thenewinquiry:
(via)
Conserving the self in a culture of productive narcissism
by Rob Horning
The cluster of ideas, meanings, and implications associated with Web 2.0 has been amalgamating for the better part of a decade, steadily consolidating to the point where few would deny its cultural significance. The development of more sophisticated search engines and the promulgation of social media have combined to turn casual computer users into simultaneous producer-consumers with an ever-intensifying incentive to weave digital interfaces into all facets of their everyday life. The ubiquity of broadband access and the onslaught of gadgetry has allowed the internet to take on the characteristics of what autonomist Marxists like Paolo Virno and Toni Negri call the social factory, in which the effort we put into our social lives becomes a kind of covert work that can be co-opted by the tech companies that help us “share” and “connect.”
Those nice-sounding words mask the potentially exploitative aspects of the process. In “Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy,” Tiziana Terranova argues that “the internet is about the extraction of value out of continuous, updateable work, and it is extremely labor-intensive.” Nicholas Carr has described Web 2.0 as “digital sharecropping,” a way of putting “the means of production into the hands of the masses but withholding from those same masses any ownership over the product of their work.” The internet thereby becomes “an incredibly efficient mechanism to harvest the economic value of the free labor provided by the very many and concentrate it into the hands of the very few.”
But if it is so exploitative, why do we bother with all the “sharing”? It may be because we don’t experience this effort as work but instead as simply being ourselves, which Web 2.0 seeks to make synonymous with digital participation. Services like Facebook succeed by making the process of ordering our social lives much more convenient — an apparently irresistible lure, as the site has recently passed the 500-million mark in users. Its ubiquity makes it hard to refuse to use it, as such a refusal becomes tantamount to rejecting sociality itself. But the service also has the effect of getting us to restructure our social life and our identity in its image, making us acutely self-conscious of identity as a strategic construct even as it grants us the opportunity to actively manage it more efficiently.
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(Source: thenewinquiry)
happy Game of Thrones-esque Christmas!
(Source: fearisforthewinter, via tumblrofthrones)
Muwahaha!
(Source: milliganoutbitches, via rekkka)
Just let my 5 year-old watch New Hope for the first time… he is now addicted.
Hilarious
(Source: fyeah-starwars, via leontina)
The Old Gods are countless nameless spirits of nature. In ancient times, the Children of the Forest carved faces in the trunks of the Weirwood trees, which became sacred symbols of their faith. In time, the First Men adopted the Children’s gods as their own.
(via cresmix)
chewbaccas:
The Seven is a single deity with seven aspects. Each symbolizing a different area of life, though most people refer to the Seven as seperate gods.
The Mother is prayed to for mercy and watches over fertility, childbirth, and peace.
The Father sits in judgement over souls.
The Warrior is prayed to for protection, valour, and skill in battle.
The Crone is the symbol of wisdom and foresight.
The Smith watches over creation and craftmanship.
The Maiden symbolizes purity, love, and beauty.
Finally, there is The Stranger, rarely prayed to, who represents death.
(via silentsquee)
Jon Snow: damn idk if i should…
Jon Snow: enhnh fuck it
(via leontina)
the-absolute-funniest-posts:
Submitted by unwinged-angel
Follow this blog, you’ll love it on your dashboard!
(Source: awesomephilia, via callitalullabyx)
yomallory:
Pain is not exclusive to humans.
(Source: danandradee, via callitalullabyx)
L’Oréal. Because you’re better than everyone.
(happened today on AIM with Cat.)
(via cresmix)