The Social Media Ideology Machine

The discussion of Althusser's ideologies had me flummoxed. In CMC we always discuss ideologies, but I didn't really realize how ideology shapes quite literally everything we do in society and culture. Kind of depressing, right? To me ideologies somehow take away the conscious choice or decision to be portrayed as some way, because we are either following the ideological expectation of our persona, or we are defining ourselves by way of the opposite of the ideological expectation, which in a way is an ideology as well. It makes the idea of a rebel or rebelling against the "system" seem very diminished. The quote "those who are in ideology believe themselves by definition outside ideology," is most relevant to the concept of rebelling against societal norms, because we are a) reaffirming the ideologies by defining the ideologies as something to rebel against, and b) creating a new sense of ideology surrounding the subculture of rebellious behavior.

One source of perpetuating ideology that particularly stuck out to me was Instagram. On Instagram we are able to construct the "perfect" scenarios in which we comply with societal ideologies and portray what is considered to be the ideal. I was reminded of an article I read recently where an "Instagram famous" teenage girl tried to rebel against the falsities that Instagram portrays as reality through carefully posed selfless and filters. The girl originally gained followers for her glamorous posts about clean eating, "fitspiration" bikini posts, and aesthetically-pleasing fashion shots. Now, a couple years after the girl became "famous," she has realized the shallowness and fake nature behind her Instagram account, so she has gone through all of her posts and reedited the captions to convey the actual reality of the photos. In many she states that she would spend hours doing her hair and makeup, while wearing clothes she was getting paid sponsorships to wear, and taking 200+ pictures just for the perfect one to post; she also highlights the sexualization of her youth, at fifteen years old, and the unhealthiness she promoted with calorie-counting habits. I will include the link to her article below.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/stephaniemcneal/a-teen-instagram-star-is-editing-her-photo-captions-to-show

The One Where Marcie Complains About Capitalism (Again)

“It is not the conciseness of men that determine their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness” (Marx, 37). 

Marx’s world view is a very interesting one. He puts the relations of production as the main social actors, which can determine how society is (or will be) set up. For Marx, those who control the means of material production also control the means of intellectual production. He states, “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas” (39). 

I believe this is a very provoking thought. To admit that the ideas of the ruling class are the one’s being exposed and advertised as the “correct” and “best” is to admit that there could be other (alternative) ideological structures organizing society. 

This is my major problem with capitalism (and Marx sees this issue clearly). Within the capitalist society, most subjects that compose the society believe capitalism is the prime form of political and economical organization. Many times this happens even among those who are not favored (or even suffer) by the status quo. It is hard to burst that bubble when media, the State Apparatus, and the Ideological State Apparatuses shove down our throats that democracy (aka capitalism) is the way to go, and if you disagree you are a commie. But is capitalism really the perfect system, or is it the perfect system for the wealthy 1%?

I sense a certain conformist atmosphere in our current society. We can’t combat capitalism, those in power are too powerful. It is best to lay low and strive (and hope) to achieve the “American Dream” (despite all institutionalized and systematic obstacles imposed on the working class that prevent them from doing so).

Marx affirms, “The existence of revolutionary ideas in a particular period presupposes the existence of a revolutionary class” (40). Where are our revolutionary ideas of today?

I know I kind of completely ignored Engels in this blog post! Sorry about that.

Jenkins on the Economy: Everything is Capitalism

Needless to say, the DIY culture has grown exponentially since the introduction of online shopping. With the click of a mouse, consumers are able to participate in the capitalistic economy from the comfort of their beds. It seems then that capitalism has never been easier than in the twenty-first century—accessibility to products have increased dramatically, and consuming has become more effortless than it already is.

There is an intersection between capitalism, the American economy, and media itself; the media has to do (strongly, too) with the overarching economic scheme. In essence, this relationship encompasses the "A good advertisement sells" argument. Demand for the product rises among the public and the market forces push prices down. In Hebdige's reading, he discusses not only the sociocultural effects of the emergence of subcultures, but he also refers to the permeating consequences in the capitalist world. As large business conglomerates start to adopt subcultures into mainstream culture, it is undeniable that its sole purpose is to serve capitalism—businesses, especially the fashion industry, deliberately feed the public what they want.

I fully support DIY businesses and small shops, but the "Swiper swiping" tendencies of large corporations tend to create difficulties for these indie sellers. The rise of the DIY (sub)culture simultaneously means that consumers are taking their spendable income towards small businesses outside of mainstream culture; in other words, big companies worry that they are losing customers to the little boutiques around the corner. Subcultural hypes will always be turned into the mainstream, and large corporations will always manipulate and dupe their consumers into the trap of capitalism—spend, spend, spend.

