Such a profound video. And this was such a profound quote: "Social media apps are prefabricated forms of pseudo-communication. Rather than enabling peoeple to freely play with one another, these apps play with their users."
David Graeber said that he would always prefer Debord to Baudrillard. He thought it was too easy to read Baudrillard and feel a certain self-satisfaction in your own passivity, whereas Debord could never be interpreted as anything but a call to action.
Kinda holds up to Baudrillard’s Agony of Power, where he basically equates intelligence to a refusal to both dominate and be dominated. Appealing but ultimately a sort of comfortable limbo outside of time and conflict. In a way theres an appeal to Baudrillard in how he describes forces almost sublimely insurmountable.
Yes, this is the correct response for any Marxist true believer (whether I am or not depends on my mood that day) but I think Baudrillard has a melancholic literary sensibility that is enjoyable to read as a sort of bourgeois coffee table book.
Hey, just wanted to say thank you for making these videos. You're the only person on YT who is capable of turning CT into digestible videos, for me anyway. Appreciate u.
Isn't it stunning how much of postmodern thought seems like it gets captured by a Gramscian view of hegemony? We can think ourselves into all sorts of strange places, but the moment we submit our supposed novel formulations of 'the problem' we're just offering up another avenue for our resistance to be subsumed, repackaged, and sold back to our peers for its defanged aesthetic value alone. It's for this reason I largely agree with a lot of what many people would call postmodern (i.e. the Frankfurt school primarily, though ofc that's not all) in terms of its descriptive value, yet I can't help but feel like trying to draw prescriptions from it can lead so easily to nihilism and despair. Successful acts of resistance aren't easily written down or described, which is why doing praxis is not just the key to making ANY kind of difference, but it also keeps yourself grounded and with your eyes cast away from the abyss
I recently reread William S Burroughs' Cities of the Red Night Trilogy and in a lot of ways it feels like a coming to terms with his earlier ideas of "open media subversion" (as in The Electronic Revolution) in a now more critical lens ala Baudrillard. With Burroughs it was less about "mass media" and more about all communication. In The Electronic Revolution he talks about the ideas of using cut-ups, and disinformation (basically modern meme warfare) to dismantle control and power structures, however by the time of this trilogy about a decade later he's realized those same structures can use those techniques. The first book ends with the implication that his novel is an attempt to dismantle control/language by using the tools of control/language and that at best he can hope for tearing a hole in the universe that someone else can step through.
"the subversive act is produced like a gesture" There's a phoniness in society now that is hard for me to describe in my own words, but I think this quote gets it. Maybe I am mourning the loss of authenticity and unwilling to accept the new way of profilicity.
Agreed. I've had the same feeling for several years now, but it got much more intense after 2020. This is the best short and pithy verbal formulation of it I've come across so far.
|"the subversive act is produced like a gesture" There's a phoniness in society now that is hard for me to describe in my own words the Age of Irony /just sayin
Near my home, someone has written on a wall, in relation to Palestine: “If you do nothing, you are complicit”. That person has freed himself from his stated responsibility, simply by writing on a wall! It isn’t authentic, the writer isn’t interested in authentic actions that will actually change things; the writer just want to appear to be on ‘the right side’. That’s The Spectacle at work.
It seems to me like Baudrillard's critique of mass media can be applied to any kind of medium of communication, including simple face-to-face exchanges in everyday language After all language is also a system with finite rules within which you need to produce whatever it is you want to say
Yes. Exactly. It's one of the first things you learn as a logician. The difference between a representation of something and the thing itself. You can also learn, elsewhere, that all ideas and theories are abstractions from reality. That is, approximations of reality-or something like that-but definitely not to be confused with actual reality. That said, I think there's something to be said for the prefabricated nature of these systems and their capacity for self-replication.
Failing to explain the difference is one of the many flaws this video has. It offered but the most basic - and I mean *basic* - introduction to Baudrillard. I have a video on my channel that goes more into depth, but I might as well briefly explain it here: First of all, Baudrillard does not view language as a finite system, something that becomes clear when reading the chapter on poetry from "Symbolic exchange and death", or any other musing of his on Saussure's late obsession with anagrammes. Second, to understand simulation, simulacra, the code, etc. one needs to understand symbolic exchange as its counterpart. Superficial videos like this one choose to ignore it for some reason, perhaps because it's not what Baudrillard is known for... Failing to give the most fascinating definition of hyperreality, i.e. the more real than the real itself, produced another head-scratcher in me. Of course, the last part of the video is spot on, in the sense that, yes - Baudrillard was a nostalgic sucker for "authenticity"; but without it, what's your basis for criticizing, and more importantly, understanding capitalism?
And now a 24/7 (social) media feed is at everyone's finger tips 24/7 - the hyperreality(s) intensifies. And all of the mediums of communication exchange are in there.
These lectures are pure gold for my mind. Thank you very much. I can not wait for the next episode. I recommend Prof. Moeller's book "Luhmann Explained: From Souls to Systems".
Of all of the “postmodernists”, Baudrillard almost definitely my favorite thinker, even if I have major disagreements with his renunciations of the importance of “modes of production”, especially where late in life he seems to think we’ve moved beyond the capitalist mode, or at least beyond it’s importance.. I’d have loved to see his thoughts had he lived to see the 2008 crashes, and the political economic landscape since then… Still, he had a lot of fascinating insights where he pretty much hit the nail on the head, especially on the future of media.. He might have been a bit too nihilistic in his response to the phenomena he described, or at least I definitely get that from his work (which I’m not very well read on tbf), but he unfortunately was all too accurate in terms of the description itself (though again, I think his dismissal of “modes/production” and the material went too far, perhaps a reaction to his younger Marxist dreams imploding).
It would be an overstatement to see mass media as only normalizing in the negative sense that Baudrillard does. It is also norm creating and valorizing. Social media has its own feedback loop that potentially opens the conversational space and meta context where it can be understood rather than simply mirror itself.
I wonder what Baudrillard would say about the current large language model AI systems. They are an amazing implementation of symbols that have no relation to any objects outside of them and by pure self-referential combination, generate something that most people (including their "creators", as far as they exist) cannot distinguish from "real" communication and intelligence. It is fascinating to what extent these models get away with generating something that looks like it is referencing "reality" without having ANY reference or understanding of the reality they are supposed to represent. I remember, back in the 80s, when I studied AI for a short time, how it was still mostly assumed that we'd have to have the systems have some kind of model of reality, in order for them to be able to "talk" about reality or make any sense about it. Yet, at this point we completely did away with this outdated notion in the generative AI models we employ. It makes me wonder if this is so easy for AI models, because culturally, our "real reality" already has become hyperreality in the sense of Baudrillard's description, and if that is why we cannot distinguish AI output from human interaction, or if there really never was a "real reality", and AI is just showing us this more clearly, as some philosophers now seem to claim (i.e. simulation hypothesis, etc. --then again, is it just a cultural expression of our age, that people seem to be willing to believe this at this time?)
Reality is a modern concept. Another construct. Reinforced by the reality principle of science. It must be continually re-reified. Thus the degeneration by copies into hyperreality. Until we realize that it was always copies without reference. And thus the quote; “The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.”
The way AI puts out jargons without caring if it knows the meaning or consequence or the feelings of audience reminds me just like some career politicians and media broadcasting personality. They knew those words ("liberty", "greatness, etc.) incite excitement and loyalty, perhaps by seeing how other people have successfully deploy them; but they do not care the strict academic meaning behind them, or how they are going to put them into actual practice. They are just there to get votes. Similar to how Chatgpt just there to get more of your prompts and feedback and data. And so since the tricks works for politicians, it makes sense for ChatGPT to be profitable, too.
