lying skulls in the public square

this was meant to be about the met gala

@iamthirtyaf is an Instagram page churning out endless milquetoast takes for the 30-something everyman, run by AF Media. This week (6 June), they posted a screenshot from a now-deleted (or possibly never existent) X account named toxic femininity that tweeted:

seeing pics of the met gala feels like we’re watching the capitol in the hunger games lmao

Bell hooks argues that decapitilising her name helps to centre ‘the ideas behind the work’ rather than ‘the people, [who] matter less.’¹ Hooks does use proper grammar throughout the rest of her work; it is only the invocation of the taken name that is to be decapitalised. The modern rejection of any grammar in online/social spaces, by contrast, presents meaningful ideas in an ultra-blasé manner; as though to say yeah, I do think this actually; no, please don’t ask me to elaborate further. The author hides behind layers of anonymity and feigned disinterest, disconnected from their eventual audience; lying out of sight. If hooks’ challenges traditional grammar structures to reposition ideas over ego, the internet grammar recentres the anonymous id, posturing as unbothered by anything and unaccountable to anyone, able to post meaningless ‘slop’ - or radical posture - without embarrassment or compulsion to act ‘in real life.’’ The anonymous poster and the Instagram resharer are both emboldened by this same freeness.

In this instance, the ferment of class war is filtered through several further stages of intentional disconnection: the author (who appears not to exist) is visible through pseudonym but unrelated to the Instagram account; the facade of the individual in the title page of the reposting company (I am thirty af) implies a human connection that doesn’t exist, and the vice grip of public perception: it is still a mainstream viewpoint that social media is handled by ‘the intern;’ in reality, this is doubtless handled by an overworked, underpaid media graduate: I know because I was one. The goal of the social media marketer is to take up space: to lie down in the town square and cause a fuss, litter the ground with bones. Attention is the economical tool; other people’s anonymous outrage is the fuel.

bringing a skull to the public square [credit: UnSplash]

@iamthirtyaf is run by AF Media, a social media entity entirely reliant on User Generated Content, which reposts internet takes from strangers in exchange for huge engagement rates; these Tweeters are not credited for the ideas they come up with beyond the cursory inclusion of their handle in the screenshot, and these Tweets are often buried in a carousel that condenses a wide parade of different opinions into one, concise post, ready to be added to (in this case) 43.8 thousand individual stories and counting. Disseminating this pseudo-radical content to our stories feels political but it’s actually feeding a content machine that is designed to enrich shareholders and brand partners.

AF Media style themselves as ‘a leading digital marketing agency, [who] specialize in crafting data-driven strategies that boost your online presence, increase brand visibility, and drive tangible results.’ Data driven strategies, then, become stolen Tweets, filtered down by 20-something graduates without a clear philosophy, ideology or understanding of the beast they serve; often missing the minimum levels of journalistic training. The digital marketer, though, is not a journalist, and has but one interest: the interest of capital.

The tweet above, then, pricks the balloon of class anger through several means, both intentionally and passively. The tweet itself has been co-opted by a ‘leading digital marketing agency’ to generate profit and clicks, forming an oroborous of capital being generated from discontent with capitalism. It’s form - a Tweet - shows a disinterest in engaging critically with the concept online; Tweets are to be flung off without a second thought; nothing of genuine interest could be contained within. They are implicitly understood to be a low-value medium, ephemera to scroll an evening away to. However, under capitalist realism, cultural paraphernalia that appears throwaway is in fact essential machinery in the insistence of capital; the ever-present waves of low effort left-leaning miasma allowing the reader to content themself with enough faux revolutionary memes without taking action. The apparent low-value nature of tweets is internalised by the author, a benign instrument of capitalism, whose use of ‘internet grammar’ instructs the audience to devalue its importance, to reject accountability and sincerity. The infantilising simile of ‘the capitol’ instructs the audience not to view the ultra-rich as parasites, but as limited in power when compared with the fictional excesses of Collins’ world. The audience is expected not to understand any more interesting comparison; be they the decadence of West Egg or the performativity at the Court of King Lear, and instead capable of digesting only lightweight, cartoonish dystopia that defuses the pressing problem (real excess wealth) and frames it as unremarkable compared with the unreal spectacle of children killing children.

This was meant to be about the Met Gala. That piece will come later, but we proletariate couldn’t even begin to process the ridiculous festival of the Gala without memes, and memes mean more than the Gala ever could.

1. https://www.blackrosefed.org/intersectionalism-bell-hooks-interview/