Why Does ‘Doing it for the Culture’ Feel Endless?
Before everyone starts demanding that their internet timeline goes back to the way it was before, what was 'before' even like? Why does modern culture feel increasingly unstable or sometimes excessive? Why does the internet feel so endless? Who is determining Culture?
As I’m writing this I feel an uncomfortable tension between black lives matter activists hoping allies and other voices do not ‘burn out’ or forget what has been accomplished by the shift in focus; and at the same time I sense that a lot of ‘black square care bears’ are desperate for the focus to shift back to the way it was, when everything was normal. But what was normal? I know I was doing it for the culture, but my selfies from back then, even if they look good, they feel different now… One can’t help but wonder what we all used to be so caught up in before active political reformation.
So let’s have a look.
Excess was and still is the culture of 2020. Media saturation, take downs, captions with problematic consequences and sponsorship branding was the tapestry of the infinite scroll. 2020 has more than most years uniquely operated outside of spatial and temporal time, both online and due to global lock-down measures being enforced thanks to the Corona-virus.
Before activism and political accountability took hold of the function of many social media apps, maybe you were not so proud or fulfilled by your algorithmic identity(cue Childish Gambino)? Did you feel a cringe or, at worse, did you feel the ghost of a corporation’s hand manipulating you into re-swiping your Instagram feed; perhaps the instability of the blue spiral felt a little bit too much?
To quote Colin Campbell perhaps this feeling comes from ‘an insatiability which arises out of a basic inexhaustibly of wants themselves’. Our wants from social media are many, varied, moody and contentious, so of course our time can feel wasteful and our attention to it excessive. Activism has for a time streamlined those wants, but it can’t forever.
With a steady supply of content, creating the perfect critical attachment to the content you consume, is like Ahab searching for that whale in Moby Dick. And to keep my allegories sea-faring, perhaps avoiding the swallow of time is like Captain Hook avoiding and the ever-ticking crocodile. Which is to say that most people at this stage, whether in their twenties or fifties have given significant parts of themselves to the internet, as observers and users. Our lives are in the bellies of sea creatures, so how on earth do we continue to navigate the endless sea?
This may sound melodramatic.
For the most part the internet is just hedonistic: a harmless self indulgence. Sure it’s inherently a little performative or mis-representative of the self, but even if re-posting, profile updates, re-blogs and shout outs come from a place of insecurity it leads to genuine pleasure. If my hedonism looks this good should I even be concerned? And if you view how you curate your page, thoughts and posts as art practice in a digital medium, the internet can feel historical, for your personal history, even if it feels abstract and non-robust in execution. The disorder of what I view, the other personal histories happening in ‘real’ time, the new geographies at new angles, can feel luxurious, especially when I am lying in bed and doing nothing. I can consume everything, I am being empowered, enriched, improved upon by being so close to everything. Right?
This feeling makes sense because consumption is the Gucci saddlebag of modernity.
Modernity is also responsible for the production of new content, and in 2020 the content creation margins are even more intimate. It’s not a network executive green-lighting your entertainment, it’s the girl you went to school with making a tiktok, it’s your best friend’s cousin coining new slang in a viral video. Its memories of what you even posted a year ago, looking intellectual and or attractive in a café in London. There are no ‘globally dis-articulated production-consumption relationships’. There is no core-periphery of content being shipped in, ideas being shipped out. While traditional industrialization of consumer goods has followed those two models, online consumer media is produced cyclically, like a circle. There is no unequal geopolitical division of labor on the internet, whoever has a WiFi-connection can contribute to the culture.
Maybe this is why it feels so endless?
In fact even if you take a look at industrial modernity, in the West, tangible products such as cars, furniture, are being replaced by communicative ‘informational capitalism’: ‘materially unproductive services have become the largest, fastest growing sector of Western economies.’
How sway, did anyone see this coming? Well, maybe the Romantics.
The circular sovereignty of the self, culture and individuals creating themselves endlessly online, brings to mind this idea that Colin Campbell described in 1987: ‘the key role played by consumption in driving the development of capitalism as well as forming particular types of subjectivity based around the quest for self-fulfillment, authenticity and pleasure… can be described loosely as the ‘Romantic tradition’, in which the manipulation of commodities is conceived as a creative practice with a crucial role in the realization of self-hood. This perspective is particularly relevant in terms of the historical shift to neo-liberalism, in which sovereign individuals use consumption to create what Anthony Giddens (1991) describes as ‘a narrative of the self.’