A world without money

So today's class was very interesting, but what was more interesting to me was the last discussion we had on the capitalistic system we live under. Marcie's point really resonated with me in so many different levels because it is something I always think about.
In class, Marcie was saying that there are so many different concepts and ideas 'out there' that have to be explored before saying that capitalism is the only way, or the right way. On the other hand, Jack (or John?) was saying that if we want to come up with a new system, it has to include some way of capitalism (I might have misinterpreted their angels, so I apologize if I did, but this is what I understood).

I always have discussions about this with people around me and myself because it is true, it is extremely complicated! How can we live without money?? How does that work?? Some people literally cannot conceive the idea of a world without money. However, I don't understand how this is possible... If you really think about it, when we humans first existed we were very animal-like. The first homo sapiens sapiens to ever be on earth were primitively surviving, satisfying their basic needs with natural resources. Then they started finding ways to communicate... I guess corporal expressions, pointing at stuff, drawing, etc. until they reached a point where they created their own language in order to be able to talk to each other, right? Well, I think this is where the problem began.
Throughout the years of evolution, communication became more complex and we started creating concepts and giving value to things. My question is, how did we go from exchanging goods to monetary currency? who gave a coin or a bill (which is nothing more than a piece of paper, that comes from trees) its value? how did this happen?
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that WE CREATED MONEY AND WE GAVE IT VALUE; therefore, there IS hope: there IS a reality without money. If we hadn't created this complex and fancy communication system, we would have never been able to attach value to un-natural things - money in this case. Why can't we go back to how things were at the begging?

Okay, I have a crazy theory. I believe that once we started communicating with each other, we started over-evolving. I believe we humans as we are today, so 'civilized', complicated and fancy is not what was meant to be for this world. We were supposed to play the role of the mammals (let's say, maybe more advanced than animals) that we are, but we weren't supposed to become this monster to the world. I believe we weren't supposed to evolve so much to the point in which we started creating artificial things and giving value to unnatural stuff.

I dont know if any of this makes sense anymore, but I'll conclude with Fight Club. In my opinion, if project mayhem was to be executed in every country of the world, capitalism would be eliminated and we would HAVE to come up with another system. The reason why we haven't, is because we haven't had the need... those who control it don't need it (or want it) to change.
But what if one night all the corporations with control over capital were burnt down, meaning the records of each person's bank account would be lost, all the stock exchange data would be lost, etc. All of those numbers that people worked their whole lives saving... poof! gone! what would the world do then? Life would still happen, we would still be alive, breathing, hungry, sleeping, etc... so realistically speaking, there HAS to be a way to live without money because that is how we started in the first place! The problem is, convincing those with financial power to understand this. If this were to happen, it wouldn't matter how much money you used to have, because now nobody has any anymore...

Right now, this is the only alternative life-style that is realistic in terms of how our society is already established. Capitalism is and will be extremely complicated to defeat, unless we rebuild ourselves from scratch, creating new, healthy communities, and maybe then, changing society. This is a link of my dream place to live in :) It supports my views and ideas on how much we have over-evolved and become so greedy that we have created this unhealthy, unnatural space to live in, with a superficial and unnatural society as well. Please scroll down the page and watch their video, it is absolutely incredible!

https://kaluyala.com

Confession.

I have a confession to make: I have never seen Star Wars.

I have read a lot about it, done some research for different purposes, heard many different opinions, but I have never watched to movie. I personally don't like Sci Fi films that much, I've never been too into them, but I definitely appreciate film and everything it has to offer. The reason why I have never seen this classic before is because I have heard so many different approaches of different fans I have met, that I am already too biased to watch it. I feel like i'm not going to enjoy it as much, I am going to be reminded of everything i've heard and learned, and I don't know... I guess I should watch it at some point, and after Jenkins article I feel like I HAVE to.
My problem with Star Wars is that it is so famous and popular, it has been used too much to my taste. I am specifically referring to an Ecuadorian YouTube user who posts a parody called: "La Guerra de Las Hallacas" (I will try to explain this as clearly as possible)
In spanish, Star Wars is translated as "La Guerra de Las Galaxias" (meaning the war of galaxies). Some ecuadorians made a parody of star wars by making short episodes in spanish using typical ecuadorian slangs and jargons to make it funny. The name they assigned to this is "La Guerra de las Hayacas." Hallacas is a typical ecuadorian dish, very popular in the poorer areas of the country. The parody can be considered funny by other people, but to me it is extremely rude, not funny at all and just very dumb. Let me highlight that the title is "Hayacas" and the word is really spelled: Hallacas; so they are misspelling the actual title with the purpose of it being funny; which in my opinion looks dumb and spreads grammatical misuse as something funny. After watching this shallow and ignorant fan's version, I never felt like watching Star Wars. I consider that to be very disrespectful and it degrades the real film piece!
People back home are obsessed with these episodes that keep being posted. I honestly don't understand what it so funny. They kind of make ecuadorians sound stupid and it just takes away the artistic and inspiring component of the original classic, turning the Star Wars experience into a dumb, empty parody. My problem with this, is that many people I know love this parody thing much more than the movie, even though they have seen it.
It is shocking to me how this movie influences people from all over the world including people for the poor areas in Ecuador. On one hand, the parody is disrespectful and decreases the "aura" of the film; its essence and context is not taken in account and its whole value is degraded. However, it is amazing how fans are so connected to this classic that they can get away with their own versions of it, including parodies...

