Media and Existence Today 

I want to validate your profile as an insightful media theorist by congratulating you on this great video. Hopefully the general peer also sees this comment and in turn helps to validate my "connoisseur of philosophy" profile branding.

The 'General peer' is amusingly similar to the old school superego, but now technologized. The superego was always a strange phenomenon as it acted as its own entity, feeding on the vital force of the population, without actually existing. The same sense of being watched even when there's nobody there. So to me this raises the point that humans will always interact with each other in similar ways, thus the present situation is an extension of the past and not truly new.

“Busy with identity work” - brilliant

I appreciate you! I feel the pull of interacting with the general peer when I watch a baseball broadcast. Inevitably I find myself wanting to comment on something only to realize I'm watching a one-way only media. lol.

Another personal example of profilicity that I catch myself in is when I play the piano. I no longer just play for the enjoyment of playing, but I am also playing to myself as if I was performing. When I critique my playing, I am not saying "I made a mistake" but I am saying "The audience would notice that mistake".

Whenever I hear "Media are" I immediately think "that doesn't sound right," but then the very few times my ancient Latin studies from high school finally pays off and I remember

The funny thing about Narcissism is that it is not about an authentic person getting attention and validation from real people, it's a virtual construct, the false self, sourcing Narcissistic supply from the virtual personae of other people in the Narcissists internal cosmos. It's the Narcissists imagined peception of him in the eyes of others broadcasting his profile to the internally created virtual profiles of others, kind of like a weird house of mirrors

"Pics or it didn't happen" was a joke earlier. Now it has become a reality.

If you keep making theories on social media you’ll really make a lasting impact. We need our smartest people thinking about this landscape very seriously

I think another good example of the reality of second order observation is the game show Family Feud. There we the audience see the contestant trying to see how the general peer (the anonymous survey respondents) sees. And we the audience also play along in this game of trying to see how the general peer sees, guessing the top 5 survey items and reacting in disbelief when we we hear a very unexpected answer.

It would be interesting to know more about how the parasocial and its potentially distortive and isolative consequences play into this idea of post-authentic profile building for a vaque, disembodied 'other'.

On the "most important question" of how to achieve ease in the wake of profilicity, I'm curious how much you think a Taoist perspective can apply. To me, discovering this counterintuitive way of thinking (for my Western mind) was crucial in growing beyond the hype around social media and the mental illness that comes from being too attached one's profile or online presence. I don't really think it's just because I'm getting old, but rather that there is inherently something lost in placing too much importance in "being seen as being seen" and shaping ourselves based on the opinions of so many strangers. I'm also very curious about how this will affect politics in a more significant way, as this new mode can be used both to benefit the people challenging the power structures, or to further suppress them. Clearly, we should be educating ourselves on how to use this to dismantle these structures, though it usually feels like we are far behind and losing this battle more but the day.... Please keep sharing more about these things! I love this analysis and find it very crucial and relevant

Love your media theories vids

mom new carefree wandering

thank you for summary, explanation and insight!

I love your channel. Thank you for your efforts

This RU-vid channel is a second-order channel.

The theme park photos are amazing!!!!! Right before the pandemic started, Robert Fripp's King Crimson performed in Brazil and the concert was great. It was great not only because they are great musicians but also because Fripp forbids people using smartphones during the concert. The facial expressions in the two theme park photos is impressive and for me the most important tio observe is the facial expression of the girl in the foreground of the second photo: even though she's not holding a smartphone, the fact that everybody else is changes how she interacts with the performance. I've always hated smartphones in large concerts or in any other type of live entertainment or artistical expression - and the reason is how the tiny screens distract me.

As soon as I saw the purple flowers next to Herr Moeller I started laughing out. I apreciate a lot these subtle curation profile jokes.

Excellent post.

Well done 👍

thank you, prof!

ayo another banger bro

Excellent summery of your work, professor. It is truly breaking through much of our daily problems. I am interested in how politics can find a better format, now that populism seems to make long term planning disappear

I agree basically with everything you say in all your videos. My only problem is that "the age of authenticity" is a self-description, whereas "the age of profilicity" is given from the outside. Emic and etic label, if you wish.

You changed my view on the world. I didn't live with profiles and I will now to gain advantage.

this "genuine pretending" is 1). giving agency back to you (i am not just forced to pretend, i do it consciously and declaratively, i am the master) 2). allows for more subtle pretending and deception (i admit that i am pretending, but what i do behind that is unknown to you, and possibly even to me)

Yo, just wanted to ask, do you got any video talking about the Homo Ludens? Would really like to hear your thoughts on it.

