no logo

It just seemed like she took a lot of ideas from critical theory and more academic writers and presented them for a popular audience.

http://shanghaiflow.canalblog.com/images/Pogo_Dance.jpg

^ No Pogo

are they doing some punk vn. of the argentine tango there?

I'm absolutely enraged by mobile phone branding and advertising, as I've long said, and the plain fact is that it really does matter to quite a lot of people, at least in the pre-buy phase, which is the one that matters to the advertiser. The same applies to other products! It's not so much about the logo as about the technology, I will admit. To be accessorised is increasingly important, perhaps more so than ever.

no, i mean, i don't care about my mobile OR about if other people do. i don't know if they do or not. adverts are annoying, bfd, there are bigger things to worry about.

It just seemed like she took a lot of ideas from critical theory and more academic writers and presented them for a popular audience.

― sarahel, Tuesday, December 22, 2009 4:49 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark

i think this is another way of saying academics can't write.

O™ (Noodle Vague)

^^^this is amazing

^yes this is awes, NV hits jackpot!

LOL Henry I was going to point out that nonfiction authors are often tasked with the translation of the theoretical into the practical.

agree, that was generally the point of her writing the book.

That and really hating gassy keg beer.

don't really give two shits about what my mobile "says about me."

― Dean Gaffney's December (history mayne), Tuesday, December 22, 2009 1:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Note the term "technical solution": rational problems have technical solutions. (Again, a blatantly erroneous claim: confronting ecological problems requires making choices and decisions -- about what to produce, what to consume, on what energy to rely -- which ultimately concern the very way of life of a people; as such, they are not only not technical, but are eminently political in the most radical sense of involving fundamental social choices.) No wonder, then, that capitalism itself is presented in technical terms, not even as a science but simply as something that works: it needs no ideological justification, because its success is itself sufficient justification. In this regard, capitalism is "the opposite of socialism, which has a manual": "Capitalism is a system which has no philosophical pretensions, which is not in search of happiness. The only thing it says is: 'Well, this functions.' And if people want to live better, it is preferable to use this mechanism, because it functions. The only criterion is efficiency."

This anti-ideological description is, of course, patently false: the very notion of capitalism as a neutral social mechanism is ideology (even utopian ideology) at its purest. [...] If there was ever a system which enchanted its subjects with dreams (of freedom, of how your success depends on yourself, of the run of luck which is just around the corner, of unconstrained pleasures...), then it is capitalism. The true problem lies elsewhere: namely, how to keep people's faith in capitalism alive when the inexorable reality of a crisis has brutally crushed such dreams? Here enters the need for a "mature" realistic pragmatism: one should heroically resist dreams of perfection and happiness and accept bitter capitalist reality as the best (or the least bad) of all possible worlds.

http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/l/lo-fidelity-allstars/album-how-to-operate-with-a-blown-mind.jpg

man I ain't tryin' to blow any minds here; just that, when the revolution comes, I wanna put as few people up against the wall as possible

I've got a 6th hand mobile that my wife gave me because I work on 3 or 4 different sites and my boss needs to get hold of me sometimes btw

good job fighting the Marketing Man noodle

I'm just sayin lots of grown ups have phones for entirely functional reasons and the idea that we're all slaves to the omniscient and totally effective machine is a bit bollocksy really

I mean I am selling out by having a job and a family but y'know what can you do?

like we could write an encyclopedia on counter-examples to companies aren't stupid as well

no logo felt really important to me when i was 17. lol @ 17-y.o. me

And fuck's sake the very notion of capitalism as a neutral social mechanism is ideology well done Mr Zizek you sho' opened my mind, chains coming off as we speak

I've got a 6th hand mobile that my wife gave me because I work on 3 or 4 different sites and my boss needs to get hold of me sometimes btw

― O™ (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, December 23, 2009 2:46 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

move to a forest and think about being for the rest of your life

I work in a FE college, we don't make anti-third world child nukes or anything

not directly, no

oh man we are all prostitutes

I'm just sayin lots of grown ups have phones for entirely functional reasons and the idea that we're all slaves to the omniscient and totally effective machine is a bit bollocksy really

― O™ (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, December 23, 2009 2:49 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

kind of an something

No Logo is a good logo. think bill hicks had a good spiel about the anti-marketing dollar being good dollar.

― stop grieving, it's only a chicken (darraghmac), Tuesday, 22 December 2009 14:16 (Yesterday)

Yeah I think No Logo has a chapter or two on this. My immediate reaction to the marketing-of-resistance cycle is that it's creepy and we're doomed, but when I think about it I guess that's where the potential for small, slow, imperfect niches of improvement in business practice comes from (you see it a little bit with food options some places). Market feedback is part of the capitalist system, yeah...so?

another way of putting it: why are you buying a mobile if it's not to make yourself into a certain kind of person?

The way you put this literally makes it impossible to disagree with. Making the choice of NOT getting a mobile would also be trying to "make yourself into a certain kind of person" by that argument. Not to say there's not a point there, but it's a bit circular.

which is not to say that I'm anti-mobile-phone or something, but it's absurd to think that there are somehow ways to partake of the fruits of international business without some piper somewhere getting paid by somebody

??? it's fun to be obvious but the point is to change it

move to a forest and think about being for the rest of your life

― max, Wednesday, December 23, 2009 9:53 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

noodle it sounds like you have a rewarding job which makes a positive contribution to society. that being said, I hope that when the time comes you don't hesitate to abandon it and join the mobs of impoverished south asian teenagers rioting in the streets.

not sure of the eco impact of flying down to south asia but I'm there, basically

xpost - is the real reason for getting a mobile phone, stripped of false ideology, because of "the capitalist imperative to sell your labor power" or "to make yourself into a certain kind of person" then? even if you say the consumerist version of the second comes from the first, they're still very different things, to the point that i'm not really sure where you're going with this.

oh ok if it is just to join the anti capitalist revolution i suppose it doesn't matter

xpost: oh I meant south asians at home in dear ol' Blighty -- but this is based on my cartoonishly simplistic idea of your country's demographic trends and shit so I could be way off on my endgame scenario

I don't have a mobile. People can email me or leave a message on my landline, which I can pick up remotely if needs be. Maybe a couple of times a year an occasion crops up where life would have been easier if I'd had a mobile to hand. And that's not enough for me to actually get one.

