Majority of Discourse Now In Online Product Reviews

giantgiant
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
http://www.theonion.com/onion3919/re..._of_human.html



I can't figure out if it's good or pitiful that we have one of the more developed versions here at AI.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    bungebunge Posts: 7,329member
    Let's just be safe: pitiful.
  • Reply 2 of 5
    buonrottobuonrotto Posts: 6,368member
    One of my friends loves to read these things at Amazon during his lunch hour. He's explained the whole pattern of the thing, and occasionally forwards the more ridiculous blurbs.
  • Reply 3 of 5
    pfflampfflam Posts: 5,053member
    Marx may be wrong about the possibility of a Communist state, yet he is really good at a number of things, and one of them is his analysis of Captalism leading to our being alienated through commodity relations . . . .



    here's how it works, at least from memory: we are cut off from the self-realization that comes from seeing how our (workers') work essentially shapes our culture and how it effects the world,

    why? because the products of work are taken from our control through the Division of Labor and through the loss of ownership of the means of production.

    It is the labor energy that is surplus (in that it is not tied to immediate satisfaction of workers' needs) that circulates in the social body and becomes valued not for the needs it satisfies but for the other surplus energy it can get through exchange . . . in other words our work is the stuff that makes our values, how we value the worth of things: our exchange value . . . we exchange our self identities

    this exchange value and the process of exchanging goods becomes the means of sharing identity (the mark made by one's labor on the stuff of the world)

    therefore, identity is exchanged through, and valued by, the process of exchanging commodities

    Our self identites are alienated and have become a process of commodity fetishism

    we let the exchange of goods replace our real self realization through human discourse and interchange



    ...not the best retelling but that's kinda how marx argues it



    its somthing that I think about alot when coming to these boards: how deeply alienated that we come together as a community centered around a commodity . . . a good commodity but still just a another good among a throng of goods . . .
  • Reply 4 of 5
    curiousuburbcuriousuburb Posts: 3,325member
    blogs replacing the traditional diary/journal?

    slowly.



    web replacing traditional print sources for stock quotes, and rapidly changing news?

    yep.



    web replacing traditional broadcast media?

    internet radio spreading station reach beyond antenna range,

    alternative television (nakednews.com, etc) pushing frontiers of reportage,

    and in the case of Ananova, replacing humans with CG hosts.

    yep.



    web replacing animation/short film festivals for exposure of new talent?

    atomfilms.com reaches more eyeballs than Cannes (405 anyone?)

    starshipexeter.com generates more traffic than a physical trekkie convention?

    stickfiguredeaththeatre (sfdt.com) spawns thousands of gifanimations/flash creators?

    yep



    online museums/galleries show more pieces, to more people than brick&mortar sites can?

    yep.



    web replacing multilingual dictionaries and reference libraries?

    babelfish.altavista.com, yourdictionary.com, webelements.com, http://www.alberteinstein.info

    yep



    web porn replacing Adult Video stores and brown-paper-wrapped magazine selections?

    yep.



    global village taking McLuhan-esque media shift to a new level online?

    yep.



    eBay and Amazon doing more sales than equivalent physical auctioneers or bookstores?

    yep



    FedEx tracking online more productive than watching the mailbox waiting for the post?

    yep.



    "rumour sites" generate more rumours than the watercooler?

    seems like a pattern is emerging...

  • Reply 5 of 5
    colanderofdeathcolanderofdeath Posts: 1,261member
    Why would I want to think when instead I can have someone else do the thinking for me about what I should consume ?
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