drones

from The Stargazers


I’m not trying to be difficult or trying to prove anything in particular. I am merely exhibiting that I can survive a happy, enlightened individual without help from somebody else. By somebody else I mean corporate America. Consumer culture. Want-get culture, as described in The Scavenger’s Manifesto. I don’t buy into that. Which is to say that I find consumer culture a sort of mind control, in a way. Corporations do a pretty fantastic job of making sure that the average citizen is only aware of particular realities, realities in which names like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola actually mean something. These companies, these brands, begin to have lives of their own, becoming infinitely relatable to the millions of people who all somehow “identify” with what the name means. The brand becomes their brand. Switch those blinders on.
And commercials. Fuck, those are the best, aren’t they? Fucking pump your brain with these images that you won’t be able to get out of your mind.
“Unhappy? Buy this shit!”
“Hey honey, that family on tv is kinda like ours! Let’s buy that brand new plasma screen!”
Oh, advertising is brilliant. Get the general populace to believe that their decisions are actually their own! Genius. Consumer culture is a fucking pill, willingly slobbered over and taken by so many people to keep their lives interesting and stable. Without such a routine, without such a comfortable little reality built by white men in suits to keep everyone sedated, then we’d start thinking about the good stuff. About humankind’s real potential. About equality, peace, art, passion, freedom, love. Dangerous ideas to a capitalist agenda. And they make sure you know that they’re dangerous.
I prefer to make up my own mind. I prefer to stand up and proudly proclaim, “You may fool some people, but you can’t fool me.” I will continue to live between the cracks, between the ticks of a clock, between the lines of your autobiography. I will not be a part of it.