I don't think it is or could possibly be true that the language models' symbols have "no relation to any objects outside of them". I think what you really mean is that the computers themselves don't "understand" what those relations are and choose how to configure sentences based on statistical models as opposed to how we choose to configure sentences. But it's probably also the case that we choose how to communicate based on something like statistical models and not just on how words relate to physical objects. We say things that are most commonly said in the environments we inhabit because those are the things the people to whom we're talking will most likely understand. That's effectively a statistical model. The AI language models are working on the same principles. That works pretty well in many cases. But the reason why AI models sometimes say crazy things that sound completely off the wall is the same reason why very isolated people often say crazy things that sound completely off the wall when they're in groups of people: because they don't have the experience necessary to fill in the blanks that statistical modelling inherently leaves.
@@naythaniel Well no: I actually do mean that they don't have any relations to the objects they represent. I am not a real expert anymore since it's been a long time that I was actively involved in anything relating to AI, but from my understanding, the language models work by building multi-dimensional maps of words and phrases, in which words and phrases used together are closer to each other in the various dimensions while unrelated words are farther apart, etc. The maps contain ONLY the words. They contain ONLY the symbols. When we looked at modeling human intelligence back in the 1980s we mostly thought that we had to allow the computer to construct a model of reality itself--yes, of course that would in some way also be a model of symbolic representations, but the representations would relate to the objects themselves: So we would see if the computer could basically build an internal 3-D model where a ball would be represented by a virtual 3D-ball and then the computer could "understand" and predict the behavior of a real ball based on the behavior of the ball in its model. That's how it would then be able to form true statements about the ball. That simply isn't the case at all with LLM. There, only the WORD "ball" exists. And the computer can talk "intelligently" about balls, without having any representation or concept of what a "ball" is, outside of language. For example, while I am not 100% sure why hands are such a problem for AI art, it does make sense that AI can easily draw 6-fingered and otherwise deformed hands: It has no concept of what hands are, their functions, etc. A system from the 80s that otherwise would be thousands of times less intelligent, would have no problem drawing hands with the correct numbers of digits (if it can draw them at all) because the actual shape and function of a hand would be part of its library of objects. There is of course a question if we humans have any conception of anything outside of symbolic language, and if what we do is really different from AI. Personally I think there is a mountain of evidence that we do process information very differently and that our conceptions lie much deeper than language--but people do disagree about that.
lavender does actually have plenty of commercial uses and is sold as a product, it can be turned into to tea, also used in cooking, essential oils for skin care and perfumes, scented candles, incense sticks, soap, shampoo, bouquet of flowers, plus flowers have been planted for pure ornamental use for thousands of years, long before the camera was invented.
Also, the reason it has social media appeal is because it has aesthetic appeal. People plant lavender for it’s aesthetic appeal all the time. Why would that stop being the case just because they anticipate *foreigners* would also find it appealing? I’m glad I’m not the only person who was confused by that example.
I identify heavily with your reading of Baudrillard on media. It reflects ideas that i have developed both from personal experience and from marxist teachings. The point where i differ is on his "hopelessness". In his "hopelessness" he also asserts marxist theories on media as wrong, but contradicts himself. I think this is a bad reading on his part because the view that media is a conversation is not wrong. Almost all communication is not one sided. Mass media as it exists today IS a functional object, but even in it's function as a tool of control his ideas are proven wrong. Even control must be mediated and directed. This reciprocation IS achieved even in todays in mass media, it's just not your voice/interests that are speaking back, its your consumption and levels of dissent. We are manipulated. I believe this "hopelessness" is just a reflection of his pessimism. A true hopelessness of ideological options for him. And, in my opinion, is evidence of his ignorance of Marxist ideas on media. Mass media IS a conversation between the masses' ideas and the capitalists as a class and that whole class' relationship to the mass media owner. Their relationships and interests speak through it, and their institutions listen to the response. This is basic marxism. Baudrillard's "hopelessness" i think stems from his ideas that marxism is authoritarian. But authoritarianism of an individual is something no Marxist backs. This conversation must be kept going by identifying through which technological, and social means can the proletariat both have mass media and control it. It is the job of the proletariat with Marxist tech and social professionals to develop these networks and uphold majority democracy, under all circumstances of social development. This can already be exemplified by taking into account distributed networks (like Mastodon, Matrix, and others) where an accountable authority could control dissemination channels, and reception can be controlled by receivers by consent of usage. Further proof of origin can determine identity. Don't listen to what does not represent you and be able to control what does. This representation shall be direct, through accountable representatives, etc. The whole chain of trust and accountability directly traceable back to the source and consented upon. Neighborhood, local, municipal, regional, provincial, state, etc.
T'would be interesting to see a video on Sloterdijk's Critique of Cynical Reason, as it relates to profile-building (and the creation of ostensibly 'critical' content).
Having read most of Baudrillard’s 50 published books I can tell you with certainty he harbored no nostalgia the least of which is “authenticity nostalgia”. I can see how he could be misinterpreted as nostalgic. *see reversibility and symbolic exchange
Thank you for the great video and this series! I am a visual artist who has written a couple of essays as part of my course, mostly about Benjamin, Debord and Baudrillard. It's been great discovering your channel and your analysis. I'd like to ask where should I read more about the concept of Profilicity for example. I guess the first step is by reading your book? Thank you for your time!
Very informative, as always, but your characterization of Baudrillard as a drama queen could extend to the whole gamut of french philosophy: the tendency to hyperboly is a good example. However, you've caught Baudrillard, as it were, in his diapers. His future work tends to be writen in the same 'style' but with overt statements disavowing any kind of nostalgia for authenticity, even accusing marxism of being reactionary. He works out his theory of the media without any kind of 'valorizing' statements, he tries to be descriptive not prescriptive. I always enjoyed Baudrillard as I enjoyed Foucault: heaviliy involved in marxist critique, but without the incessant need for any kind of liberation theory -focusing on the descriptive power of marxism while leaving the messianic tendency behind.
I feel that todays society has become exactly the opposite of what Baudrillard and Debord are saying. We now are the spectacle in the society of the spectacle, and society is gazing at us. The purpose of this is to measure our every activity in order to grind us up into data so that we may be best exploited as easily exchangeable commodities. We are like the nodes in a neural net, assigned weights by way of social media prompts as a means to generate the most profitable model that still maintains a level of social equilibrium that keeps society from collapsing. The Internet is the Empire's new Panopticon.
Brilliant analysis, elaborate on this,especially in relation to how young people are becoming way less convinced by US propaganda on the Israeli war in Gaza.
@@quadracept576 I think cynicism is too deep in western societies and stuck in farcical election cycles like another Trump Vs Biden in 2024. I have more hope in Global South like France backing down from invading Niger in 2023 which was virtually a colony until a coup with widespread public support
"One Idea To Rule Them All: Reverse Engineering American Propaganda" by Michelle Stiles is highly recommended. It speaks of the five pillars of belief and how they are manipulated in the service of propaganda.
16:32 “Imposing it’s code on society”. This may be a stupid question, but would people self-censoring be an example of this? Many YTubers will *refuse* to use terms like suicide or sexual assault in their videos because they will lose monetization. On Twitch, I know that people affiliated with the platform cannot interview or feature anyone banned from the site (even as a one-time guest!). Is that what J.B. means, or was he referring to something a few more levels up? Like, higher up in terms of dealing with groups and not the actions of individuals.
Thank you for all the thought provoking videos. A side question, what happened the last video you posted? I wanted to rewatch it and share it, but it seems to be taken down?
love the ending. The "Smoking Kills" equivalent for all media platforms is a good start. Is this comment part of the problem? Did i just take selfie by typing this? Any actionable takeaway?
Doesn't Baudrillard reproduce notions of use value and exchange value in his privileging of reciprocity over hyperreality? Such as with the lavender field where exchange value determines its creation (for tourism), rather than use value (subsistence for the people who live there).