This is an Hallaca

This is a link to the 2nd episode of "La Guerra de las Hayacas" (its in spanish, sorry)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHoQdWj9xjo

Crazy Post: Escaping Reality with Disney and Video Games

I loved reading Poster this week. I believe he is a psychic and doesn't know it. Twenty years ago, he literally described our current world. He said, "[T]here is every reason to think that virtual reality technologies will develop rapidly and will eventually enable participation through the Internet. Connected to one's home computer one will experience an audiovisual 'world' generated from a node somewhere in the Internet and this will include other participants in the same way that today one can communicate with others on bulletin boards in video-text." In my opinion, this is the reality of the online gaming community. This community, however, is in constantly evolving and it still has space to expand, making it possible for the multiple realities exposed by the author to grow.

It is a scary, but fascinating future. Maybe the virtual reality will reach a whole new level and open space for new ones. There is an anime called Sword Art Online (me being a nerd again) that explores this exact concept. In the series, video games have become so advanced that people are able to immerse themselves in the game as if it was an entire new world. They feel the grass, they feel emotion, and eventually they even feel pain.

Why are we so fascinated about escaping our own realities? Why do we constantly seek to create new ones? This contemporary search for the "perfect" virtual realm juxtaposes what is exposed (and fought against) in The Matrix. In the movie, humans are trying to escape a fake reality to live a real one. However, in our present situation, we do the exact opposite.

This concept is explored by Dorfman and Eco when they talk about Disney. For Dorfman, Disney represents an escape from reality. People immerse themselves in a fake environment to escape everyday life. It is almost as if these individuals walked into a theme park to feel nostalgia for something they never had. Disney is not a reality lived by any real person. Still, people feel a sense of longing relating to every aspect of the franchise. Although Disney is not the real world, some people only seem happy when immersed in this sea of (capitalist) make-belief. Following a similar path to Dorfman, Eco talks about the safety we feel among technology. Disney represents the hyperreal, the fake, and the electronic as the desirable. Technology provides more reality than nature and contemporary people are more comfortable in this environment.

Some people immerse themselves in Disney to escape "normal" life; others immerse themselves in video game simulators. These virtual realms are each time more "real," but, at the same time, further from our own universe, toying with the possibility of creating an entirely new one. I wonder what circumstances (cough cough capitalism) led contemporary people to feel this intense need to escape from our own world.

I Am 90's Grunge

Tumblr is an extremely versatile social media platform that, in my opinion, serves a purpose for any and all types of bloggers. In this sense, Tumblr can be seen as a huge online community, and within it multiple subcultures have bred through the years since it went online. Undeniably, I'm part of my own subculture, one that posts about Halsey's heart-wrenching song lyrics to cat/dog Vine videos that (I find, at least) are (un)intelligently funny. Being a part of this subculture has been an extremely interesting experience; people have been speculating as to what it's called, labelling their aesthetic as anything from "plants," "soft grunge," to "halloween 4eva."

An interesting trend that I've seen going around is the comeback of 90's fashion—cheap plastic black chokers and pastel jelly shoes are back, y'all. I've seen people on Tumblr revel in the its return and others abhor it; as Hebdige (131) states, "[s]tyle in particular provokes a double response: it is alternatively celebrated (in the fashion page) and ridiculed ore reviled..." But what sparks my curiosity, and perhaps also the general public distaste for the return of chokers, is the fact that 90's fashion is brought back not by people who were actually born in the 90s, but instead after. In other words, it is mostly 14-15-year-olds born in the 2000s that dominate this subculture of 90s fashion in 21st century society.

Multiple department stores have begun selling chokers and platform shoes; I've seen endless rows of 90's-inspired clothing fill the racks of Forever 21. Similarly, small businesses have opened up Etsy shops, selling handmade patches that accurately depict you as a government-hating, self-loathing, cat-loving feminist. With the sale of such items by large fashion companies, these "original innovations which signify 'subculture' are translated into commodities and made generally available, [thus] they become 'frozen'" (Hebdige 132). It seems, then, that the subculture has shifted into the world of capitalism—the aesthetic itself has been commodified. How ironic (or rather sinister?) is it that nostalgia of the buying public can be manipulated for the purpose of capitalism?