Facebook Marginalia Teach-In; Or, The Revolution Will Be Advertised

Marxist critic Louis Althusser is probably most famous for his theory of the “Ideological State Apparatus.” This was his name for those things within a capitalist nation that keep its population docile and willing to be subjected to the state’s will over their own best interests; unlike the courts, prisons, and Departments of Motor Vehicles that make up its counterpart, the Repressive State Apparatus, these “ISA”s habituate their subjects to subjection (and subjugation) by “hailing” them, affording a type of pleasure through mutual recognition. “Hey you!” says the Pepsi can, “Don’t you find me fizzy, refreshing, and affordable?” And sometimes we say, “Sure do! I can afford you and I love the way you taste and how you fit in my hand! What a wonderful world I live in!” Or, if we’re feeling a mite iconoclastic, we say, “Pepsi, you can shove right off! I am a free wo/man! What a wonderful world I live in! Now where’s my Coke?”

I was reminded forcibly of this dynamic a couple days ago while fiddling along through the RSA-that-walks-like-an-ISA “social networking” techno-monstrosity called “Facebook” at a computer whose browser, unlike my personal one, is not set to block ads (“I’m a free wo/man! What a wonderful world I live in! Ooh, what a clever product-placed joke about product placement Tina Fey just told!”). Jittering down the margin like a pixel-powered centipede, row upon row of dancing pandas shucked and jived for my attention. Was I hallucinating? What were they offering? And what did they want?

Well, as you more experienced types know, they wanted my attention, and were offering me an online degree. I could join them! I could have any of the labels they danced upon! I just had to sign up!

And I admit it might be interesting to know how to become a psychologist, nurse, software professional, criminal investigator, marketing specialist, med. billing specialist, health care manager, graphic designer, HR officer, teacher, web designer, police officer, therapist, and/or accountant, but isn’t the real question why all of these positions are signified by exactly the same dancing panda?

I sense a clever Marxist subversion here. The dancing pandas are winking at me even as they wriggle, undercutting the ideological construction of capitalism as a system that allows for the ‘freedom’ to ‘choose’ from a diverse array of employment ‘opportunities.’ They claim to represent this diversity even as they reveal it to be a sham, displaying with every tippity-tap of their adorably oversized paws that within the lockstep of alienated labor, we are all just interchangeable dancing pandas.

Which seems a bit unexpectedly truthful for a google-enabled advertisement for an online degree program, but who am I to be choosy about the avenues through which revolution is fomented?

And then, of course, I “refreshed”, only to find an even deeper, more disturbing lesson than that taught by the pandas’ little game of Dance Dance Revolution: that even (or especially?) selfhood itself is immanently alienable. The ad takes the form of an apparent profile of some snowboarder named “Shaun,” and he seems in the throes of a crazed, twitching species of hysteria, carrying on a shouty, one-sided conversation consisting of a barrage of questions he’s too hyped-up to hear answered:

What, you want Shaun’s personal info! No way! Only joking! Born and raised in the wilds of California, been standing sideways on a snowboard or a skateboard since he could walk!

And then of course, the inevitable is revealed: “Sponsor: Red Bull.” Which seems to explain both the content and the tone rather concisely.

And yet Shaun’s grotesque, burlesque performance is occurring at the margins of the Book where I myself jostle amidst all the other Faces, performing similar acts of identity assertion, cavorting around in an attempt to be considered “interesting” or “funny” or “just psychotic enough to be compelling but not quite psychotic enough to compel police intervention,” much like my new friend Shaun.

So here I am, dancing away like a panda who tells himself he can be a psychologist, nurse, software professional, criminal investigator, marketing specialist, med. billing specialist, health care manager, graphic designer, HR officer, teacher, web designer, police officer, therapist, and/or accountant if only he had right degree, and now Shaun is “bringing it home” for me, making it personal, “b(e?)aring the device” of how the institutional apparatuses that churn out dancing pandas by the barrelful intersect with an inner life consisting of desperate assertions of the boundary between self and other (“No way!”) followed immediately by equally desperate entreaties to be liked (“Only joking!”), buoyed along by the dehydrating currents of consumerism and caffeine that keep us all hyped-up and hysterical (“sponsored by Red Bull”). It’s a chalky Caucasian circle-jerk up in here, and I thank Shaun for his enlighteningly enthusiastic ejaculations.

The revolution is already here, the google ads tell us, hailing from within the very apparatuses that perform the subjugation they simultaneously gleefully subvert. “Click to learn more!” And then they winkingly add, “Life is a series of transactions performed while suspended above a void! Let’s snowboard! Let’s learn criminal forensics! Let’s dance, then hump slowly while eating bamboo! Let’s watch ‘NYC Prep’! It’s all the same thing! I was raised in the wilds of California! No way! Only joking! WHY WON’T MY HANDS STOP SHAKING?!”

Why won’t they, indeed.