You make some interesting points but I genuinely didn't expect you to bring up Omniscient Reader's View Point. I'm surprised you didn't talk about it as a novel rather than a comic, but it makes sense since the comic's more popular. You should've given it a quick read along as the other contemporary media you've mentioned, since these gods or viewers watching the character progress, represent the readers intended reaction to whatever event going on in the novel, through an outside commentary. It also fictionalizes current day technology and a viewpoint on parasocial relationships, i.e. streamers. The current popular media is imitated through fiction and through that portrayal, we witness a characterization of this- a broader view of what contemporary invention/event are meant by wider society.

"Seeing Is Being" strips the meaning that the viewer attaches to the information or content because personalities process things differently and people have different sets of knowledge with awareness towards themselves and surroundings, finally, sorting out implications and omissions that might have been missed, belief and faith also play a role in navigating a viewer's experience. That awareness takes a bit of time to be realized and "Seeing is Being" seems like it would be stuck in rumination., opinions and dogma that people accept.

Now this is REAL philosophy!! 👌💯

i love the idea of the "general peer."

Do you think Renee Girard's "Mimetic Theory" can be used in these media theories comparisons? Thanks!

Is the concept of 'general peer' has any relation to the lacanian concept of 'the big other' ?

It is interesting to observe that in Europe, after the black death and later elsewhere, roughly in this order: - better firearms first democratized military service - direct trade with Asia democratized spicy food - printing and later mass media, knowledge and entertainment - Protestantism and later secularism, religion - Settler colonialism, land ownership (for some anyway) - Liberalism, politics and trade - Nationalism, the pride of descending from a rich heritage (not by the virtue of your caste/clan) - Industrialization, material goods Now finally social media has democratized the feeling of being a legend, monarch or a saint. Being more of a stand in figure for your ideas or your own power more than an authentic flesh and blood person with opinions, thoughts and feelings. Your profile is not curated through your edicts, portraits on currency and idols (how fitting), but what do we use our phones for if not for socio-political declarations, financial transactions and staring at imagery. Marcus Aurelius was authentic when he wrote his 'Meditations' but Caesar was building a profile when he commented on wars, especially his wars. All Kaisers and Tsars have been following in his footsteps ever since. We also seem to have democratised the alienation, detachment and isolation such people might’ve faced.

Can I ask what the music is you end your videos with?

I like to characterize psychosis in today’s time as a case of übersignifikantung, of profilic ideas present in media. We spend endless hours hearing the same thing over and over again, causing ideals to be more oversignified, which in the era of profilicity, matters more than their overdetermined ‘reines Sein’.

Netflix generally excludes the general peer (famously hard to get hold of the view or popularity statistics). The only thing they do I think is to show “popular now” as a category. And there’s no comments. Is Netflix operating more in the “authentic” mode?

Profilicity makes me think a religious identity, with the general peer being an omnipresent godhead. Acting virtuously to be seen as virtuous. Is that too much of a stretch?

How does the "genuine pretender" find ease while engaging in profile building? I'm trying to answer this question by saying the genuine pretender will engage in the process but in a playful manner, and as much on their own terms as possible. They would know they are enjoying the benefits of a social feedback loop and that it is part of a process of identity formation, but that is not itself their identity, just a guest of it. Thank you for the video and your writing and videos about the Dao De Jing and Zhuangzi, they help me enjoy some of the therapeutic benefits.

This is a fantastic video. But, I need to know what is going on with the plant. It kept distracting me, it doesn't look real. Is this some sort of metaphor? Or should I get my eyes checked?

Wonderful video as always. I jokingly used to say that Crips are better than Bloods because it is better to C than to B. Boy do I look foolish now!

Could you create material comparing the concepts of Bourdieu's Field and Luhmann's Social Systems?

Is the general peer like Benthams (known also as Foucaults) Panopticon ? The knowledge of the tower at the centre of the prison, the possibility of being judged by the general peer, being seen, etc. How can a prisoner live when that tower stands erect there ? Is it possible to be authentic ?

I would like to contest your proposition that profilicity precedes the introduction/imposition of profile-based media technologies. Whilst the opposite statement is perhaps extremely reductive, it also seems extreme to deny that technology shapes human behaviour. It very obviously does. Perhaps the social and technological development of "the profile" as we observe it precedes digital media, but that does not necessarily mean that it wasn't the product of innovations in print (e.g. magazines) and television during the flourishing of these forms in the 20th century. It seems to me quite natural that a media form which constrains people to constantly reflect on their own appearance and social profile at least leads to feedback mechanism which enhances this kind of self-perception, if not necessarily exclusively generating it. As far as genesis is concerned, I would suggest that alongside technology, we also have to include the cultural development of individualistic tendencies within global capitalism. The link between these and the development of celebrity culture in the 20th century, the technological oligopolies which govern social media, and the increasingly marketised nature of academia and education speaks for itself.