I think 2020 will continue to show how individuals ‘circumvent established channels of distribution’, both as the producer and the consumer. But how do we retain a feeling of self-control? Sometimes it seems like even indie brands over-post and produce more content because they are scared consumers will forget them. Sometimes it feels like leaving socials and reducing your consumption will take you too far ‘out of the loop’, even if the loop feels like it’s too much.
Ultimately the idea of self-realization through commodity exchange is a powerful cultural narrative, whether it comes from me purchasing from a specific brand or consuming virtue signals or aligning myself so much with a brand that I am eligible giveaway exclusives. The commodity exchange, even, of a golden hour selfie for 400 people is a powerful cultural narrative, and it feels good. If I look this good my identity can never really be eroded, only built upon, who I am is tangible and filtered golden baby, if 2020 is the age of informational capitalism then I look valuable. I can commodify myself, and man it looks good. My understanding of myself that I create offline and online could be potentially branded, and to quote Lindsay Ellis ‘what is brand can never die.’
I can’t speak for content producers, but I would say that the struggles around controlling consumption can articulate wider concerns around issues of desire, excess, impulse and reason as well as freedom and responsibility. Sometimes it feels like I curtail my consumption because it feels like my phone is judging me. Or Google. Or whichever parent conglomerate monitors my usage. Or whichever FBI or I suppose MI6 agent may decide to dip through my usage. Or the shame of ever having to explain my consumption habits to ‘the culture at large’: the friends and ‘influencers’ that reinforce my subjectivity.
This idea may seem dramatic, but Michel Foucault did write extensively in the 1960’s and 70’s about how the state is able to govern ‘at a distance’, without actually governing society itself, by determining the limits of reason for individuals and through shaping the subjectivities of autonomous individuals. We then, the twitter trigger fingers, about to keep scrolling on tumblr users, conveniently, undertake the task of self-control ourselves. Such an orientation is an aspect of what Foucault describes as ‘governmentality’. An important question I have to ask myself is who forms my sense of governmentality now, in which I, the modern subject, ‘assume responsibility for the constraints of power . . .[they]become the principle of [their] own subjection’ (1977 , 202). Further, Mariana Valverde in 1997 described this as ‘the move from ‘act’ to ‘identity’- based governance, where individuals are governed not so much through what they do, but rather through who they are.’
So what does this all mean in the endless sea? The culture of 2020 when looking back may have been a sort of Bermuda meets Foucault triangle, with internet culture stuck between the three destinations of tech-company power, pout ‘influencers’/trolls and morally superior off-the-grid-never-looked-at-an-email types.
But I would say that the destinations of cultural power will appear and roll away in succession, and the moral subjectivities of the individual will always change; the sea is never calm and neither is culture. What you see is not as given. Consumer sovereignty starts and ends with you, so how do you see what you see?
Again what you see is not as given. I would encourage you to consume online content with a heart of humor and a sense of longevity.
I would say have some comical fun distance to the internet because it keeps you light, really heavy anchors are no good for long journeys into the unknown. Having a sense of humor can also encourage a participatory critique of what you consume. And when you cannot reimagine what you see as given with lightness, when the subject is too heavy, then reach out to those who can bear the load with you, get real hands on deck.
The subjectivity of culture, as it is presented to you at this point in time, does not have to be your normality.
Anchor down in good bays of media and information, while retaining a sense of longevity and time, pause before the re-blog, sit with the caption, like I mentioned before so much of our time sits in the bellies of regret, whales, nostalgia and crocodiles. Re-determine the value of what you spend time on, and maybe your reactions will feel more fulfilling than sensational. Maybe sector the internet into North, East, South and West. North is good political causes and activism, East is comedy and joy. South is inspiration for the insecruities you want to improve in your life. West is your space to shine. Journey accordingly. And hopefully you will see what you want to be given on your timeline.
Time means nothing anymore, see what you see in the context of your own time, and then you’ll know where all that time went when you were out here doing it for the culture.
My final salute to all that 2020 will bring is part of this poem by Li-Young Lee, titled In The City In Which I Love You: ‘noisy with telegrams not received, quarrelsome with aliases, intricate with misguided journeys, by my many expulsions have I come to love you’.
My deepest thanks to Gerda Reith’s super enlightening book ‘Additive Consumption, Capitalism, Modernity and Excess’ for making me feel seen, which you can access here.
