Message from @Dionysus
Discord ID: 529647860082409473
no, its deeper than that
also, sadder
though TBF, I'm legitimately afraid of digital media censorship replacing that....
oh? what then?
let me get it..
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Girard’s studies in literature, history, and sociology led him to develop a pretty cynical theory for why we want things:
We don’t know what we want, so we imitate what other people want. He called this “mimetic desire.”
People are switching jobs, getting divorced, and feeling dissatisfied more than any time in history. It’s as if our values and desires are in a constant state of fluctuation, changing with the slightest off-hand comments or newest trends. Rene Girard saw it coming: we have no concept of what we truly want or value, so the next best thing is to mimic someone else’s desires.
The girl with the Louis Vuitton bag got 600 Instagram likes – drop two grand.
Being a [insert religion here] worked for the rest of my family – do the same.
He’s a lawyer that makes money and drives a cool car – go to law school.
Everyone’s having fun in L.A. and New York – pack up and move.
The compound effect of mimetic desire is that it creates a culture where we battle for products, ideologies, and lifestyles that likely won’t satisfy either person fighting for them. We unintentionally manufacture social, political, and cultural norms, then try to stand out by being really good at those norms. And if that doesn’t work, we look for something else to “want.”
Needless to say, social media turbocharges mimetic desire. Scrolling through Facebook and Instagram is like diving into a vortex of social proof. It’s where our personal tastes are formed. It’s where “likes” have more merit than authenticity or talent. It’s where we learn to want what everyone else wants.
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mimetic existence
basically old-school NPC theory
... what I wouldn't give for a meme right about now
but yeah, there it is.
sad, right ?
we keep acting like there was a time in human history where most ppl where original
or deep thinkers
they weren't
only difference is that now, we live in an era of unprecedented democratization
which means that we get to truly see the banality of most ppl's existence
out in the open
same reason why our celebrities are shitheads and music is just ppl selling sex
extreme democritization
of taste
memetic warfare has supplanted physical warfare here...
or maybe it's just been expanded into a battlefield all it's own
ppl always assumed that social media would be an unwarranted goldmine of sorts
back in the early days
it would just be of ppl sharing ideas and books and what not
now it's just people yelling at each other... well mostly.
the Rubin Report is definitely a font of such ideas and books
but Twitter is just angry people in a town square yelling at each other.
yeah, now we're back to different sections or factions
we screwed up somewhere.
you can stay on twitter, youtube and follow certain intellectual peeps
but the bigger issue is that we can fall farther still.
everything on the internet comes through filters moderated by corporations
I don't think its all that bad tho
this is just societal flux that happens right after a communication revolution
like, soon after the printing press and widespread availability of bibles
things actually became much worse
for a short period of time
ppl went around burning witches based on certain phrases, that which was previously ignored by priests
that's fair I guess.
similarly, we're in a constant weekly witchunt