I cannot count how many times i have read or heard something deeply human, insightful, original, moving, produced by a stranger on the internet. Even more difficult to count tge amount of empty calories I've consumed in the form of algorithmic sludge. I wonder if these small glimpses of light matter in the end...
I can't help but think that Baudrillard merely extrapolated from Stuart Hall's Representation Theory: the understanding that there's no "real" to be misrepresented (all news is a conflagration of complex histories and events), but rather the medium itself operationally and notionally imparts an understanding. Mere hubris on his part that he claimed to be a progenitor of such ideas. Are you arguing a similar case with profilicity? That the profile is a curation-to-context, without substance behind it?
in any case, as with all positivistic French philosophy it negates change and dialecticism; a cursory investigation into media and its representation shows the cantilever of perception through changes in technology, and I imagine Brecht was making similar points through distantiation theory. During the active years of the FS, arguably one might have subscribed a form of monopoly capital to media (Freud's cousin was a big influence in ads, for example); but capital moves on, and is now more privatized. Where I think it might - in "re-presentation" essentialize is through reifying and amplifying the reification of - social relationships through a form of media-speak metonomy. "The Economy," or "Climate" are channelled often sans-agency, encouraging a voyeuristic idea of humanity's impending destruction for which it has no part to play. As such, viewers are encouraged to see themselves statically as markers of particular, unchanging values.
Maybe I'm being reductive, but I don't see Baudrillard's hyperreality as much more insightful than Walter Lippmann's "pictures in our heads". "Public Opinion" was published all the way back in 1922 and was refreshingly unpretentious.
Thought a lot about Baudrillards writing style and the way he conveys his idea or "theory", when i was reading "Precession of Simulacra". I came to the conclusion that he writes the way he thinks reality functions. He would contradict himself if he just wrote down a theory as a conceptual copy of reality in a logically sound way when at the same time he argued that this way of duplicating reality with signs isnt anymore (the cultural norm) - wouldn't he? In this era, the era of simulaton, (hyper) reality ermerges from the system of signs. There is just no reality anymore one can argue to have understood. So if he wants to convey his idea of hyperreality, he needs to do it the same way hyperreality functions: through simulation. And how does simulation operate? "Simulation is characterized by a precession of the model, of all the models based on the merest fact - the models come first, their circulation, orbital like that of a bomb, constitues the genuin magnetic field of the event. [...] This anticipation, this precession, this short circuit, this confusion of the fact with the model, is what allows each time for all possible interpretations, even the most contradictory - all true, in the sense that their truth is to be exchanged, in the image of the models from which they derive, in a generalized cycle." And that is how i understand Baudrillard: he somehow circles the fact of hyperreality by using different popular examples or simulakras like the space race, disneyland, the italian comunist party and so on; he gives hints without turning towards the term "hyperreality" and defining it negatively and positively. The whole essay "Precession of Simulacra" is itself a precession.
While money/ commodification is inherently alienating to this, I don't believe in a world where all art is always 100% in sync with its use/social value. In this utopia, how we value art would change yes, but people will always pressure artists for their work to serve an end.
13:32 While people wearing designer outfits to protests to post on social media *is* a thing, what about stuff like the Arab Spring? That was almost entirely facilitated by social media networks like FB.
Completely unrelated, but is that the first volume of the manga BLAME! we see in the background? If so, we might demand a video on the horror of algorithmically generated architecture =P
I found your analysis excellent, in an area of 20th century philosophy that has greatly interested me for a long time. I have a question, though I'm not sure you respond to them. As someone with more than a hobbyists interest in writing and music, I find myself very averse to sharing any of it online, as the medium is the message. But I see people like yourself posting thing like this online. Is there any use in trying to use these things in this way, or does any sincere effort get drowned out in the sea of mindless noise?
I think the construction of cyber tools are what the construction of the tv broadcasting structure was back in the day now the chip designs and software designs are the messages the media carries as once marshal mcluhan said about tv so we are just in the tunnel of our desires extended in electrons and magnets in chips and softwares.
8:14 If mass media always separates people, then why do fan communities exist? Plenty of people have gotten married or formed lifelong friendships because of their mutual obsession with a media product.
I re-watched your response to Sam Harris and I am very curious what you think of the subreddit r/AmITheAsshole ? It's a forum where people post stories of a personal conflict they had and people in the comments can morally judge the situation and choose "whose side to take", who was at fault (or in other words, who is "the asshole"). What does this mean from the perspective of language games or moral language? Clearly, when commenters are judging that the person posting is "the asshole", they are not suggesting that they should be punished by law, nor are they giving any concrete, practical solution on how to solve their conflict or telling them what they should do. But nonetheless it means something linguistically. A second, somewhat tangentially related question is how you would analyze the discourse of human rights that started in the Enlightenment and has taken hold of our everyday relationships. For instance, when we're arguing with someone, we might tell them "You have no right to talk to me like that!", but clearly, we do not use the word "right" here to refer to legal/political rights. Thank you very much in advance!
"Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication" - Simone Weil
@@Unfunny_Username_389 Mostly to counter the points in the video, and keep the mind flexible. I use (and maybe Even abuse) the quote to exempify how a supposed detrement can be used as a positive, which is supposed to counter the view people have on technology, Not for technologys sake, because i mostly care about the next generations, and their Ability to use the technologys of today in any way they see fit. Im not a blind optimist, but rather someone who likes to exercise my brain as to not fall into the same trap as evey old person does, saying the next generations are doomed, or that New technologys are bad. Everything can be good and bad, its just about evaluation of values. Ideology isnt important but people are. Sorry for the flowery language
Thank you for another great episode! One question re "the simulation principle dominates the reality principle" : isn't this inherently Marxist in the sense of echoing Marx' social (socio-economic) being determining consciousness, where both 'social being' and 'consciousness' could be interpreted as hyperreal 'content'?
it's being caught in overload of stimulation like when in nature you would rarely see anything red and yellow ripe for eating and you would never see a saturated blue colour... now you get so much you end with insomnia
When I began reading about media, I started with Debord and Baudrillard... They blew my mind, but then I found McLuhan and found his works so much more fun and insightful. By his own admission, McLuhan didn't push theories or systems, but a mosaic of "probes"... Which I can really easily apply to my every day life.
@@ArawnOfAnnwn my tone is syncretistic, photosynthesizing corpuscula vibrant, purple, fluid, but crude, cerebral perception of it's kaleidoscopic nature is that flare and echo of idolatry, but idolatrous resonance is just a mirage and sonic sclerotism, my dear parallelopipedic homunculus ganglion
I am skeptical of the usefulness of such a framework. Take the example of the flowers in China at the end being planted not for agricultural reasons but for attracting tourists: this kind of phenomena of a thing being used not for its implied purpose, but for what it represents, is not a new development in history, but a constant, guaranteed reality throughout all of human history. Think of a palatial garden being planted to represent grace or sophistication, or a wealthy business owner planting things to create specific associations and attract customers. If those flowers planted in China are "hyper real", then why aren't those situations? Actually this phenomena can describe a vast array of social behaviors, imagine a tribe adopting another tribes symbols or clothing or art etc for reasons that are different then why the tribe they adopted these things from did so. To the original tribe these symbols meant one thing, maybe they represented specific animals or landmarks, but the tribe adopting those symbols may have no knowledge of the animals/landmarks the symbols represent, but instead adopted them because of their own appreciation and conception of those symbols, disconnected from what they represent. You can then imagine further tribes interacting with these tribes and adopting and modifying these symbols just on the basis of how these symbols relate to other symbols, instead of what they originally represented. So is that not a "simulation"? So that's my point, it seems to me that a great, great deal of behavior/technology throughout all of history (rather than being a distinctly modern phenomenon as Baudrillard seems to claim) can be described in Baudrillard's terms, so where is the explanatory power in this framework? Have others pointed this out? Am I confused?
