It’s an O/T post that is the product of my morning spent catching up on some news and accidentally running into a couple of sensational stories. Maybe I will write a market post later. Like maybe something on gold stocks, gold bugs interwoven with some psychology, which is always fun for me. Or maybe I’ll write about the actual – as opposed to widely promoted – fundamentals for gold stocks.
But for this morning…
I went to the NY Post to see if there were any new items on the Rangers and was served a story about the mentally ill Brittany Spears’ tragic conservatorship enslavement by her abusive father. This kid was a victim of and emblem of the spectacle from the moment she first appeared on stage. A young girl, sexualized, singing bad songs for other young girls and probably a lot of perverts.
Then I go to CNBC to check the market headlines (not to take them seriously, but for indications, often contrary) and there is another manifestation of this fucked up society, John McAfee, dead of apparent suicide in a Spanish jail after allegedly evading taxation from making millions pumping and dumping some Shitcoin and selling his ‘story’ to a documentary.
Those who see Commies around every corner may immediately discount the following as Marxist ranting. It is our right in America, after all, to produce and ogle Brittany Spears as a child star and later be fascinated by her as a mentally ill tabloid figure. Or John McAfee, creator of some old fashioned security software a long time ago, and apparent seeker of publicity – good or bad – ever since.
Guy Debord:
All life in societies where modern conditions of production reign announces itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that was directly lived has moved away into representation.
Film here…
Now, I am no Marxist and I am no revolutionary. I am just a blog writer and market service manager. But since before I ever became aware of the Situationist International in 1988 or 9 I have known that this society is 90% cartoon (including legions of conspiracy theorists who think they are onto the truth) and maybe 10% something real. Felt it in me bones. It’s not real.
I mostly ignore things for the sake of trying to remain mentally clear and sound. For example I did not know Spears’ story other than she (along with scores of others) was something I avoided as the concept of Brittany Spears was a creation of a media machine, was an affront to actual art and the human behind the image was just the vehicle.
McAfee? Boring software, second rate media personality, but there was that sensational thing where he made a bet on something, with his dick hanging (so to speak) in the balance. I don’t recall the tawdry details, but it came to me by way of Twitter or some other noise factory.
Why do I make fun of this cartoon (usually in the context of the Fed and political policymakers) with images from the Outer Limits, the Twilight Zone, The Wizard of Oz and the 3 Stooges? Well I guess this is close to the mark…
A détournement is a technique developed in the 1950s by the Letterist International,[7][8] and consist in “turning expressions of the capitalist system against itself,”[67] like turning slogans and logos against the advertisers or the political status quo.[68] Détournement was prominently used to set up subversive political pranks, an influential tactic called situationist prank that was reprised by the punk movement in the late 1970s[69] and inspired the culture jamming movement in the late 1980s.[67]
