The Internet: Then vs.

Now
“Capital, having reached its maximal capability for flight, sets off a process of
escalation. The vision that defines the neoliberal moment is one according to which “all
events and situations in the world of life can be assigned a market value.” The process
is also characterized by the production of indifference; the frenzied codification of
social life according to norms, categories, and numbers; and various operations of
abstraction that claim to rationalize the world on the basis of corporate logic. Capital,
notably finance capital, is haunted by a baneful double and defines itself as unlimited in
terms of both ends and means. It does more than just dictate its own temporal regime.
Having taken as its responsibility the “fabrication of all relations of filiation,” it seeks to
reproduce itself “on its own” in an infinite series of structurally insolvent debts.” (3)

--Achille Mbembe, Critique of Black Reason

The Internet: Then vs. Now
“Capital, having reached its maximal capability for flight, sets off a process of escalation.
The vision that defines the neoliberal moment is one according to which “all events and
situations in the world of life can be assigned a market value.” The process is also
characterized by the production of indifference; the frenzied codification of social life
according to norms, categories, and numbers; and various operations of abstraction
that claim to rationalize the world on the basis of corporate logic. Capital, notably
finance capital, is haunted by a baneful double and defines itself as unlimited in terms of
both ends and means. It does more than just dictate its own temporal regime. Having
taken as its responsibility the “fabrication of all relations of filiation,” it seeks to
reproduce itself “on its own” in an infinite series of structurally insolvent debts.” (3)

--Achille Mbembe, Critique of Black Reason

The Internet: Then vs. Now
“Let us dare, then, to make the following hypothesis: the raw materials of today’s
production process are excitation, erection, ejaculation, and pleasure and feelings
of self-satisfaction, omnipotent control, and total destruction. The real stake of
capitalism today is the pharmacopornographic control of subjectivity, whose
products are serotonin, techno-blood and blood products, antibiotics, estradiol,
techno-milk, alcohol and tobacco, morphine, insulin, cocaine, living human eggs,
citrate of sildenafil (Viagra), and the entire material and virtual complex
participating in the production of mental and psychosomatic states of excitation,
relaxation, and discharge, as well as those of omnipotent and total control. In these
conditions, money itself becomes an abstract, signifying psychotropic substance.”

--Paul B. Preciado, Testo Junkie

“A sensibility (as distinct from an idea) one of the hardest things to talk
about; but there are special reasons why Camp, in particular, has never
been discussed. It is not a natural mode of sensibility, if there be any such.
Indeed the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and
exaggeration. And Camp is esoteric – something of a private code, a badge
of identity, even among small urban cliques. […] Though I am speaking
about sensibility only – and about a sensibility that, among other things,
converts the serious into the frivolous these are grave matters. ”

-- Susan Sontag, “Notes on Camp”

1. To start very generally: Camp is a certain mode of aestheticism. It is one way of
seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. That way, the way of Camp, is not in
terms of beauty, but in terms of the degree of artifice, of stylization.

2. To emphasize style is to slight content, or to introduce an attitude which is

neutral with respect to content. It goes without saying that the Camp sensibility is
disengaged, depoliticized -- or at least apolitical.

3. Not only is there a Camp vision, a Camp way of looking at things. Camp is as
well a quality discoverable in objects and the behavior of persons. There are
"campy" movies, clothes, furniture, popular songs, novels, people, buildings. . . .
This distinction is important. True, the Camp eye has the power to transform
experience. But not everything can be seen as Camp. It's not all in the eye of the
beholder.
10. Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It's not a lamp, but a "lamp"; not a woman, but a "woman." To
perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role. It is the farthest extension, in
sensibility, of the metaphor of life as theater.

11. Camp is the triumph of the epicene style. (The convertibility of "man" and "woman," "person" and "thing.")
But all style, that is, artifice, is, ultimately, epicene. Life is not stylish. Neither is nature.

12. The question isn't, "Why travesty, impersonation, theatricality?" The question is, rather, "When does
travesty, impersonation, theatricality acquire the special flavor of Camp?
“I hate people” - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioHuBsT6nA8

Pico bio
Juxtaposition: two contrasting elements placed together or near each other; two elements placed together
that might not logically make sense and for effect

Related to: contradiction, paradox, parataxis

Juxtaposition in IRL is used to:
• create and mimic effects of internet and social media
aesthetics:
• Nonlinearity
• Digital chaos
• Overwhelming/overflowing of information
• Distraction, disorientation, attention deficit/attention
seeking, glitches, scrambles, “jumpiness”, lightness,
brevity, humour, fun
Juxtaposition occurs in content and form
• Light, humorous poetic narrative can turn into a dark,
serious one
• But also at the level of the line by using enjambment:
… Today a roach
died under my keyboard.
When I sat down
to play, I saw a leaf
and bent to pick
it up. I touched the stem
but it was antennae
and I screamed
bloody murder
and Jess ran in
with a napkin, scooped
it up to heaven.
Juxtaposition in IRL is ALSO used to:
• Juxtapose the serious and the comedic; notably native
American issues, queer issues – these often interrupt
the flow of the text (ex. P12)
• Death
• Suicide
• Loneliness
• Lack of love and self-love
• This juxtaposition mimics the reality of being on social
media: your feed can be “interrupted” by jarring
content, news content that is full of grief or sadness
Seriousness and pain are thus expressed in the internet
aesthetics of the long poem.

Also plays with “crush” or “crushing” as a poetics;

• Crush as in to be squashed with extreme pressure and
• Crush in terms of desire
• How is love and desire crushing?
• How are crushes short spurts of desire, mistaken love,
crushes that move from person to person (also flightly
and variable like the internet aesthetics)
• How is crush campy?
… Muse
texts me don’t respond
don’t respond don’t
respond don’t spondee
respond don’t respond
Then text five things in a
row and fucking kill myself.
I mean my phone. Delete
Facebook because okay just
because in general just bc
you hate yourself
doesn’t mean yr allowed
to be an asshole. Stop
fucking posting about
Klonopin, or cutting yourself,
or throwing u—Save it
for a shitty poem like a normal
wretch. Boundaries
aren’t cages. Meter
is a fine flute.
But maybe nobody wants
to hear you. Maybe
you are just an asshole. (15)
I mean, you never
really treat me that
well. We just get com-
fortable with each other
at a time when comfort
something come stop the shaking
is more important than
privacy So I turn my phone
back on, text Michael
I want to tell you a story. This
is a traditional story,
this story comes our
way from the ancestors.
This story is my story,
the story of summer,
and nine stories tall
grow the dendrical shafts
of perception. Rooftop
parties r the payday
of summer n I tell Max
Just so you know, when bird
flu comes—chops humanity
to a stump—I’m going
to be great. I hope you’ll b
too :-) Tradition is a cage,
Like an Edward Curtis pic
of high copper cheekbones—
totemic, fabricated.
Fear cages, feeds sec-
rets. Faith is a privacy, a
thing you don’t have to
explain—river of belief
that one is owed
an internal life, a rich
vista of idiosyncrasies
Like looking at windows
and wondering, who’s in there
having sex? I don’t want
to set you up for a racial
Encounter, but NDN’s
are reluctant to tell
our stories to strangers.
There is no such thing
as “Indian,” but now
there’s no turning back.
There’s turning over, bounding
out of bed and head-
first into the hammer
of stars. Story is performance
contextual tradition, language
class—billows like summer.
Dictionary is kind of a blast
of chill air. Language is living
history class, like you n me, […]