I believe you can always find correlations or examples of problems that are firmly modern in the past. History is immanent in its movement; the new thing is always already in labor in the old thing. So yes, those examples you speak of can be analyzed through Baudrillard's point of view, however you must agree this type of representation without original (i.e. a simulacra) was not as prevalent or widespread as it is today with the advance of capitalistic media, as well as the fall of communism that lead to generalized pessimism and lack of imagination (Capitalism Realism and all that).
The key difference is that with the proliferation of mass media images in the 20th century, the reality principle has been completely left behind, in that our perceptions and desires are mediated by images that tell us what to desire and how to perceive the world around us. When we think of love, we think of romantic movies/images. When it comes to sex, most people see porn images before they actually experience sex, so that creates the expectations, desires and an idea of how sex is done generally. This is unprecedented when compared to previous human history which was never so awash with images as it is now. And these images don't refer to something in reality, but other images in a signifying chain, and so what happens is you get a precession of simulacra, where reality ends up representing the sign, rather than the other way around.
All these media theories suddenly make the Matrix more interesting to me. The 1988 film “They Live” was also a highly distorted film based on Situationist theory. I agree with Braudilliard that Semiotics is vital to proper media theory. The issue for socialists is whether media has revolutionary and liberating potential, or if it is a system of social control altogether, beyond the capitalist system’s use of it. To me sign, symbols, language etc… is how we make the idealist realm materially manifest
Aleister Crowley and other genius occultists have dealt with the same issues many times over. The fact that Language, signs and words can liberate but also enslave and destroy. We must learn what it is and how to develop the virtue to use is wisely.
In what kind of broken society can someone declare themselves ‘an influencer’, despite having no experience whatsoever in education, business, politics or publicity?
Calls for an "authentic" situation before some kind of fall always make me suspicious. In this concrete case, I have trouble imagining "true social interaction". There is a time for lectures, a time for podium discussions, a time for videos and a time to talk behind closed doors. Only among friends without intervening institutions or materiel interest is true egalitarian communication experienced. And even there vanity & shame might intervene and stop a topic short. How is Baudrilliard postulating to do away with vanity, shame, vaingloriousness, material interest and all other internal as well as external influences that guide interaction among humans, even equals? Especially, if he laments the alienation from material reality: is not this material reality that impoverished most interactions of the past? Is it more authentic to "discuss" who has to get water (9/10 times the weaker person) than who you intend to vote for in the next election (even if simulated, indeed a choice the water-carrier did not have)?
Interesting. The little I have seen of Baudrillard , he always seems way too self aggrandizing, considering the lack of concrete evidence for his claims.
I've felt for years that, in young, internet savvy, nerdy, male dominated circles there is this oppressive and hidden ideology that has arisen that is tricky to pin down. But you see it in the same kinds of responses people give over and over again thay get mass agreement. Attitudes and modes of speech that are well established in online conversations often sound completely insane if spoken in the real world. And indeed, when I on occasion get into arguments with people, and try to behave as I would in the real world the response is often "Is this your first time using the internet?".
Its because communicating on the internet and real life is not the same, especially if you use a public forum. You have to take into account that you maybe talking to anyone in the USA maybe even the world. You need to do clarify so much more so that your statement doesnt offend or is minterpreted. You have to adjust to completely different social rules and expectations.
the only thing i can think of is the kind of 'meme reply' that has exploded recently e.g. "bro [verb][skull emoji]" but i suspect you're referring to something else?
The amount of hubris in philosophers like Baudrillard who really think that "empirical" or "economic" or "material" are actual criticisms. When you're not subject to the scrutiny of scientific method, falsifiability or any peer review or metastudies -- well, you can just make up anything you want, as long as it sounds catchy, pseudointellectual, and memorable.
Very nice series! I disagree in part with Baudrillard's point about democracy: there is a dialogue but unfortunately it's a very slow conversation and that's one of the aspects from Parliamentarian systems that make it quite superior to Presidential systems - the conversations is quicker than in Presidential regimes. BTW, have you heard o Jaron Lanier? He has some interesting points of view about social media. He was a pioneer of Virtual Reality - Google even bought one of his companies. I don't know if he ever read Baudrillard but he also talks about how realith through social media is nothing but a caricature of reality. I have an early Wired magazine where he talks about that - from the early 1990s.
it sounds to me like you're speaking of "wokism" as if that's really a thing, but i don't want to jump to conclusions about your intent as the examples you cite are definitely what one might rightfully call wokewashing. as to virtue signaling as people call it, when done by an individual, that may be a person who's halfway here, you dig? that could be a person who recognizes that something is wrong, and maybe as they learn, as we all learn we can bring our actions more in line with the change we want to see, and even horrible corporations attempting to take a more equitable public position, should definitely be called out for their double standards, the fact they even consider such tactics to be possibly beneficial shows that even they are aware people won't stand for these escalating systems of oppression forever, so yes we should be very vigilant against co-opting, as it always happens, but we mustn't stay blind, everything we need is right here, if it wasn't all locked up. we need to use whatever we can to build something new, something they don't own, a structure which resists ownership
"There's no Marxist theory of media" funny that Marx was a journalist, Spencer Leonard edited a whole collection about Marx the journalist, which is the only way to know Marx's thoughts on media.
Such a profound video. And this was such a profound quote: "Social media apps are prefabricated forms of pseudo-communication. Rather than enabling peoeple to freely play with one another, these apps play with their users."
If you do not control the genie in the bottle, it will control you.
@@thenowchurch6419it's constructed to control you like hypnosis
you aren't born with strong will either not whole time conscious mind
"Nothing is ever the mere substance of what it appears to be"
If this is "pseudo-communication", what is "communication" and what seperates the two?
I pressed "like" on this video to sincerely and authentically express my enjoyment of the lecture.
Here’s one for the algorithm, doc!
21:18 Love and Basketball in a video
David Graeber said that he would always prefer Debord to Baudrillard. He thought it was too easy to read Baudrillard and feel a certain self-satisfaction in your own passivity, whereas Debord could never be interpreted as anything but a call to action.
Kinda holds up to Baudrillard’s Agony of Power, where he basically equates intelligence to a refusal to both dominate and be dominated. Appealing but ultimately a sort of comfortable limbo outside of time and conflict. In a way theres an appeal to Baudrillard in how he describes forces almost sublimely insurmountable.
@@tellurianapostle Baudrillard is not far from Zizek's Bartleby politics of "I prefer not to".
Source? I’d love to read that
@@Rawapplesauce Can't find it.
Yes, this is the correct response for any Marxist true believer (whether I am or not depends on my mood that day) but I think Baudrillard has a melancholic literary sensibility that is enjoyable to read as a sort of bourgeois coffee table book.
Hyperreally loving this series
Hey, just wanted to say thank you for making these videos. You're the only person on YT who is capable of turning CT into digestible videos, for me anyway. Appreciate u.
Isn't it stunning how much of postmodern thought seems like it gets captured by a Gramscian view of hegemony? We can think ourselves into all sorts of strange places, but the moment we submit our supposed novel formulations of 'the problem' we're just offering up another avenue for our resistance to be subsumed, repackaged, and sold back to our peers for its defanged aesthetic value alone. It's for this reason I largely agree with a lot of what many people would call postmodern (i.e. the Frankfurt school primarily, though ofc that's not all) in terms of its descriptive value, yet I can't help but feel like trying to draw prescriptions from it can lead so easily to nihilism and despair. Successful acts of resistance aren't easily written down or described, which is why doing praxis is not just the key to making ANY kind of difference, but it also keeps yourself grounded and with your eyes cast away from the abyss
"Immense retardation" has now been added to my vocabulary.
So excited for the Lumann episode :)
I recently reread William S Burroughs' Cities of the Red Night Trilogy and in a lot of ways it feels like a coming to terms with his earlier ideas of "open media subversion" (as in The Electronic Revolution) in a now more critical lens ala Baudrillard. With Burroughs it was less about "mass media" and more about all communication. In The Electronic Revolution he talks about the ideas of using cut-ups, and disinformation (basically modern meme warfare) to dismantle control and power structures, however by the time of this trilogy about a decade later he's realized those same structures can use those techniques. The first book ends with the implication that his novel is an attempt to dismantle control/language by using the tools of control/language and that at best he can hope for tearing a hole in the universe that someone else can step through.
Your videos always manage to be spectacularly concise, in the best sense of the word.
"the subversive act is produced like a gesture" There's a phoniness in society now that is hard for me to describe in my own words, but I think this quote gets it. Maybe I am mourning the loss of authenticity and unwilling to accept the new way of profilicity.
Agreed. I've had the same feeling for several years now, but it got much more intense after 2020. This is the best short and pithy verbal formulation of it I've come across so far.
|"the subversive act is produced like a gesture" There's a phoniness in society now that is hard for me to describe in my own words
the Age of Irony
/just sayin
Near my home, someone has written on a wall, in relation to Palestine: “If you do nothing, you are complicit”. That person has freed himself from his stated responsibility, simply by writing on a wall! It isn’t authentic, the writer isn’t interested in authentic actions that will actually change things; the writer just want to appear to be on ‘the right side’. That’s The Spectacle at work.
It seems to me like Baudrillard's critique of mass media can be applied to any kind of medium of communication, including simple face-to-face exchanges in everyday language
After all language is also a system with finite rules within which you need to produce whatever it is you want to say
Yes. Exactly. It's one of the first things you learn as a logician. The difference between a representation of something and the thing itself. You can also learn, elsewhere, that all ideas and theories are abstractions from reality. That is, approximations of reality-or something like that-but definitely not to be confused with actual reality.
That said, I think there's something to be said for the prefabricated nature of these systems and their capacity for self-replication.
Failing to explain the difference is one of the many flaws this video has. It offered but the most basic - and I mean *basic* - introduction to Baudrillard. I have a video on my channel that goes more into depth, but I might as well briefly explain it here: First of all, Baudrillard does not view language as a finite system, something that becomes clear when reading the chapter on poetry from "Symbolic exchange and death", or any other musing of his on Saussure's late obsession with anagrammes. Second, to understand simulation, simulacra, the code, etc. one needs to understand symbolic exchange as its counterpart. Superficial videos like this one choose to ignore it for some reason, perhaps because it's not what Baudrillard is known for... Failing to give the most fascinating definition of hyperreality, i.e. the more real than the real itself, produced another head-scratcher in me.
Of course, the last part of the video is spot on, in the sense that, yes - Baudrillard was a nostalgic sucker for "authenticity"; but without it, what's your basis for criticizing, and more importantly, understanding capitalism?
Yeah, so in a way he seems to be saying that communication is impossible?
@@RydSpynSo how does Baudrillard claim that language isn't a finite system?
And now a 24/7 (social) media feed is at everyone's finger tips 24/7 - the hyperreality(s) intensifies. And all of the mediums of communication exchange are in there.
These lectures are pure gold for my mind. Thank you very much. I can not wait for the next episode. I recommend Prof. Moeller's book "Luhmann Explained: From Souls to Systems".
lol, the character for wall "牆" hung on the wall. nice
Of all of the “postmodernists”, Baudrillard almost definitely my favorite thinker, even if I have major disagreements with his renunciations of the importance of “modes of production”, especially where late in life he seems to think we’ve moved beyond the capitalist mode, or at least beyond it’s importance.. I’d have loved to see his thoughts had he lived to see the 2008 crashes, and the political economic landscape since then…
Still, he had a lot of fascinating insights where he pretty much hit the nail on the head, especially on the future of media.. He might have been a bit too nihilistic in his response to the phenomena he described, or at least I definitely get that from his work (which I’m not very well read on tbf), but he unfortunately was all too accurate in terms of the description itself (though again, I think his dismissal of “modes/production” and the material went too far, perhaps a reaction to his younger Marxist dreams imploding).
Some complimentary reading: Propaganda by Jacques Ellul and Program or be Programmed by Douglas Ruskoff.
Your lectures/explanations are so well structured and easy to digest no matter the topic. The visual material helps as well. Thank you so much!
It would be an overstatement to see mass media as only normalizing in the negative sense that Baudrillard does. It is also norm creating and valorizing. Social media has its own feedback loop that potentially opens the conversational space and meta context where it can be understood rather than simply mirror itself.
This is a fascinating explanation of Baudrillard's media theory.
I wonder what Baudrillard would say about the current large language model AI systems. They are an amazing implementation of symbols that have no relation to any objects outside of them and by pure self-referential combination, generate something that most people (including their "creators", as far as they exist) cannot distinguish from "real" communication and intelligence. It is fascinating to what extent these models get away with generating something that looks like it is referencing "reality" without having ANY reference or understanding of the reality they are supposed to represent. I remember, back in the 80s, when I studied AI for a short time, how it was still mostly assumed that we'd have to have the systems have some kind of model of reality, in order for them to be able to "talk" about reality or make any sense about it. Yet, at this point we completely did away with this outdated notion in the generative AI models we employ.
It makes me wonder if this is so easy for AI models, because culturally, our "real reality" already has become hyperreality in the sense of Baudrillard's description, and if that is why we cannot distinguish AI output from human interaction, or if there really never was a "real reality", and AI is just showing us this more clearly, as some philosophers now seem to claim (i.e. simulation hypothesis, etc. --then again, is it just a cultural expression of our age, that people seem to be willing to believe this at this time?)
Reality is a modern concept. Another construct. Reinforced by the reality principle of science. It must be continually re-reified. Thus the degeneration by copies into hyperreality. Until we realize that it was always copies without reference. And thus the quote; “The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.”
The way AI puts out jargons without caring if it knows the meaning or consequence or the feelings of audience reminds me just like some career politicians and media broadcasting personality. They knew those words ("liberty", "greatness, etc.) incite excitement and loyalty, perhaps by seeing how other people have successfully deploy them; but they do not care the strict academic meaning behind them, or how they are going to put them into actual practice. They are just there to get votes. Similar to how Chatgpt just there to get more of your prompts and feedback and data.
And so since the tricks works for politicians, it makes sense for ChatGPT to be profitable, too.
Artificial communication devices like Chat GTP is a simulation of a general peer
I don't think it is or could possibly be true that the language models' symbols have "no relation to any objects outside of them". I think what you really mean is that the computers themselves don't "understand" what those relations are and choose how to configure sentences based on statistical models as opposed to how we choose to configure sentences. But it's probably also the case that we choose how to communicate based on something like statistical models and not just on how words relate to physical objects. We say things that are most commonly said in the environments we inhabit because those are the things the people to whom we're talking will most likely understand. That's effectively a statistical model. The AI language models are working on the same principles. That works pretty well in many cases. But the reason why AI models sometimes say crazy things that sound completely off the wall is the same reason why very isolated people often say crazy things that sound completely off the wall when they're in groups of people: because they don't have the experience necessary to fill in the blanks that statistical modelling inherently leaves.
