at, which is that exciting the lizard brain in humans is easy to do by creating artificial fears and enemies, and that it takes very little effort to construct this "art". But "telos" specifically doesn't mean "a means", it means "purposeful aim". And I don't think kitsch is the aim. If anything, the aim of the clickbait economy seems to simply be to displace all other economies, which is a rather trite statement in itself. On the other hand, maybe the author was simply looking for a high-brow synonym for "product" and missed the mark? It's like saying "the telos of the pottery industry is kitchenware". No it isn't: the telos of the industry is to safely store long-term goods.
- SuoDuanDao 6y ago
  I think 'kitsch' was used to imply that the products of the clickbait economy trend towards the trivial. Kitsch is not just product, it is cheaply produced product whose value quickly fades; I think it's a fair critique.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Kitsch and fascism have been linked for quite some time. Fro Dwight MacDonald's "A Theory of Mass Culture" (1953): When to this ease of consumption is added kitsch's ease of production because of its standardized nature, its prolific growth is easy to understand. It threatens High Culture by its sheer pervasiveness, its brutal, overwhelming quantity. The upper classes, who begin by using it to make money from the crude tastes of the masses and to dominate them politically, end by finding their own culture attacked and even threatened with destruction by the instrument they have thoughtlessly employed. (The same irony may be observed in modern politics, where most swords seem to have two edges; thus Nazism began as a tool of the big bourgeoisie and the army Junkers but ended by using them as its tools.) https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/jaro2008/ESB032/um/5136660/MacDonald_-_A_Theory_of_Mass_Culture.pdf https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/jaro2008/ESB032/um/5136660/MacDon... (The link is stronger than evident in this passage though most of the connections are more verbose than merits quoting here.)
chrisweekly 6y ago
See also Tristan Harris, and the new Netflix film "The Social Dilemma"
bvanderveen 6y ago
If the subject matter interests you, just head straight for Bataille. If reading is too hard, you can also watch Žižek. The navel-gazing children of the handset writing about social media in the 21st century are not to be trusted, in my estimation.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
krrishd 6y ago
ejected myself from a twitter addiction just a few months ago and this resonated. i think people read the “zombie” comparison as metaphor; IME, it’s pretty literally accurate. the realization that snapped me out of it cold turkey was that my twitter “self” —- cultivated outside of my body, for an environment of pure text —- had accumulated far more status, meaning, friendship, etc than my physical self possibly could; and why wouldn’t it? the internet has no friction in comparison. so that weird external GPT-3-esque “self” quite literally reached primacy within me, with a huge margin over the original one unlucky enough to be constrained by physical reality & trained via physical human interaction: and as a result i was genuinely zombie-like for a while. perpetually a disoriented visitor to physical reality, to the people actually around me — only at home in text. and it was probably clear to anyone who knew me in person well. maybe annoyingly mystical for HN’s taste, but when this clicked for me, it felt like discovering i’d been possessed by a demon.
- Viliam1234 6y ago
  yeah, my facebook self also has lots of friends and active social life, I barely have any. before I kill him, I wonder whether there are some useful lessons I could learn from him.
Angeo34 6y ago
I thought it was already established that Freud's teachings were among the dumbest shit in human history. If he was Nigerian instead of Central European people would have probably burned him alive for insanity.

75 points by axiomdata316 6y ago

polishdude20 6y ago

I liked this :)

quickthrower2 6y ago

With a name like Max Read there is only one calling!

082349872349872 6y ago

> "online celebrity is only ever 240 characters away from online infamy" Horace, about 2'000 years ago, suggests a (long to modern eyes) embargo[1]: > "You will have it in your power to blot out what you have not made public: a word once sent abroad can never return." cautions against seeking internet points from astroturfers[2]: > "As those who mourn at funerals for pay, do and say more than those that are afflicted from their hearts; so the sham admirer is more moved than he that praises with sincerity." and even agrees with TFA's psychoanalytic reading[3]: > "And whomsoever [a mad poet] seizes, he fastens on and assassinates with recitation: a leech that will not quit the skin, till satiated with blood." [1] http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0065%3Acard%3D347 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%... [2] http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0065%3Acard%3D419 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%... [3] http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0065%3Acard%3D453 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%... Amusingly, footnote 3 in the perseus text is a rosetta stone for the scholar's leisurely manner of saying "like and subscribe": "I must beg to recommend to the reader's notice my translation of Aristotle's Poetics, with a collection of notes, as the two treatises contribute to each other's illustration in the fullest extent." Bonus tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKftOH54iNU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKftOH54iNU

Real_S 6y ago
From [3] >I shall wonder if with his wealth he can distinguish a true friend from a false one The state of social media?! A thousand "followers" but none that can be called on in times of need.
- ses1984 6y ago
  Gofundme?
- trhway 6y ago
  >A thousand "followers" but none that can be called on in times of need. in the attention economy the followers aren't friends, they are consumers.

ycombinete 6y ago

I was hoping, from the name, that Book Forum would have a web forum.

discreteevent 6y ago

"That we want to waste our time. That, however much we might complain, we find satisfaction in endless, circular argument." "But political and economic and immunological crises pile on one another in succession, over the background roar of ecological collapse. Time is not infinite. None of us can afford to spend what is left of it dallying with the stupid and bland." But in the past we had plenty of crises and yet we used to spend our downtime shooting the shit, going around in circles, with stupid and bland people just like ourselves (there's not many geniuses in any particular locality, and they usually aren't the ones shooting the shit, just as they don't now). At least it was face to face, I suppose. And at least you could go home and leave them behind to watch tv! Edit: I will admit that there was more time to think and daydream (and be bored) then. Probably because you didn't have a tv in your pocket and, even if you did, there was often really nothing to watch.

coldtea 6y ago
>But in the past we had plenty of crises and yet we used to spend our downtime shooting the shit, going around in circles, with stupid and bland people just like ourselve Past people were much more involved in societal change and day to day history than we are.
- enkid 6y ago
  You can't make a broad statement like that. In most places, for most times, people have been pretty passive. The mass of people being involved is the exception, not the rule, and even then, it normally was not a majority, but a local minority that acted at the right time that changed things.
  - 411111111111111 6y ago
    I think both statements can be true. It's just when there are only two hundred people around, each voice has more influence then even an enthusiastic politician nowadays. So just by living like we do today with having opinions and voicing them you've already influenced your society back then. If you do the same today, nothing would've changed.

Ygg2 6y ago

Psychoanalytic is as discredited as theory can get. It might as well as deriving particle theory from of Aristotle four base elements. Plus the article is riddled with sentences like "telos of the clickbait economy is fascist kitsch." It's just empty claptrap, that could have been written in half as many words, if the writer wasn't trying to be as pretentious.

coldtea 6y ago
"Psychoanalytic is as discredited as theory can get" - you'd be surprised. People saying such have in mind some caricature of 19th century Freudian analysis. >Plus the article is riddled with sentences like "telos of the clickbait economy is fascist kitsch." Which basically means "the final state the clickbait economy moves forward as its inherent tendency is fascist kitsch". >It's just empty claptrap, that could have been written in half as many words, if the writer wasn't trying to be as pretentious. In other words, if we talked down to his audience, assuming them to being half-illiterate Joe Sixpacks.
- Ygg2 6y ago
  > People saying such have in mind some caricature of 19th century Freudian analysis Article mentions Freud's desire for death. Freud theory is bunk. It's unprovable, can't be verified, useless and outdated model. If psychology as a whole has a replication issue. Freud psychoanalytics has a deeply existential issue. > Which basically means "the final state the clickbait economy moves forward as its inherent tendency is fascist kitsch". I know what it means. In the end you didn't explain much, just explained what telos is. Let me help - Clickbait economy is a rage generator. > other words, if we talked down to his audience, assuming them to being half-illiterate Joe Sixpacks. I read my fair share of philosophers, I understand what he's trying to say. However it's all been said better and more eloquently by CCP Grey in his video on memes. https://youtu.be/rE3j_RHkqJc https://youtu.be/rE3j_RHkqJc Any halfwit, pompous, rudderless, telos lacking humanities reject could have written, a long, detalied, baroque word salad if the whippersnapper in question was so inclined - much like this sentence. Real artistry isn't saying as much as you can, but saying as much as you can in as few and understandable words. To quote a poet "Brevity is the soul of wit".

