“According to a poll released in 2019, some 54 percent of Americans between the ages of
thirteen and thirty-eight would, if given the chance, become a social-media influencer."
"Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Benjamin
suggests that fascistic governments aim to maintain the status quo by providing citizens with
the means to express themselves aesthetically without reforming their lives materially. Thus
the aforementioned government that Brandon thinks TikTokers have scared shitless actually, as
Benjamin writes, “sees its salvation in granting expression to the masses—but on no account
granting them rights.” More to the point, any countercultural voltage these influencers
purport to possess gets nullified by the fact that they have clear incentives not to talk
about controversial matters, lest they get dropped by their brands.”
Very interesting comments on the the idea that university are there to meet the states
workforce needs. “consensus that our students weren’t so much human beings with complex,
variegated histories but potential members of the job market with certain workplace
deficiencies—that the threshold into adulthood should be devoted to learning how to compete in
an increasingly vicious economy.” thoughts 🤔
“Call it the Yelpification of the academy. Call it the retail logic of higher education. I
mention this only to observe that if we sneer and snicker at influencers’ desperate quest to
win approval from their viewers, it might be because they serve as parodic exaggerations of
the ways in which we are all forced to bevel the edges of our personalities and become
inoffensive brands.”Quote
”bow unfailingly at the altar of the algorithm."
"Whether they’re ordinary undergrads or social-media celebs, they all strike me as unbearably
sad, and it’s a sadness that seems more than casually related to the ways in which we’ve
defined what it means to be a person.”
thoughts 🤔career I got rejected from Evervault 18:03. My programming just isnt there is it?
I think the feedback is low hanging fruit that are kind of obvious so nothing that I crazy missed
its just the majority of the time is supposed to be spent doing the bits and bobs, not trying to
figure out implementation. I feel embarrassed, I kinda beard my soul, at least for me, a bit and I
just cant back it up. I feel dumb too and just generally disappointed. I will get over it just
right now it sucks, my future horizon is right on front of me or staring me in the face and all I
see is myself which, well… we know how that one goes most of the time. Guess I’ll just simmer in
this for a while and then move on. Such is life.