Curating Desire

A generation defined by emulation and role modeling

I’m not a fan of the word “content.” The etymology is a peculiar one, considering the word appeared around the transition towards the digital age and when the global corporations started to rule over our daily lives. I have explained before that “dark data” is against the concept of “content,” and that if artists and intellects were to reclaim agency again, they must have self-ownership, and thus control over their property.

I’m not an anarcho-capitalist. What we give to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Bandcamp, whether that may be a few written words, a video, or a song we made, we give up our information to the elites. Facebook and Instagram are private platforms not open to the public, and we need an account to access the data it hosts. This paradox means that the public needs an online account to sign up and view the data. Perfect, considering, we are phished, in process.

Director John Waters stresses the need that the artist needs to reclaim their property, instead of “giving it away for free” to the big corporations. Our entire generation needs “platforms” to communicate. These trends go in and out, from Myspace in 2007, to Snapchat in 2013. All gone after the fad is over. What remains is a monopoly on the subjects, interests, and “social connections” to make it as an artist.

There is no denying that Jeff Bezos owns the publishing industry through Amazon and Kindle Direct Publishing. There is no need for supplies like Barnes & Noble, or publishing companies like Simon & Schuster, as Bezos gives the average citizen power to self-publish their work, and as well buy books through Amazon at a cheaper price than on retail. However, this means we give up the right of our means of production, as we rely on a “big brother” to do everything for us. The “rent economy” is replacing ownership, and accelerating state-driven post-scarcity. But it comes at a cost we must give up our freedom.

Realize that the millennial generation, and Generation Z, don’t take any of these mega-platforms seriously. No tools or technology advocates that there is intrinsic value to our digital existence, and instead, it is replaced by a pessimistic, plural-pronoun identity politics based upon liberal nihilism (and that’s not even about the virtues of classical nihilism).

We are ultimately, commodified.

To survive in this global capitalist society, we must whore ourselves as the product. We are not just the consumer rats running on the wheels, but the scientists hired to create the wheels. Capitalism, in the digital age, is a B.F. Skinner box, where we participate as the subject and as the examiner.

Commodification in this regard is the same thing as a sexual awakening, where one naturally whores (and “presents”) themselves on the market to become self-actualized. This might take the form, in petite bourgeois language, of becoming an "adult" or taking on “the real world.” Men and women are seen as the same, but neoliberal capitalism tilts towards the feminine. Sexual politics becomes skewed. We all become supply, and demand is as vague and ambiguous as blank slate egalitarianism.

The woman is the supply, and she is desired. The man is the demand, and he has desires. But suppose the man gives up on his desires and wants to become desired? He must become a supply, and thus capital. Desires, translated as consumer “preferences” are negated by liberalism, as the ideology fears difference and prejudice. It is okay with trends, memes, and fashion, as these things only last a decade or for a living zeitgeist. It’s all replaceable, and replacement is a good thing for those in power. Internet pages can be taken down, Twitter accounts deleted, and valuable data is wiped off the internet.

If you are looking for the highly controversial and racist dubs by Cjuvenile117, too bad. The videos have been erased from the internet. When addressed, he might say he has the “right to be forgotten” or that he has “changed.” The system loves this kind of historical erasure and mental re-correction. Not only does it have to do with deliberate revisionism and the erasing of significant resources, but it’s also an enforcement of the liberal regime while treating people like replaceable cogs if the machine breaks down. They want us alienated and isolated.

We have the Internet Archive to document and trace eccentric resources and data. But one day, they will be after the Internet Archive too. Whoever controls the platform, controls the message.

This generation is defined by its obsession with curating desires. When you look at obsolete platforms like Tumblr, they were once used to socially control and incite envy within the petite bourgeois. They “liked,” “retweeted,” and “saved” the pictures as their desires. When addressing the importance of this desired market, they say “It’s only just a website. Who cares? I want to express myself!” All perfectly planned to the ideology of “social media.” When Facebook loses the next generation, it will “express” itself on other like-minded platforms.

Even the idea of being a “DJ” today is about juke-boxing the subjective preferences of the individual, in hopes the consumer desires the same thing. Expression alone is not authentic or original, but an emulation of what other people desire, following a vicious cycle of René Girard scapegoating. Users on Pinterest share curated art and “content,” and measure who has the better collection. Subculture is merely a collection of these curated experiences and pictures, tied together in a red ribbon of ideology. It is that each subculture, from “goth” to “cyberpunk,” with its unique curated collection of aesthetics and art, also has its ideologies.

