the memeing of mark fisher
z
SKUNK WORKS
The Memeing of Mark Fisher
2021
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“If, then, something like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
is a pathology, it is a pathology of late capitalism.”
MF/CR
“The pictorial jokes which fill the magazines are for the
most part pointless, empty of meaning. What such pictures act
out, in anticipation of their completion by the well-versed
observer, is the throwing of all meaning overboard like
ballast in the snapshot of the situation, in the unresisting
subjugation to the empty hegemony of things.”
TWA, Minima Moralia
x
My Idols are Shadowbanned
and My Enemies are Monetizing Content
Plato argued that citizens should neither engage in comedy,
nor be the target of it.
I can only assume that Mark Fisher would have hated our
memes.
He doesn’t strike me as the kind-of man that enjoys jokes,
anyways. I daydream about him laughing like Rex Banner
at the podium and it seems like the most likely scenario.
2015 doesn’t feel like a long time ago – a short six years –
where Mark was individually removing each member of
his ‘Boring Dystopia’ Facebook page as it slowly became
over-run with people like us. His vision of vending ma-
chines and CCTV cameras was supposed to be a portfolio
without conversation. He was stuck in an Adbusters loop of
recycling material to show the horrors of contemporary life
while participating in it. This terrain resembles a pastiche of
subversion that looks more like mall-bought Che Guevara
t-shirts than the hard critique it was intended to portray.
He was distraught by the sight of out-of-service ATMs and
their “aesthetic consequences.” He had no time for whatever
clever comment one might post, whereas he had more than
enough time to individually remove 3000 members/fans
from his group.
Mark didn’t think it was a laughing matter.
In the same year, Mark also stated his assumption that
social media would collapse into itself – even stating that
Facebook would die in a similar manner to its predecessor,
Myspace, by 2018. Instead, Facebook is the 34th largest
corporation in the US by revenue and Mark Zuckerberg is
worth a cool 131.8 billion.
He wasn’t entirely wrong in his prophecies, however. His
statement that “[…] people will find a way to make the
internet useful again” would reveal itself to be true and he
would have hated it even more.
Social media is still flooded with the same photographs of
mimosas at brunch, absolutely – but there are just as many
infographics to tell you why you’re being problematic when
you share those images.
The mid-2020 rise of infographics provided a useful way to
appease and condescend. It oversimplified things as ‘good’
or ‘bad’ in a manner that drew as much contempt as it did
applause. Simultaneously, the rhizomatic appeal of
‘philosophy irony’ posting began to dominate the
memescape from the other side.
I’m deviating slightly from my point, but bear with me.
In general, people tend to dislike being critiqued in any
fashion. They hate being the butt of a joke and they hate
not being part of what appears to be an elaborate ‘inside
joke.’ This is not a philosophical or cultural problem.
Human nature has decided that we’re social animals, and
the fear of mockery exists inertly in us all – whether it
occurs face-to-face or on the plane of cyberspace.
Whether it’s an infographic explaining the cultural
appropriation of your favorite meal or a meme declaring
Fanged Noumena readers fascist, there is a “good” and
“bad” immediacy to this style of content.
Mark would have hated seeing himself as a wojak. He
would have hated the thought of someone fucking on the
Capitalist Realism bed tonight. He would have hated
everything our ‘little community’ has done to promote him
and his book. He would think that we’re making fun of
him.
Maybe we are sometimes. Maybe we’re also making fun of
ourselves. It’s hard to be sure.
We live in an era where we demand explanations so we can
classify things as, yes – good or bad. There is a large market
for those who wish to explain what happens online to those
who are simply out of the loop. More often than not, the
academic approach misses the mark by overintellectualizing
these mostly inconsequential images.
I know this is a fact because I’ve created enough of the
aforementioned memes to know that there is no higher
meaning.
The purpose of shitposting at large is to make someone
laugh or to make someone mad: a successful post does both
at the same time.
The uninitiated might refer to the act of shitposting as
being a cynical “race to the bottom,” but one might argue
that this is the more pessimistic outlook than the one it
describes. Shitposting has gotten people more interested in
reading Deleuze, Foucault, and Bataille than any marketing
campaign could have ever done. The subversive act of
posting a ‘body without organs’ joke ensures a future
reading of Anti-Oedipus by an unaware but nevertheless
eager reader.
I would be bold enough to claim that the sight of so many
Capitalist Realism memes have led to a younger generation
discovering the book and, for fear of being ‘left out,’ read it.
They quickly find it a somber companion to the many jokes
they’ve seen on the timeline, but at least they have read the
source material.
The surge of Capitalist Realism memes accidentally created
a nice community where people eagerly reposted each
other’s content. Everyone was happy to give credit where
credit was due. What the book represented was more
important than the book itself, which led to its exploitable
nature to be utilized across templates and trends as they
arrived.
The internet has made niche interests useful for making
friends. As we desperately look for a malignant threat in
sharing jokes, we oftentimes find ourselves questioning
what is even funny anymore. Is everything so drenched in
irony that it’s impossible to discern the difference?
I scroll through the timeline and the first meme I see
answers my question:
“it’s not that deep.”
Editor’s Note
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@academicfraud
http://fraud.cool
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