2501
I overshared in my previous post to illustrate that it’s not AT ALL surprising to me that people would find the Timsona grating; on the other hand, for precisely that reason, it is surprising to me that Timsona is the thing people want to talk most about! Tim begins the Cyberpunk video with a long exhortation to remember that you’re in control of your experience of his video—CYOA gimmick foregrounds that—and are people just forgetting that lesson? or is Tim the person whom they don’t seem to much like the thing they want to think about? If the latter, why?
he presents the image of this imperiously judgmental, nigh-superhuman character whose goading inaccessibility all but demands our fascination
I guess I’m saying that I don’t really feel this compulsion; and insofar as I do feel it, it comes from the objective conditions of my own life and not from any power Tim has or could conceivably have over me. The fact that Tim owns a $1000 Earthbound jacket means something to him, and watching him express that meaning sets gears turning productively in my own dang head; of course the fact that he owns this jacket means something different to me, sitting here in the conditions of my OWN life, but since I haven’t the faintest idea how to hold any asshole responsible for these conditions! I’m not going to hold Tim responsible!
I’ll watch F is for Fake and report back (my roommate has it on his bookshelf); short of that, my only point of reference for what you call “observations about simulacra and cultural decay under late capitalism” are Baudrillard, Marcuse, maybe some other dudes… I always understood those critiques as basically negative: here’s what capitalism can’t do anymore, here’s what it’s not even conceivably capable of, which just seems to lead inexorably to Fukuyamaish apolitical despair. What made me think about Marx in Tim’s video is the positive element to what he’s talking about; the fact that the genuine article really does still get made, and that authenticity still means something to Tim. For Marx the point of politics was to seize control of the capitalist machine and redeem its (as yet unrealized) potential; a positive critique, not a negative one.
The meaning Tim that Tim attributes to the “authentic replica” of a bomber jacket is totally unavailable to me in my own life; is that because Tim is wrong, or is being ironic, and that meaning can’t actually be recovered? (which leads to: resignation, resentment, negative critique, throwing your body against the gears of the machine to make it stop) Or am I tasked to make that meaning available? (positive critique and the seizure of political power; or, falling short of that, getting rich; or, falling short of that, self-hatred and the yearning to forget about the past)
I don’t have a political program to offer anyone here, I doubt Tim does either, just spitballing