Let’s do without human presidential prospects and conventions, and replace both the prospects and their supporters with idealized AI fabrications.
The Program Needs To Go On, however I’m not actually taking pleasure in the show. One reason that is I Keep Altering Channels However It’s Still the Exact Same Program, i.e. the programs and marketing are now homogenized. Another is Even the Aliens Are Uninteresting, i.e. whatever is so sensationalized and hyped that we are now desensitized to it all.
A third factor is our culture has refined the craft of self-parody, rendering parody difficult. To parody foolish excess, we exaggerate a two-patty burger into a four-patty hamburger: oops, they’ve already hyped four-patty burgers.
To parody the fossilization of American politics, we produce a parody in which 77-year olds are the vibrant young-uns in the halls of power. Dang, the halls of power are already choked with more senior than the USSR’s creaky leadership right before it collapsed in a load.
To parody the homogenization and infantilization of Hollywood, we develop a parody in which the dominant “tentpoles” producing constant profits are constantly multiplying comics superheroes. Darn, that’s currently the case.
To parody the media’s desperate competitors for “engagement,” we create a parody in which everything ends up being a global existential crisis. Heh, there’s no chance to parody anything that’s currently been driven to excess via the proficiency of self-parody.
Irony has also been shown the door. The core dynamic of the modern world isn’t– as is continuously hyped– development; it’s marketing, encouraging someone to move worth— cash, commitment, votes, engagement– for something (tangible or intangible) without regard to the eventual expenses and effects of the exchange.
The irony is credibility is faked to make the sale. However the scams of mimicking credibility to make the sale is now so embedded, so common, that the irony is lost: we are residing in a Philip K. Dick story come to life in which real girls fabricating fake lives of beauty and luxury to enhance their Only Fans earnings are now taking on digitized fictional girls that are idealized variations (like Barbie) of the sexually compelling female.
In a culture removed of irony and parody, a motion picture based upon an idealized female doll presented 64 years ago gains $1 billion in sales and sparks countless earnest cultural commentaries. Barbie as a marketing phenomenon has naturally progressed: idealized male Ken was introduced a few years later on, together with an ever-expanding line of ethnic Barbies. Barbie is clearly an “authentic” cultural icon.
If the aliens are seeing us, one hopes they have a refined sense of absurdist humor.
As for AI: what’s marketed as “expert system” is certainly artificial, but it isn’t remotely intelligent. By imitating mankind’s natural language abilities, ChatAI programs make a marketing claim of authenticity that is totally fraudulent. There is no “there there” in regards to understanding, predictive acumen or any other form of what when passed for intelligence.
The whole point of this phony AI is to automate the processes of marketing, homogenization and buzz, to improve and lower the costs of fabricating authenticity to make the sale. As in a Philip K. Penis story, where the protagonist ends up asking if he remains in reality a robotic and not a human as he assumed– our own authenticity must be questioned, as what we presume is “the genuine me” ends up being nothing however a jumble of marketing cliches that checks out like an obituary: he was a Steelers fan, enjoyed the music of Nashville, was an avid BBQer, etc.
With parody and irony both enfeebled, the program is now tediously stuffy. What can we say about a show in which the once-compelling topic of alien visitations to Earth are minimized to another dull congressional hearing on CSPAN, a parody in which the possibility of an alien presence is decreased to ashes while whatever is being marketed at the moment is hyped as the “crisis” you must take notice of?
It’s impossible to parody what is currently an absurdist parody. Think about the continuous adverts for low-quality processed/ fast-food in which euphoria can be yours (“this oily sugar-bomb tastes great!”) for a low, low price and the rest of the adverts, which are for pharmaceutical medications for all the illness developed by consuming low-grade processed/ fast-food, ads that consist of an eye-watering list of side-effects that is difficult to parody, as it already includes “and in uncommon cases, death.”
Hmm. So we can end from metabolic and other lifestyle conditions in the pursuit of infantile “it tastes so excellent!” or we can end from the supposed remedy, after suffering from a list of side-effects that would certify as prohibited protocols of torture. Absurdist paradox, you are now live, action!
So desperate are we for authentic authenticity that “the real thing” ends up being a tempting marketing platform. You may have come across a young woman’s artful videos of her preparing genuine food in a beautiful rural setting in China. Her name is Li Ziqi. Her videos have logged almost 3 billion views. They are impressive for their structure and for her culinary, gardening and handicraft abilities, which are clearly real. She brought the mythology of an authentic life close to the Earth into being, and the international desperation for some shred of unpackaged, unprogrammed, unmarketed authenticity produced her large audience.
Sadly, her authentic abilities were packaged so entrancingly with a business purpose. Thanks to a marketing deal, her international audience blew up, as did the sales of her line of products in China. She suddenly stopped releasing new videos two years ago, and it seems legal/ industrial disputes were at the heart of her disappearance: Li Ziqi’s Online Pastoral Poetics: Countless people registered for her vision of an idyllic rural presence. Who was she, and why did she vanish? (New Yorker)
It’s skeptical that many of her millions of audiences actually wanted to spend hours tending gardens and materializing food from real produce; they discovered satisfaction in the folklore, not the reality. This is the issue with authenticity: it’s requiring and needs discipline and an inner life unsusceptible to marketing.
To grasp why the show is no longer satisfying, we turn when again to Philip K. Cock, who used an insightful description of credibility in How to Build a Universe That Does Not Fall Apart Two Days Later:
“The genuine human is one of us who intuitively understands what he must refrain from doing, and, in addition, he will balk at doing it. He will decline to do it, even if this lowers fear effects to him and to those whom he enjoys. This, to me, is the ultimately brave characteristic of common individuals; they state no to the autocrat and they calmly take the effects of this resistance. Their deeds might be small, and almost always undetected, unmarked by history. Their names are not kept in mind, nor did these authentic human beings anticipate their names to be kept in mind. I see their credibility in an odd method: not in their desire to perform great heroic deeds. but in their quiet refusals. In essence, they can not be compelled to be what they are not.”
In conclusion, I use an idea: let’s dispense with human governmental prospects and conventions, and change both the candidates and their supporters with idealized AI fabrications. Thanks to AI, the phony candidates can participate in practical phony arguments, and their phony advocates can clap, cheer and jeer on cue.
In a world stripped of authenticity, paradox and parody, such an alternative makes marketing sense. Let’s get the program rolling, and make the sale. It’s just a guess, obviously, however I think the aliens would authorize.
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