@@naythaniel Well no: I actually do mean that they don't have any relations to the objects they represent. I am not a real expert anymore since it's been a long time that I was actively involved in anything relating to AI, but from my understanding, the language models work by building multi-dimensional maps of words and phrases, in which words and phrases used together are closer to each other in the various dimensions while unrelated words are farther apart, etc. The maps contain ONLY the words. They contain ONLY the symbols. When we looked at modeling human intelligence back in the 1980s we mostly thought that we had to allow the computer to construct a model of reality itself--yes, of course that would in some way also be a model of symbolic representations, but the representations would relate to the objects themselves: So we would see if the computer could basically build an internal 3-D model where a ball would be represented by a virtual 3D-ball and then the computer could "understand" and predict the behavior of a real ball based on the behavior of the ball in its model. That's how it would then be able to form true statements about the ball. That simply isn't the case at all with LLM. There, only the WORD "ball" exists. And the computer can talk "intelligently" about balls, without having any representation or concept of what a "ball" is, outside of language. For example, while I am not 100% sure why hands are such a problem for AI art, it does make sense that AI can easily draw 6-fingered and otherwise deformed hands: It has no concept of what hands are, their functions, etc. A system from the 80s that otherwise would be thousands of times less intelligent, would have no problem drawing hands with the correct numbers of digits (if it can draw them at all) because the actual shape and function of a hand would be part of its library of objects.
There is of course a question if we humans have any conception of anything outside of symbolic language, and if what we do is really different from AI. Personally I think there is a mountain of evidence that we do process information very differently and that our conceptions lie much deeper than language--but people do disagree about that.
You're so underrated man, why don't you have more subs? Friggin TH-cam am I right?
"more subs, more problems." - Notorious B.I.G
@3g0st Being underrated is a blessing.
Edit: especially when money doesn't pull your strings.
lavender does actually have plenty of commercial uses and is sold as a product, it can be turned into to tea, also used in cooking, essential oils for skin care and perfumes, scented candles, incense sticks, soap, shampoo, bouquet of flowers, plus flowers have been planted for pure ornamental use for thousands of years, long before the camera was invented.
Also, the reason it has social media appeal is because it has aesthetic appeal. People plant lavender for it’s aesthetic appeal all the time. Why would that stop being the case just because they anticipate *foreigners* would also find it appealing? I’m glad I’m not the only person who was confused by that example.
he didnt argue that it isnt but that this certain spot is only made for esthethics
really appreciate the concepts explained here, thank you
I identify heavily with your reading of Baudrillard on media. It reflects ideas that i have developed both from personal experience and from marxist teachings. The point where i differ is on his "hopelessness". In his "hopelessness" he also asserts marxist theories on media as wrong, but contradicts himself. I think this is a bad reading on his part because the view that media is a conversation is not wrong. Almost all communication is not one sided.
Mass media as it exists today IS a functional object, but even in it's function as a tool of control his ideas are proven wrong. Even control must be mediated and directed.
This reciprocation IS achieved even in todays in mass media, it's just not your voice/interests that are speaking back, its your consumption and levels of dissent. We are manipulated. I believe this "hopelessness" is just a reflection of his pessimism. A true hopelessness of ideological options for him. And, in my opinion, is evidence of his ignorance of Marxist ideas on media.
Mass media IS a conversation between the masses' ideas and the capitalists as a class and that whole class' relationship to the mass media owner. Their relationships and interests speak through it, and their institutions listen to the response. This is basic marxism. Baudrillard's "hopelessness" i think stems from his ideas that marxism is authoritarian. But authoritarianism of an individual is something no Marxist backs.
This conversation must be kept going by identifying through which technological, and social means can the proletariat both have mass media and control it.
It is the job of the proletariat with Marxist tech and social professionals to develop these networks and uphold majority democracy, under all circumstances of social development.
This can already be exemplified by taking into account distributed networks (like Mastodon, Matrix, and others) where an accountable authority could control dissemination channels, and reception can be controlled by receivers by consent of usage. Further proof of origin can determine identity.
Don't listen to what does not represent you and be able to control what does. This representation shall be direct, through accountable representatives, etc. The whole chain of trust and accountability directly traceable back to the source and consented upon. Neighborhood, local, municipal, regional, provincial, state, etc.
T'would be interesting to see a video on Sloterdijk's Critique of Cynical Reason, as it relates to profile-building (and the creation of ostensibly 'critical' content).
Having read most of Baudrillard’s 50 published books I can tell you with certainty he harbored no nostalgia the least of which is “authenticity nostalgia”. I can see how he could be misinterpreted as nostalgic. *see reversibility and symbolic exchange
Yeah, this is a really bad reading of Baudrillard tbh, first time I felt disappointed with this channel tbh
Hello! Do you have a list of references with the ideas of Baudrillard cited in this video? Thank you! Great video
The Gulf War Did Not Take Place; Symbolic Exchange and Death
Will you ever talk about Michael Parenti and his book Inventing Reality?
Thank you for the great video and this series! I am a visual artist who has written a couple of essays as part of my course, mostly about Benjamin, Debord and Baudrillard. It's been great discovering your channel and your analysis. I'd like to ask where should I read more about the concept of Profilicity for example. I guess the first step is by reading your book? Thank you for your time!
Jean Baudrillard was a trickster and a drama queen, yet he was so right some times. This is why I love him so much.
Thank you for inspiration professor. I just came up with the idea of display board for my TOK classroom.
Where can i find the bibliography of the quotes in this video?
Very informative, as always, but your characterization of Baudrillard as a drama queen could extend to the whole gamut of french philosophy: the tendency to hyperboly is a good example. However, you've caught Baudrillard, as it were, in his diapers. His future work tends to be writen in the same 'style' but with overt statements disavowing any kind of nostalgia for authenticity, even accusing marxism of being reactionary. He works out his theory of the media without any kind of 'valorizing' statements, he tries to be descriptive not prescriptive. I always enjoyed Baudrillard as I enjoyed Foucault: heaviliy involved in marxist critique, but without the incessant need for any kind of liberation theory -focusing on the descriptive power of marxism while leaving the messianic tendency behind.
Can you do an episode about love and sex under profilicity and hyperreality?
That would be just about the most depressing and dystopian thing!
Thank you! Fascinating.
Fantastic! Thank you.
Great talk!
Yooo this channel is one of those ones where you want to just jam with the creator!!
🙏
I would like to see your take on Zizek
Love this video, thanks
I feel that todays society has become exactly the opposite of what Baudrillard and Debord are saying. We now are the spectacle in the society of the spectacle, and society is gazing at us. The purpose of this is to measure our every activity in order to grind us up into data so that we may be best exploited as easily exchangeable commodities. We are like the nodes in a neural net, assigned weights by way of social media prompts as a means to generate the most profitable model that still maintains a level of social equilibrium that keeps society from collapsing. The Internet is the Empire's new Panopticon.
Brilliant analysis, elaborate on this,especially in relation to how young people are becoming way less convinced by US propaganda on the Israeli war in Gaza.
@@quadracept576 I think cynicism is too deep in western societies and stuck in farcical election cycles like another Trump Vs Biden in 2024.
I have more hope in Global South like France backing down from invading Niger in 2023 which was virtually a colony until a coup with widespread public support
"One Idea To Rule Them All: Reverse Engineering American Propaganda" by Michelle Stiles is highly recommended. It speaks of the five pillars of belief and how they are manipulated in the service of propaganda.
Yes, new video
16:32 “Imposing it’s code on society”.
This may be a stupid question, but would people self-censoring be an example of this? Many YTubers will *refuse* to use terms like suicide or sexual assault in their videos because they will lose monetization.
On Twitch, I know that people affiliated with the platform cannot interview or feature anyone banned from the site (even as a one-time guest!). Is that what J.B. means, or was he referring to something a few more levels up? Like, higher up in terms of dealing with groups and not the actions of individuals.
Thank you for all the thought provoking videos. A side question, what happened the last video you posted? I wanted to rewatch it and share it, but it seems to be taken down?
Thanks for posting.
love the ending. The "Smoking Kills" equivalent for all media platforms is a good start.