The problem here afaic is that critiques of Capitalism that still rely on bigging up its totalising force and spinning a version of "false consciousness" feel pretty ridiculiculiculous in the 09 and I don't really wanna get down with an ideology that starts from the premise that 99 percent of everybody is an idiot, tbh.

xpost to Maria: I haven't really thought about the issue of mobile phones that much, so I'm kinda making this up as I go along (shocker!). the notion of "real reasons, stripped of false ideology" is one I'm kind of skeptical of (I think Zizek is right to follow Althusser in making ideology a question of what people do, rather than what they think), so I suppose the position I'm taking is some variant of:

- this is a historically contingent development which has both positive and negative aspects
- there are a lot of useful/productive things that you, the individual consumer, can do with a mobile phone (make money, talk to your friends, etc.)
- ... but adopting a perspective (a la "I don't care what my mobile phone 'says about me', I just want to be able to keep in touch with my parents/friends/drug dealer/boss!") from which your choices appear to be purely personal matters of consumer preference or providing for your family or whatever -- when the reality is that they tend to be conditioned by, be noticed by, and contribute to the reproduction of, global capitalist power relations -- is willfully ignorant, especially when it serves to absolve you of any guilt by naturalizing these power relations and treating their harmful consequences as unavoidably built into the social fabric, while simultaneously letting you enjoy some (if not all) of the benefits that come from living in one of the wealthiest nations on earth.

can you imagine if the first major appearance of the mobile phone in society had been as a government-subsidized way to integrate the homeless into global networks of telecommunications, help them find work and get access to medical care, etc.?

xpost NV I'm not really sure what you mean by "totalising force" but part of the Zizek quote that I omitted actually talks about how one defining feature of neoliberal capitalist ideology is that it really doesn't partake of 'totalising narratives' or grand illusory truths or whatever; the truth of capitalism is the mechanism of the marketplace, which is a truth without meaning, and for precisely that reason can be incorporated into basically any society or culture. not sure if I totally buy this argument (which is why I left it out of the quote above), but just throwin' it out there.

xp i understand that argument but ultimately it doesn't impact my decision to get a phone or not which i find is kind of the problem with this

why is it a problem that it doesn't impact your decision? what would it have to do to impact your decision?
(genuinely curious)

there's just a big macro/micro disconnect for me with this stuff. like i can make the choice to buy anything fully acknowledging that my choice is conditioned by global capitalist power relations--i would never deny that that is true. but at the end of the day, i, as one guy just trying to make my daily life work, can choose to either a) buy a mobile, b) buy a landline, or c) not have a phone.

so i'm not trying to absolve myself of guilt but really my options are limited.

i don't spend any longer on my phone than i need to (so, on average about once a day for >2 minutes) but obviously yes i am participating in a corporate discourse. thing is, by not taking videos, using mobile internet, sending pictures, using free minutes, doing any of the crap that actually SELLS phones these days, i strongly believe i dodge the overwhelming groundswell of falsely collectivist telecommunication labelling that you so powerfully outline

what's the difference between using mobile internet and using internet in your home?

the way it is marketed! the way you pay for it! the way it 'defines' you socially! hey dudes, lemme just pop home so i can check my email vs i am connected person on the go thumbing thru my gmail woooooo

well I mean, that's fine, just so long as you realize that this pseudo-pragmatic worldview rests on a whole host of ideological assumptions -- Zizek makes a good point in his most recent book, apropos of the financial crisis, about the structure of capitalist ideology:

ahahaha, i'll get to this later. just so long as you know (what a pleasing construction) that zizek is a fucking toolbag/stalinist apologist/antisemite (i say this most days but rly dude).

xp eh that's kind of fooling yrself imo--i pay one giant telecomm company for internet at home; i pay another one for my phone/data plan. if feeling like you didn't get marketed to is a good feeling to you then carry on, i guess.

well dude put it this way my parents bought me a phone when i was 12 and didn't know shit about anything. i still have the same SIM card. i haven't been marketed to at all; i've received and topped up. as for the internet...well as i still live w/ my folks, i get their internet. but the internet is kinda universal and it really doesn't matter who you got it from. i just want cheap, cheerful internet.

i mean ok the fact remains i don't think you can successfully participate "halfway" in these structures

the truth of capitalism is the mechanism of the marketplace, which is a truth without meaning, and for precisely that reason can be incorporated into basically any society or culture.

slow_burner.gif

zizek is a fucking toolbag/stalinist apologist/antisemite (i say this most days but rly dude).

― Dean Gaffney's December (history mayne), Wednesday, December 23, 2009 4:24 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

lookin' forward to yr reply though

there's just a big macro/micro disconnect for me with this stuff. like i can make the choice to buy anything fully acknowledging that my choice is conditioned by global capitalist power relations--i would never deny that that is true. but at the end of the day, i, as one guy just trying to make my daily life work, can choose to either a) buy a mobile, b) buy a landline, or c) not have a phone.

so i'm not trying to absolve myself of guilt but really my options are limited.

― call all destroyer, Wednesday, December 23, 2009 4:16 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark