New Extractivism - Mining the Human Resource, or You're the Product of the Product of the Product, and You Can't Do Shit About It

[illautomatic]

You ever feel like calling it quits and checking the fuck out of society, but you just can't? Do you see that everything around you has become a dumpster fire but you simply can't stop huffing the fumes? Are you so invested in this nightmare that opting-out seems nearly impossible? Do you wonder how you got this way? Then air out that rotten piece of meat you call a brain and get on board with the New Extractivism. Answers lie within:


View: https://youtu.be/JkUi3e7GVXs

New Extractivism

An assemblage of concepts and allegories. By Vladan Joler (2020)

www.extractivism.online

 

[illautomatic]

Updated OP. Now includes a video.

 

[kriko313]

This is a really nice presentation. Beside finding some wording questionable, I can mostly agree with it.
(Man, I wanted to write a big reply, but I can't keep my thoughts coherent.)

 

[Deleted member 3373]

This is a fantastic piece. I'm already sharing it with some buddies of mine.

 

[vale-aroma]

The human race defiles itself to construct itself ever larger. Not merely transformations of Earth, but transformations of the self take place in order to fuel the expansion of the anthrosphere. Unique among all other builder creatures, the human can remake the individual node to be as a queen, as a unit of passage reformed so that the whole of the species-work (civilization) may flow through it. Hasn't been a shock since archaeological evidence of malnourishment beginning with hierarchical order, hierarchical order beginning the truly succesful human experiments, the pioneers that truly uncovered the human species-work in Indus, Yellow & Yangtze, Mesoamerica, Mesopotamia, Nile....

 

[punishedgnome]

Interesting video, but my issue with this sort of thing is always the fact I don't have accounts with companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix or Microsoft and I don't find it particularly hard to function without the services provided by these companies. I just torrent all the shit I want to watch, listen to music over m3u streams and spit my nonsense into the void on sites like this one. The analogy that trying to escape them is like swimming against the tide is bizarre to me. It's like, bruh, just stand up and wade out, the water's not that deep.

THE ONE EXCEPTION is Amazon. Amazon has made my life exponentially more convenient by shipping things to the far flung town I live in. However, most of the stuff I buy there I could get elsewhere, so it's not like without it I'd be up shit creek without Amazon. If I felt I was not benefitting from my relationship with Amazon I would absolutely stop using it. But then the relationship with Amazon is different than the one with sites like Twitter, Facebook and reddit. If I want to buy something, I go on Amazon and buy it. It's not an endless stream of curated posts.

At the end of the day though, if you don't like what these companies are doing you have to not be a pussy and delete your account. No offense to anyone, that's just how I view things. I've always been confrontational and quick to act. If I feel like a service is retarded and exploiting me for free labour, I'm not going to use it. Sometimes you have to tolerate short term pain for long term gain. Yes, digging drills for potatoes is hard on the back, but by the end of September, that back pain has turned into all the French fries you can eat.

 

[The Westerley]

Man, I wanted to write a big reply, but I can't keep my thoughts coherent.

I often find myself in the same boat.

 

[kriko313]

I often find myself in the same boat.

I am working on fixing my brain. Decades of dopamine overdosing sure didn't help.

 

[Deleted member 3981]

I think the allegory of the cave is a dumb point to make. Yeah, information about things you'll never personally experience is biased. Before big algorithms, we had journalists, who worked for companies, and could bias anything we didn't explicitly see irl. Everyday people just aren't build for understanding events without experiencing them firsthand. That's why I'm not a fan of the allegories: too much abstraction when they could just explicitly tell you what they're aiming for.

I am working on fixing my brain. Decades of dopamine overdosing sure didn't help.

If you have the luxury, look into lots of blockers or just not have internet when you get home. Leaves you with a lot more time to invest in your actual hobbies without distraction.

 

[kriko313]

If you have the luxury, look into lots of blockers or just not have internet when you get home. Leaves you with a lot more time to invest in your actual hobbies without distraction.

I want to cut off the Internet as much as I could from my life.

 

[notetoself]

I want to cut off the Internet as much as I could from my life.

I've been working on doing the same. The most helpful strategies so far have been
- turning all my devices to grayscale
- installing browser extensions to monitor which sites I waste the most time on
- blocking time wasters in /etc/hosts

Good luck!

 

[Ixion_SEROV]

This plays off of a much simpler concept I remember hearing about back around 2010; Facebook's design is a proof of concept that you can make someone attached to your product with simple sensory overload. Don't give someone time to think about anything else, a desire to do anything else, or go anywhere else. Be everything to everyone and ensure that there's no need for any other kind of media or product.

Make your -ideas- a product. Hell, use political trends to spice up whatever otherwise mediocre merchandise you're selling. Take advantage of that deep-rooted human desire for validation and belonging.