• thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Kind of reminds me how the CEO and founder of Buzzfeed used to be a critical theorist, and wrote an essay about how "late capitalism not only accelerates the flow of capital, but also accelerates the rate at which subjects assume identities. Identity formation is inextricably linked to the urge to consume, and therefore the acceleration of capitalism necessitates an increase in the rate at which individuals assume and shed identities" using writings by Jameson, Guattari, and Deleuze. Kind of insane that he wrote about how the internet can perpetuate this, and then founded a company that did exactly that.

      • RNAi [he/him]
        hexagon
        ·
        edit-2
        4 years ago

        You would make a great libertarian cult leader, the internet site would be great, you just need to change "capitalists" for "(((them)))" in your rants. Think about it, your family wouldn't have to worry about medical costs anymore...

    • glk [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      The marxist to doomer to tech bro pipeline.

      If the stupidest possible thing is going to happen it might as well be done by someone aware of how stupid it is.

      • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Ads. It's all about ads. Buzzfeed as a site fosters quick "identity creation" by having all those stupid quizzes, and then can tailor ads to fit that newly adopted identity constructed by the quiz. It's very scary because the scholarly reason why all of this works is laid out in the paper I linked! He just took the theory and applied it to a website to make bucket-loads of money.

      • RNAi [he/him]
        hexagon
        ·
        4 years ago

        Yeah, like Bezos, without him there wouldn't be so many people unironically wanting to guillotine rich people.

          • Nagarjuna [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            Turns out that manifesto on disrupting just-in-time infrastructure I picked up at the anarchist book fair was by Bezos.

    • qublics [they/them,she/her]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      That article ends with "A successful contemporary politics has stakes in defining the rhythmic flow between schizophrenic and identificatory impulses. Hopefully, alternative rhythms can challenge, or at least syncopate, the accelerating rhythm of late capitalism."
      If anything it reads like a manifesto of why Buzzfeed exists rather than any betrayal of previous beliefs. It basically argues that what capitalist marketeers are doing seems to be effective, so let us co-opt these strategies towards our own ends.

      Buzzfeed produces a very specific type of culture; it is bourgeois and liberal but as LGBTQ person I can tell you that absolutely I would rather be in a room with a random Buzzfeed reader than random person that dislikes Buzzfeed or even random Chapo just given influx of stupidpol chuds. That website is is like an anti-venom for bigotry.
      Much of it is also a gateway drug to BuzzfeedNews, which is a lib-left publication with articles like this one: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/otilliasteadman/pandemic-nurses-onlyfans-sex-work

      And besides, the type of people that are liable to visit Buzzfeed are the exact same that could get easily sucked into alt-right and conspiracy thinking instead; it is no coincidence that Breitbart has such a similar approach.

      The worst Buzzfeed can be reasonably accused of is hypernormalisation and telling people to vote democrat.

      • qublics [they/them,she/her]
        ·
        4 years ago

        I mean seriously, the kind of person that reads and agrees with this: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/political-violence-inequality-us-election
        They are inches away from being radicalized into leftism; all they are really missing is class consciousness and some praxis. God knows I would rather have ex-BuzzfeedNews flooding into Chapo than ex-Stupidpol.
        To put it bluntly, the schizophrenic work of dissolving bigotry is much more difficult and time consuming than the intellectual work of reading a few essays on Marxism.