Is this comment part of the problem? Did i just take selfie by typing this?
Any actionable takeaway?
Media must be viewed as their predecessor, Language.
It is an immensely powerful and helpful tool that can also distort and destroy.
Thanks for your work!!
I'm really looking forward to the Chomsky video.
Doesn't Baudrillard reproduce notions of use value and exchange value in his privileging of reciprocity over hyperreality? Such as with the lavender field where exchange value determines its creation (for tourism), rather than use value (subsistence for the people who live there).
Cheers.
I cannot count how many times i have read or heard something deeply human, insightful, original, moving, produced by a stranger on the internet.
Even more difficult to count tge amount of empty calories I've consumed in the form of algorithmic sludge.
I wonder if these small glimpses of light matter in the end...
I can't help but think that Baudrillard merely extrapolated from Stuart Hall's Representation Theory: the understanding that there's no "real" to be misrepresented (all news is a conflagration of complex histories and events), but rather the medium itself operationally and notionally imparts an understanding. Mere hubris on his part that he claimed to be a progenitor of such ideas. Are you arguing a similar case with profilicity? That the profile is a curation-to-context, without substance behind it?
in any case, as with all positivistic French philosophy it negates change and dialecticism; a cursory investigation into media and its representation shows the cantilever of perception through changes in technology, and I imagine Brecht was making similar points through distantiation theory. During the active years of the FS, arguably one might have subscribed a form of monopoly capital to media (Freud's cousin was a big influence in ads, for example); but capital moves on, and is now more privatized. Where I think it might - in "re-presentation" essentialize is through reifying and amplifying the reification of - social relationships through a form of media-speak metonomy. "The Economy," or "Climate" are channelled often sans-agency, encouraging a voyeuristic idea of humanity's impending destruction for which it has no part to play. As such, viewers are encouraged to see themselves statically as markers of particular, unchanging values.
how does one becoe a professor in macau?
Another good one
Maybe I'm being reductive, but I don't see Baudrillard's hyperreality as much more insightful than Walter Lippmann's "pictures in our heads". "Public Opinion" was published all the way back in 1922 and was refreshingly unpretentious.
i wonder how would Baudrillard respond to social media and today public sphere
Please do a video on Fredric Jameson! I feel like he is the optimistic version of Baudrillard, but still has a similar level of Doomsaying
Im glad that Baudrillard had a change of heart later on in life about Marx's work. Both of their works are important.
Thought a lot about Baudrillards writing style and the way he conveys his idea or "theory", when i was reading "Precession of Simulacra". I came to the conclusion that he writes the way he thinks reality functions. He would contradict himself if he just wrote down a theory as a conceptual copy of reality in a logically sound way when at the same time he argued that this way of duplicating reality with signs isnt anymore (the cultural norm) - wouldn't he? In this era, the era of simulaton, (hyper) reality ermerges from the system of signs. There is just no reality anymore one can argue to have understood. So if he wants to convey his idea of hyperreality, he needs to do it the same way hyperreality functions: through simulation. And how does simulation operate? "Simulation is characterized by a precession of the model, of all the models based on the merest fact - the models come first, their circulation, orbital like that of a bomb, constitues the genuin magnetic field of the event. [...] This anticipation, this precession, this short circuit, this confusion of the fact with the model, is what allows each time for all possible interpretations, even the most contradictory - all true, in the sense that their truth is to be exchanged, in the image of the models from which they derive, in a generalized cycle." And that is how i understand Baudrillard: he somehow circles the fact of hyperreality by using different popular examples or simulakras like the space race, disneyland, the italian comunist party and so on; he gives hints without turning towards the term "hyperreality" and defining it negatively and positively. The whole essay "Precession of Simulacra" is itself a precession.
While money/ commodification is inherently alienating to this, I don't believe in a world where all art is always 100% in sync with its use/social value. In this utopia, how we value art would change yes, but people will always pressure artists for their work to serve an end.
13:32 While people wearing designer outfits to protests to post on social media *is* a thing, what about stuff like the Arab Spring? That was almost entirely facilitated by social media networks like FB.
Completely unrelated, but is that the first volume of the manga BLAME! we see in the background? If so, we might demand a video on the horror of algorithmically generated architecture =P
I think someone comments this every video.
@@gh0s1wav ahaha, first time I noticed! and i watch every video
I found your analysis excellent, in an area of 20th century philosophy that has greatly interested me for a long time.
I have a question, though I'm not sure you respond to them. As someone with more than a hobbyists interest in writing and music, I find myself very averse to sharing any of it online, as the medium is the message. But I see people like yourself posting thing like this online. Is there any use in trying to use these things in this way, or does any sincere effort get drowned out in the sea of mindless noise?
I think the construction of cyber tools are what the construction of the tv broadcasting structure was back in the day now the chip designs and software designs are the messages the media carries as once marshal mcluhan said about tv so we are just in the tunnel of our desires extended in electrons and magnets in chips and softwares.
Yes I agree with all of it.
Great vid
Recommend
8:14 If mass media always separates people, then why do fan communities exist? Plenty of people have gotten married or formed lifelong friendships because of their mutual obsession with a media product.
4:10 baudrillard had an stroke there lmao
I re-watched your response to Sam Harris and I am very curious what you think of the subreddit r/AmITheAsshole ?
It's a forum where people post stories of a personal conflict they had and people in the comments can morally judge the situation and choose "whose side to take", who was at fault (or in other words, who is "the asshole"). What does this mean from the perspective of language games or moral language? Clearly, when commenters are judging that the person posting is "the asshole", they are not suggesting that they should be punished by law, nor are they giving any concrete, practical solution on how to solve their conflict or telling them what they should do. But nonetheless it means something linguistically.
A second, somewhat tangentially related question is how you would analyze the discourse of human rights that started in the Enlightenment and has taken hold of our everyday relationships. For instance, when we're arguing with someone, we might tell them "You have no right to talk to me like that!", but clearly, we do not use the word "right" here to refer to legal/political rights.
Thank you very much in advance!
Subbed
yes baudrillard!
"Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication" - Simone Weil
Thanks for this comment - it provoked some reflection.
@@Unfunny_Username_389 dont thank me, Thank Simone! The reevaluation of all values is a good exercise - some guy with a mustasch
@@DeadEndFrog Can I ask you why you thought the quote was relevant here, though? Cheers
@@Unfunny_Username_389 Mostly to counter the points in the video, and keep the mind flexible.
I use (and maybe Even abuse) the quote to exempify how a supposed detrement can be used as a positive, which is supposed to counter the view people have on technology,
Not for technologys sake, because i mostly care about the next generations, and their Ability to use the technologys of today in any way they see fit.
Im not a blind optimist, but rather someone who likes to exercise my brain as to not fall into the same trap as evey old person does, saying the next generations are doomed, or that New technologys are bad.
Everything can be good and bad, its just about evaluation of values.
Ideology isnt important but people are.
Sorry for the flowery language
@@DeadEndFrog That's a good answer, thanks.
Thank you for another great episode! One question re "the simulation principle dominates the reality principle" : isn't this inherently Marxist in the sense of echoing Marx' social (socio-economic) being determining consciousness, where both 'social being' and 'consciousness' could be interpreted as hyperreal 'content'?
it's being caught in overload of stimulation
like when in nature you would rarely see anything red and yellow ripe for eating
and you would never see a saturated blue colour... now you get so much you end with insomnia
awesome episode, looking for the next one hoping you touch on the mind body problem.
Things like that makes me suspiscious of these projects to connect people to internet.
When I began reading about media, I started with Debord and Baudrillard... They blew my mind, but then I found McLuhan and found his works so much more fun and insightful. By his own admission, McLuhan didn't push theories or systems, but a mosaic of "probes"... Which I can really easily apply to my every day life.