tremon 6y ago

And correct: the telos of the clickbait economy is fascist kitsch I'm not sure how to parse this. What does it mean for something to have kitsch as its ultimate aim, or for an economy to have an aim? I think I understand what the author is getting at, which is that exciting the lizard brain in humans is easy to do by creating artificial fears and enemies, and that it takes very little effort to construct this "art". But "telos" specifically doesn't mean "a means", it means "purposeful aim". And I don't think kitsch is the aim. If anything, the aim of the clickbait economy seems to simply be to displace all other economies, which is a rather trite statement in itself. On the other hand, maybe the author was simply looking for a high-brow synonym for "product" and missed the mark? It's like saying "the telos of the pottery industry is kitchenware". No it isn't: the telos of the industry is to safely store long-term goods.

SuoDuanDao 6y ago
I think 'kitsch' was used to imply that the products of the clickbait economy trend towards the trivial. Kitsch is not just product, it is cheaply produced product whose value quickly fades; I think it's a fair critique.
dredmorbius 6y ago
Kitsch and fascism have been linked for quite some time. Fro Dwight MacDonald's "A Theory of Mass Culture" (1953): When to this ease of consumption is added kitsch's ease of production because of its standardized nature, its prolific growth is easy to understand. It threatens High Culture by its sheer pervasiveness, its brutal, overwhelming quantity. The upper classes, who begin by using it to make money from the crude tastes of the masses and to dominate them politically, end by finding their own culture attacked and even threatened with destruction by the instrument they have thoughtlessly employed. (The same irony may be observed in modern politics, where most swords seem to have two edges; thus Nazism began as a tool of the big bourgeoisie and the army Junkers but ended by using them as its tools.) https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/jaro2008/ESB032/um/5136660/MacDonald_-_A_Theory_of_Mass_Culture.pdf https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/jaro2008/ESB032/um/5136660/MacDon... (The link is stronger than evident in this passage though most of the connections are more verbose than merits quoting here.)

chrisweekly 6y ago

See also Tristan Harris, and the new Netflix film "The Social Dilemma"

bvanderveen 6y ago

If the subject matter interests you, just head straight for Bataille. If reading is too hard, you can also watch Žižek. The navel-gazing children of the handset writing about social media in the 21st century are not to be trusted, in my estimation.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

krrishd 6y ago

ejected myself from a twitter addiction just a few months ago and this resonated. i think people read the “zombie” comparison as metaphor; IME, it’s pretty literally accurate. the realization that snapped me out of it cold turkey was that my twitter “self” —- cultivated outside of my body, for an environment of pure text —- had accumulated far more status, meaning, friendship, etc than my physical self possibly could; and why wouldn’t it? the internet has no friction in comparison. so that weird external GPT-3-esque “self” quite literally reached primacy within me, with a huge margin over the original one unlucky enough to be constrained by physical reality & trained via physical human interaction: and as a result i was genuinely zombie-like for a while. perpetually a disoriented visitor to physical reality, to the people actually around me — only at home in text. and it was probably clear to anyone who knew me in person well. maybe annoyingly mystical for HN’s taste, but when this clicked for me, it felt like discovering i’d been possessed by a demon.

Viliam1234 6y ago
yeah, my facebook self also has lots of friends and active social life, I barely have any. before I kill him, I wonder whether there are some useful lessons I could learn from him.

Angeo34 6y ago

I thought it was already established that Freud's teachings were among the dumbest shit in human history. If he was Nigerian instead of Central European people would have probably burned him alive for insanity.