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TLP explains modern narcissism samzdat explains a bit more about how that mech self perpetuates and hints at how it started this documentary gives dope historical context for this transition and how it all unfurled https://t.co/PTVmxpr3tt
the 60's brought awareness of this manipulation "there is a policeman inside all our heads; he must be destroyed" shit tons of political activism, "we will free our minds my changing the state/society" very much rooted in ACTION
story goes: strong police/military resistance to protests. hard to actually get the change demanded. action getting frustrated the focus subtly shifted to "begin with personal transformation and freeing the self, this will lead to social change"
places popped up like the Esalen Institute where people experimented with all sorts of "radical self expression" tactics to "unlock your true authentic self" this crew became the nexus of 60's counter culture Wilhelm Reich psychology brought in as an intellectual basis
corporate america started to notice, life insurance being first. the made new teams of psychoanalysts to figure out wtf was up with people meanwhile, people like Werner Erhard made mass produced self expression workshops that hundreds of thousands of people enrolled in
basically, individualism was getting drained of it's political potency and people were being turned into Shaw's Reasonable Man where instead of changing themselves to "conform", they changed themselves into their "authentic selves"
the stanford research institute (SRI) pionerred to categorization and labeling of this new wave of "self expressive individuals" instead of slicing by demographic, they sliced by ways people wanted to self-actualize. this was the Values and Lifestyle program
the end result is the modern well understood "making products to pander to your sense of being a unique and special individual" ^i've known that's the state of affairs since like middleschool. what i never knew was how we got here
very relevant i think i'm still only in the early stages of understanding how much optimization there is on figuring out how to sell people shit https://t.co/kAzbMSVlpN
existing power structures did not get where they are by being bad at power the existence of easy and quick communication means that opposition to power is easy to organize therefore, power must be able to either suppress or subvert enemy communications https://t.co/YsGNIGtSno
i used to think that "the older people in power just don't get us kids, we're moving faster than them and our cool undergrounds will always be better than the mainstream bullshit they make" but is it getting even easier for corps to colonize cool? https://t.co/QYsOjC6MRZ
reminder that Jonah Peretti, buzzfeed CEO used to be an anti-capitalist and wrote critiques of the system rapidly churns people thru identities for profit... then made a company who's business model was churning you thru identities to sell targeted adds https://t.co/al9DDj38TR