CyberHarassmentAsConsumtariatPolitics

ThoughtStorms Wiki

Context : CyberHarassment / ConsumtariatPolitics

Unpleasant thought :

Are Cyber-harassment and InternetTrolls actually a kind of rising tide of resentment / feeble resistance by the ConsumTariat underclass in arriving NetoCracy?

I mean, these are the people losing out in the attention / connectivity competition. Of course the only way to win a bit of attention is to harass those with more of it. A violent fantasy is the way to get the attention of the more famous. (Compare "haters" in TheWorldOfHipHop).

Of course it takes on a misogynistic flavour (wars often do as patriarchy is interwoven with other concerns). The anti-feminist trolls are caught in the paradox of hoping their masculinity gives them privilege and the reality of their attentionless / Consumtariat state under netocracy.

By 2017 ... we know that this is more or less right. (ConsumtariatPolitics)

Actually the last chapter of NetoCracy points out that :

a) the insurgency of the Consumtariat will be reactionary not progressive (unlike the uprising of the working class in capitalism)
b) but won't be "well organized" or successful because anyone good at organizing / articulating in the network world immediately gains netocrat status. This is even worse than it being middle-class intellectuals claiming to lead the vanguard of the people's revolt

Instead, Bard and Soderqvist think that things only become serious when there's "netocratic civil war" ie. one group of netocrats ("class traitors") side with the consumtariat for their own advantage.

This looks awfully like what's going on with RightWingPopulism at the moment. Some netocrats (eg. SteveBannon are siding with the "PeopleOfSomewhere", "left behind" sedentary / reactionaries. People who don't like "mobilism" in race and sex and sexuality against other netocrats defending the mobilities of social liberalism but who have been willing to put liberal governments to work defending it (eg. laws against racism and homophobia and unequal pay)

At the time of writing, B&S imagined netocratic civil war would be about IntellectualProperty, instead it's about IdentityPolitics

See also ClioDynamics for more on this idea of a civil war within the elites.