Just like the DJ, if one wants to hear hardcore gabber, the individual is mean and aggressive, and if the DJ plays only Taylor Swift, the individual is sensitive and ditzy. Both contrast, of course. Yet liberalism will find a way to create an egalitarian ideology that infiltrates the text, and synthesizes (and watered down) the stupid with the smart, such as Swift being played along with gabber music. Capitalism, by default, and the system of curating desire, has the principle basis of liberalism and egalitarianism. In other words, the political philosophy itself is rotten to the core. Two opposing parties must be forced to get along under one roof, at gunpoint. Everything lowers in moral standards and intellect to coddle the stupid. We have the resentful equity state.

Subculture is a collection of signs, symbols, manners, thoughts, and fashion statements that make up a unifying and ever-subjective aesthetic we so subscribe to. My research discovered that the aesthetics of the “Unpop” movement can be used to create an entirely new subculture out of it. We have the power to pick and choose what we like, and in libertarian interest, for good or worse, pick a side. Even race realism tends to argue that it's all about ownership, falling into the deathtrap of consumer culture capitalism.

There is clear evidence that this kind of desire is linked with vivid and selective sexuality. If there is self-actualization by becoming a commodified product, there is also the root of “adulthood” under neoliberal capitalism, that there is also self-actualization of desire, where sexuality is the innate and biological process of acting upon it. Sexuality coincides with identity politics. The person who desires, and the ideology of desire, is as important as the commodification itself. There is an ideological bias in preference. Examples include being a “whitesexual,” which attracts the interests of the petite bourgeois ideology of whiteness, and the “asiansexual,” which attracts the interest of the “submissive” and “the other,” as the word “Asian” and “Asianness” implies. The two have irreconcilable differences. Even though both sexualities fall for each other, the ideologies contrast back to the rotten core of liberalism. Liberalism hates these authentic differences. The liberal sees itself as a perfect guardian, a paternal force that could do nothing wrong, and insists the only fault of liberalism comes from the guardian itself.

There are two major causes of suicide. The first is consensual, where the individual commits suicide to leave life. The second is based on shame. It is through shame, ridicule, and punishment that the individual commits suicide to correct themselves. Society brainwashes, gaslights, and proselytizes the opponent that they are “problematic” and cannot exist within the space of liberalism. A woman who is an open “whitesexual” must erase herself from the system, because liberalism finds her presence of difference completely at odds with liberalism and commodification. Even so, any advocation of the “white” lifestyle means accepting a desire that is ideologically beyond liberalism. And that too, an “Asian” lifestyle is the objective truth and result of the technological society that curates desire.

Rebranding is a way to undergo such change that the system won’t push suicide upon its opponents. Instead of being too sincere about being a “white nationalist,” one may prefer a preference around a “middle-class fancy” subculture. Like anything from Christian Lander’s Stuff White People Like, the whitesexual urge is advocated as a paradox loop. The same could be said about having an interest in anime and video games, as both hobbies create a paradoxical loop around being a sincere Asiansexual. Eventually, these ignored realities will face the truth, and become sincere in time again.

As the artist or intellect, we say nothing when we curate desire. Young people, from their teenage years to their late twenties, learn to curate and actualize themselves as the product. Some never grow out of this cycle of curation. They learn to produce without reason and give their life’s work to a soulless machine that enforces our prison. Idolatry is the sin that drives social media.

A man is truly free when he acts as the unit of production, and not only learns about self-ownership, but becomes the monk, the priest, the professor, the father, or the one who is desired, without shame from the modern world. To simply act as the role model than to emulate it, is liberating. But the conundrum presents itself here, how does one become a model if there is nothing to emulate? Man can only learn through trial-and-error mistakes, reading books, practice, experience, effort, relationships, and aging.

I acknowledge my prison sentence through the internet and its false connection with fictional pen pals whom I will never meet in person. I am writing digital letters in space, and whoever reads them, I say, “caveat emptor!”

I produce because I don’t exist. I am the curated desire and product. It’s a matter that you, dear reader, should proclaim agency over your production of data. We do not exist, as we are still running this wheel for everyone else.

What if I told you, that you could step outside of it?

…The next article you should read is “‘Asian’ as a Social Construct.” Please click on this link to read it.

-pe

5-9-2023