And then again - there is no video about our uncle Gnoam Chomsky.
My rage is building up, professor
Gnome Chimpsky jumped the shark during Covid.
@@thadtuiol1717 he rides that shark like a raging bull
Chomsky is next you know. Although I don't think you'll like it much going by your tone.
@@ArawnOfAnnwn my tone is syncretistic, photosynthesizing corpuscula
vibrant, purple, fluid, but crude, cerebral perception of it's kaleidoscopic nature is that flare and echo of idolatry, but idolatrous resonance is just a mirage and sonic sclerotism, my dear parallelopipedic homunculus ganglion
Can you insult people with a toaster? With a smartphone? 0:1 for the smartphone? What does the philosopher sage say?
I know rainbows don't exist, yet that fact makes them no less mesmerizing.
I am skeptical of the usefulness of such a framework. Take the example of the flowers in China at the end being planted not for agricultural reasons but for attracting tourists: this kind of phenomena of a thing being used not for its implied purpose, but for what it represents, is not a new development in history, but a constant, guaranteed reality throughout all of human history. Think of a palatial garden being planted to represent grace or sophistication, or a wealthy business owner planting things to create specific associations and attract customers. If those flowers planted in China are "hyper real", then why aren't those situations?
Actually this phenomena can describe a vast array of social behaviors, imagine a tribe adopting another tribes symbols or clothing or art etc for reasons that are different then why the tribe they adopted these things from did so. To the original tribe these symbols meant one thing, maybe they represented specific animals or landmarks, but the tribe adopting those symbols may have no knowledge of the animals/landmarks the symbols represent, but instead adopted them because of their own appreciation and conception of those symbols, disconnected from what they represent. You can then imagine further tribes interacting with these tribes and adopting and modifying these symbols just on the basis of how these symbols relate to other symbols, instead of what they originally represented. So is that not a "simulation"?
So that's my point, it seems to me that a great, great deal of behavior/technology throughout all of history (rather than being a distinctly modern phenomenon as Baudrillard seems to claim) can be described in Baudrillard's terms, so where is the explanatory power in this framework? Have others pointed this out? Am I confused?
I believe you can always find correlations or examples of problems that are firmly modern in the past. History is immanent in its movement; the new thing is always already in labor in the old thing. So yes, those examples you speak of can be analyzed through Baudrillard's point of view, however you must agree this type of representation without original (i.e. a simulacra) was not as prevalent or widespread as it is today with the advance of capitalistic media, as well as the fall of communism that lead to generalized pessimism and lack of imagination (Capitalism Realism and all that).
The key difference is that with the proliferation of mass media images in the 20th century, the reality principle has been completely left behind, in that our perceptions and desires are mediated by images that tell us what to desire and how to perceive the world around us. When we think of love, we think of romantic movies/images. When it comes to sex, most people see porn images before they actually experience sex, so that creates the expectations, desires and an idea of how sex is done generally. This is unprecedented when compared to previous human history which was never so awash with images as it is now. And these images don't refer to something in reality, but other images in a signifying chain, and so what happens is you get a precession of simulacra, where reality ends up representing the sign, rather than the other way around.
Where do these theories apply now in a system where media is interactive and socialised, but still formed around capitalist domination?
yes yes and more yeses
All these media theories suddenly make the Matrix more interesting to me. The 1988 film “They Live” was also a highly distorted film based on Situationist theory. I agree with Braudilliard that Semiotics is vital to proper media theory. The issue for socialists is whether media has revolutionary and liberating potential, or if it is a system of social control altogether, beyond the capitalist system’s use of it. To me sign, symbols, language etc… is how we make the idealist realm materially manifest
Aleister Crowley and other genius occultists have dealt with the same issues many times over.
The fact that Language, signs and words can liberate but also enslave and destroy.
We must learn what it is and how to develop the virtue to use is wisely.
carsick cars? nice
In what kind of broken society can someone declare themselves ‘an influencer’, despite having no experience whatsoever in education, business, politics or publicity?
Calls for an "authentic" situation before some kind of fall always make me suspicious. In this concrete case, I have trouble imagining "true social interaction". There is a time for lectures, a time for podium discussions, a time for videos and a time to talk behind closed doors. Only among friends without intervening institutions or materiel interest is true egalitarian communication experienced. And even there vanity & shame might intervene and stop a topic short. How is Baudrilliard postulating to do away with vanity, shame, vaingloriousness, material interest and all other internal as well as external influences that guide interaction among humans, even equals? Especially, if he laments the alienation from material reality: is not this material reality that impoverished most interactions of the past? Is it more authentic to "discuss" who has to get water (9/10 times the weaker person) than who you intend to vote for in the next election (even if simulated, indeed a choice the water-carrier did not have)?
Interesting.
The little I have seen of Baudrillard , he always seems way too self aggrandizing, considering the lack of concrete evidence for his claims.
I've felt for years that, in young, internet savvy, nerdy, male dominated circles there is this oppressive and hidden ideology that has arisen that is tricky to pin down. But you see it in the same kinds of responses people give over and over again thay get mass agreement. Attitudes and modes of speech that are well established in online conversations often sound completely insane if spoken in the real world.
And indeed, when I on occasion get into arguments with people, and try to behave as I would in the real world the response is often "Is this your first time using the internet?".
Its because communicating on the internet and real life is not the same, especially if you use a public forum. You have to take into account that you maybe talking to anyone in the USA maybe even the world. You need to do clarify so much more so that your statement doesnt offend or is minterpreted. You have to adjust to completely different social rules and expectations.
What kinds of responses are you talking about?
the only thing i can think of is the kind of 'meme reply' that has exploded recently e.g. "bro [verb][skull emoji]" but i suspect you're referring to something else?
Braudillard was prophetic!
"The only permanence in life is longing." amg
I hope this guy pulls apart BHL or Michel Onfray.
The amount of hubris in philosophers like Baudrillard who really think that "empirical" or "economic" or "material" are actual criticisms. When you're not subject to the scrutiny of scientific method, falsifiability or any peer review or metastudies -- well, you can just make up anything you want, as long as it sounds catchy, pseudointellectual, and memorable.
Who else is watching this on his/her toaster?
Most black metal is recorded on potatoes. Anyway, typing this from my dishwasher.
babeeeeee
Very nice series! I disagree in part with Baudrillard's point about democracy: there is a dialogue but unfortunately it's a very slow conversation and that's one of the aspects from Parliamentarian systems that make it quite superior to Presidential systems - the conversations is quicker than in Presidential regimes.
BTW, have you heard o Jaron Lanier? He has some interesting points of view about social media. He was a pioneer of Virtual Reality - Google even bought one of his companies. I don't know if he ever read Baudrillard but he also talks about how realith through social media is nothing but a caricature of reality. I have an early Wired magazine where he talks about that - from the early 1990s.
it sounds to me like you're speaking of "wokism" as if that's really a thing, but i don't want to jump to conclusions about your intent as the examples you cite are definitely what one might rightfully call wokewashing. as to virtue signaling as people call it, when done by an individual, that may be a person who's halfway here, you dig? that could be a person who recognizes that something is wrong, and maybe as they learn, as we all learn we can bring our actions more in line with the change we want to see, and even horrible corporations attempting to take a more equitable public position, should definitely be called out for their double standards, the fact they even consider such tactics to be possibly beneficial shows that even they are aware people won't stand for these escalating systems of oppression forever, so yes we should be very vigilant against co-opting, as it always happens, but we mustn't stay blind, everything we need is right here, if it wasn't all locked up. we need to use whatever we can to build something new, something they don't own, a structure which resists ownership
"There's no Marxist theory of media" funny that Marx was a journalist, Spencer Leonard edited a whole collection about Marx the journalist, which is the only way to know Marx's thoughts on media.