Enter the Facebook

A few days ago, my wife and i had an almighty row about something i put on facebook.

now, before i begin, both of us don't particularly like facebook. i could have used hate, but we don't really hate it. we see it for its benefits, such as the ability to be in touch with people we have been far removed from in time, geography, culture and directions. we like that we can get connected to a virtual flowing river of thoughts, and responses, and so on and so forth.

but then again, facebook seems to get under our skins and freak the fuck out of us.
i get seriously disturbed by how people are so feverishly fervent in consuming such copious amounts of details about EVERYONE else's life. once i saw someone update their status as "just got back from dinner, loved for the yummy food" and about 12 people had 'liked' it. what is there to like, what is there to appreciate in such a banal statement? yet i don't judge it really, i get overwhelmed by it, that virtual river slamming down on me and pulverizing me into its bed.

as for my wife, she despises how people turn into vapid sheep blindly embracing the latest 'it' thing on facebook with over-exuberant, psychotic and hollow passion. to quote an example, remember when israel bitch-slapped gaza, and facebook was inundated with status updates 'donated' to the plight of the palestinians? these were the same people who had been under blockade for almost a year at that point, and yet it was only when the showbiz happened (the ka-booms and the bleeding children) when people suddenly became infatuated with fatah and hammy over hamas.
so this was her retort to them facebookers back then.
of course, it was only fitting that no sooner had she done that (the links are all to stories about swat which back then no one gave a fuck about) people began to be interested in her opinion as well, because facebook junkies love to follow anything and everything.

ironically, her rant brought little attention to swat, but a facebook viral video turned out to be the gamechanger in the whole politics of that region.
which proved the power, and emptiness of this whole facebook phenomenon.(on an aside, i love how the earliest status created responses absolutely unconnected to the content, as if the controversy of it had forced a response, but the addiction to banality did not allow any acknowledgment of it.)

now what both of us were fighting about was my decision to post my film on my profile page. she felt that i was whoring out because things that existed on facebook immediately lost all gravitas, all purpose, all integrity. she complained that i was denuding my work of art, robbing it of its purity. that which existed on facebook was meant to be consumed, like a can of pepsi or a box of detergent. it was consigned to be eventually relegated to the trash.
i argued that by being on facebook, i was creating buzz about myself as a film maker. in a country without a breathing institution of cinema, a new comer would need to have people know about him, to have seen his work, to have heard about his reputation in order to be convinced to go out and watch his work. facebook is where viral happens, especially in pakistan. by being there, i was reaching out to an audience i couldn't otherwise reach. my blog for example, generates hardly a pittance in terms of viewership, while my completely meaningless profile page gets a lot more. in essence, what i was arguing was that i needed to 'brand' myself as a film-maker, generate buzz about my brand, so that when my 'brand' offered new products, it would have loyal consumers already present to spread the gospel.
i can feel you cringing.

if you are at this blog, you are probably inclined to have a knee-jerk aversion to brands, and corporations, and marketing and all such concepts.

let me enlighten you.

your aversion is surface deep. you are already a brand.

no, i'm not getting all naomi klien on your ass. remember your university applications? remember how you wrote essays about what drives you as a person, and attached certificates of sporting and artistic achievements which provided proof that you were a well-rounded person, and recommendations from experts who attested to your qualities? that was you branding yourself.

in fact, it's not just university applicants. job applicants do the same. and so do rishta applicants.

it permeates even further than that. foucault had argued that modern society was one ruled by discipline. but one of his contemporaries, deluze, reasoned that modern society was not about discipline, but control.

it is a subtle distinction, but a poignant one. deluze felt the reason behind this was that the institutions which governed society, had in contemporary times become highly diffuse, in the form of corporations. hence instead of the omnipotent state you have the omnipresent corporations.and a society of corporations consists of brands.

you present one brand to your parents, another to your grandparents. another to your first cousin, a far more liberal one to your friends, a far more devious one to your lovers, a far more honest one to your siblings, a restricted and much convoluted one to your boss, a domineering one to your subordinates, a squeaky clean one when you are at a religious ceremony, an unabashed one at the party you were dying to get invited to and so on.
it is far more easier for girls in pakistan to relate to this, as their brands have to switch rapidly depending on who can see them or hear them, and they are constantly on display, within their homes, on the street, in their rooms, on their profile pages, and ultimately, alone in front of the mirror as well.

and so, you are left with the essential question at the heart of this debate - is there a stable core sense of self beneath these ever fluctuating identities, brands or masks that we present to the world? or is our sense of self really an amalgamation of the cluster of brands we are putting out there?

is it possible to know one self, or are there too many selves, each fighting for dominance, each arising when needed, discarded when out of fashion, or possibility of use?

to paraphrase pink floyd, is there anybody 'in' there?

