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To be fair, the new year's countdown is a simulacrum (Baudrillard) of a moment to begin with. It's the perfect example of a meme without real substance. So peop
by arketyp 3y ago
To be fair, the new year's countdown is a simulacrum (Baudrillard) of a moment to begin with. It's the perfect example of a meme without real substance. So people want to save this (hyperreal) moment, share it, fill it with meaning. That's not entirely sad.
Consider the reverse. People just standing there staring at a countdown? It would not be hard to travesty that either.
- episteme 3y agoI don't know about you but every crowd I've ever known would be chanting down together until midnight and then cheering at the fireworks, not sure where the travesty would be.
- arketyp 3y agoI sketched an example and you countered it. That was my point, about not choosing the cynical perspective.
- thinkingemote 3y agoPeople don't actually save it, or share it, or fill it with meaning by using their phones but they think that's what doing it with their phones is doing. After the moment the content is not looked at. It's a thing to do not to be reviewed. It's recording to not record. It's a way of participation in the world, a mediation of reality. In some way it's a kind of play acting of what a hyper connected human should do in the moment when confronted with something unusual. A cyborg activity. Or it's just because everyone else is doing it!
- arketyp 3y agoYes, it's performativity. I think going to the Champs-Élysées for the countdown is too. Not anything wrong with it, necessarily.