Viral Passivity

Re: Dean’s “Affective Networks"

Although the internet is a levelled playing field in terms of allowing users anonymity, it is questionable whether the unknown amateur blogger contributes anything to it besides the act of his own contribution. He posts something on his blog and accrues an “affective nugget” from having made himself heard, though potentially it is only in the inside of his own head that his voice echoes. In a crowded space like the internet, sound doesn't echo. The blog upon which this post is located can very well be read as that. Statistically, it has most views from my own clicking and re-reading. I keep it like an archival diary of my dabblings in writing and sense-makings. Even if there are great ideas or moments that are perched within these posts, they’ll unlikely ever be read by anyone outside of a select few, myself included.

Because the sheer size of the data-colossus that is rewritten and enlarged by participation in communicative capitalism, it is less and less likely that one blog or one voice will surface above the mass, even if for a short period of time. Success on the internet would be that ‘rising from the mass above the mass’, exemplified by the rise of amateur YouTube stars to celebrity status, like Justin Bieber, or the rise of viral cat videos that created their own momentum of cat videos. Success is thus quantified, mathetic, measured by view counts and the amount of attention paid. We contribute to the mass of information available, in the secret hope that what we have to say actually will be heard. But as Dean remarks, “contemporary communication networks are reflexive”, so by interacting, we are effectively writing the code for the approval of our writing. This blog doesn’t just sit in the ether of the internet; I have linked it to my computer and to my Facebook page; perhaps someone will stumble upon it and have a gander.

Dean further notes that communication for its own sake “turns our activity into passivity;” we become unable to do anything but communicate because before we act, we feel we must be informed – and with more and more information available to sift through (which takes patience, concentration, not to mention time), we end up either stopping halfway through being informed and risking action without full awareness of consequences (e.g. organising a protest march through a Facebook event), or actually doing nothing. In other words, we may be motivated by a cause, such as the Occupy Auckland movement, but there would be so much that we would have to become aware of before we could feel ‘able’ to act, that we probably would resort to clicking the safe “maybe attending” on the event and never actually doing anything about it. I think of this in Year 11 Economics 'scarcity' terms: we have unlimited wants but limited means. We are being asked to care about all these causes, but if the precursor to proper care is being informed, and the communicative network continuously extends that information flow, action derived from care seems to be perpetually deferred. If stuff does happen, it happens always with the risk of being uninformed, of not being totally aware (even though that total awareness, in itself, is an impossible – an objet petit a).