On the Demerits of Modernity or why slutty behaviour should no longer be risque

Here's something to titillate you.

Miss Bimbo is an online registration game where you get a "bimbo" to tend to.

The goal of the game is to make your Bimbo the " the hottest of hot Bimbos," which involves dating "that famous hottie," becoming a "socialite and skyrocket[ing] to the top of fame and popularity," and even resorting "to meds or plastic surgery", because girls should "Stop at nothing to become the reigning bimbo!"

The catch, is that the game has over 200,000 users who are between the ages seven to seventeen.

The average age is nine to twelve year old females.

How wholesome.

You can read more about this here, and here, and here.

Notice how in order to validate my claims, i provided several links to various websites. It comes from a habit garnered during the time i would write academic papers. The trick is that you always make sure that whatever you are saying, or reporting, is attributed to someone, somewhere.

It's not really a trick as much as its the law. or the rule.

it extends to journalism as well for example. if you don't attribute your claim, then you are just stating an opinion. any information, in order to be regarded as legitimate 'truth', requires for it to be backed up by someone.

but not just anyone. someone of authority. and the more someones you have, the more authoritative your 'truth' becomes. essentially then, contemporary times require that truth be a collaborative entity. the falling tree does not make any sound if there is no one to hear it.

that leads to the creation of a cataclysmic disconnect between what is perceived reality, and what is legally reality. if you can't prove it, it doesn't exist. of course, it is the preserve of sad blogger types to whine incessantly about how such situations are somehow debasing some vague notion of what 'should' be, but the fact of the matter is that this is it. how things 'are.'

but this collaboration in the creation/verification of truth is an intrinsic facet of the contemporary/western/modernized world. by having something which can be proven, you can apply a law to it. in order for laws to exist and function, there must be a ready manner for reality to be determined and be acted upon so that 'justice' can be ultimately delivered.

And modernity, as Weber foresaw, is big on rules and laws.

but if our sense of justice is based upon a system which requires you to fashion truth upon a foundation of authority, and that sense of authority resides solely within institutions and not personalities*, then some intriguing conclusions can be drawn.

*(Its a well established fact that the idea of authority stemming from individuals is a throwback from the bad days of monarchs and absolute power. Modern ideas of authority are intrinsically rooted in the ideas of institutions being the purveyors of all things worth being obeyed.just take my word for it.)

because we can now claim that we do not have to affiliate ourselves to what we know to be traditional (also known as indigenous, cultural etc) values or morals, but rather to institutions of our choosing. and institutions can be defined as “established law, practice, or custom.” Customs are “a traditional and widely accepted way of behaving or doing something that is specific to a particular society, place, or time”

Now in a world of i-want-it-i-got-it individuality customs can be rapidly established, especially those of a viral web-savvy nature. but in order for customs to be established as institutions they require validation, from some sort of institutional authority. and something like ms. bimbo can achieve that validation simply by becoming a popular website. because once you are popular, you have achieved celebrity, and celebrity status can bestow institutional authority.

i concede, that last statement was a head-spinner.

the reasons i would equate celebrity to institutional authority are many, but i would boil them down to five letters – Paris. as in the hilton heiress. despite all your protests, what paris does is increasingly followed around the world. for all that rankles about her, people accept her as some sort of authority on how to live “the good life.”

if nothing else, it can be proven that the world is extremely interested in her. a google search for her throws up 80 million websites. a search for pope benedict xvi throws up 5 million websites. george w bush, arguably the world's most powerful head of state, shows up on 49 million websites. so we can see that paris fascinates the world.

but what i must stress here is that it is not paris who is an institution, but rather her status as a celebrity. the institution here is celebrity, not paris hilton. the comparison with bush and the pope was to explain that celebrity dwarves both religion and politics. and like the pope and bush, paris won't be around forever. but in our epoch, the preeminence of celebrity as an institution will be unquestioned.

soooo, did the idea of 7 year olds jostling for breast jobs bother you? have you realised now why it shouldn't?

its how things are now. face it.