All you said is too true and it makes for a life that is so externally focused. It seems too tiring...

Professor you should do your videos in a bath tub while drinking a cocktail while wearing a powdered wig with dark wave synth music playing

Nice flowers. In general there's no reason that digitization needed to unfold in the way that it did. I don't think technology and media forms are inevitiable. I remember when myspace felt like people were just people and it reflected life. I mean yes it was a profile. But you could kind of style it a bit. As opposed to more rigidly being allotted the same style. The standadisation of this of I assume is anticedent to setting up a definable boundary with to orient the comparison between profiles. The design of instagram leads one to compete in profile curation. This is why people are not authentic and wish to do all that performative validation seeking. Imo this profile media technology was made inevitable not from any intrisic technological development but becasue it coincided with neo-liberalism which intrisically lends itself to the kind of individuation which produces the kind of identidy profiling prevelant in social media. It was as an extension of the systemization of social status and it's concomitant focus on assessing people on there work performance and productivity etc. Branding and the generally domesticated consumerist impulses with which instant gratification became omnipotent I guess also lend themsleves to this atomised state that lay dormant before social media. I'm not sure if that's just stating what you've already said or something but anyway. Basically i'm saying that the social media or this 'structural coupling' ok it exists and is self informing. But you said 'the economy is coupled with the media'. Maybe it's pedantic but I think it's the other way round. Again dk i'm misquoted or misinterpreted what you said sorry if so. Anyway basically the most important thing is to radically shift the ownership of technology. FB, tik-tok and these companies should be run by the UN imo. But my actual opinion is if people spent time working towards restoring wilderness and maybe fishing for a trout or something they wouldn't be thinking about there profile. I think this arbitary profile curation supplants a lack of any mission with which people can pursue. If humanity was more ambitious in pursuing non-private space exploration and science and had more direct democracy where people actually can actually have or be part of a mission then there'd no longer be a need to identify with a meaningless profile. But people are disempowered after decades of hyper capitalism and hence submit to existing online which is the only thing with which they can orient themselves and actualyl effect. Because I assume none of the above will happen and it'll just be people lieing alone in dingy apartments with VR goggles on.

I guess because i have no social media accounts or profiles, and I'm a real person, who just lives in the real world...all these bizarre terminologies and digital world nonsense means absolutely nothing to me. 🤔🤷

What is the relationship between 'God' and the general peer? One thinks of Luhmann's discussion of surface and depth in Theory of Society

The 2017 model of observation, it is like rather than watching the show, they want people to know they are watching the show.

Sing us the song of the century, bang bang by green day is somewhat about prolificity, perhaps.

Seeing is (a mode of) Being, but Being is not (only) Seeing.

Do you believe profanity is strictly a modern thing or does it also appear in the past, I am thinking of kings/emperors/warlords who wished to be seen a certain way or artists/philosophers who wanted to be seen as the next great version of an artist or philosopher that already existed.

What is your diet professor

already missed a new video

So 9/11 was the second worse thing to happen in 2001

I think we are less than a decade or 2 out from your identity being outsourced to an AI that is linked to 'big data' that has determined our consumer profile. The AI chooses our music, furniture, clothes, etc. for us. The groundwork is already being done without algorithms deliver entertainment to people. The way we will "talk" about identity at that point I feel will be completely devoid of 'authenticity' rhetoric.

As Christopher Lasch pointed out true narcissism is manifest in someone who cultivates distinct and often contradictory profiles to different acquaintances, Thus, the example he gives, the man who simultaneously profiles as a great husband and father and a terrific sex partner for his mistress. The existence of pathological narcissists within the paradigm of profilicity calls into question the moral compass of media.

How long till we have recursive "seeing"? How many layers of recursion will there be? I think probably at most three, but who knows. We already enjoy watching the shows of commenters watching commentary shows and commenting on each others commentary. A voyeuristic hall of mirrors!

spec tacular (specto-tactile)

Notice how nobody in the audience of "Idol" is filming with their phones.......that's weird.

Confucius Becomes A V-Tuber

HELLLLOOOOOO

profilicity seems to me to be at least a little redundant of a concept. it's basically just how intersubjectivity, predictive processing, and theory of mind plays out in contemporary contexts. but perhaps for best understanding, we don't need this kind of conceptual engineering *without* the scientific frameworks. in my experience, people gain vastly more explanatory clarity and/or understanding through cognitive science, evolutionary psychology / anthropology than through this kind of analysis. this is not to say that this kind of analysis is bad or shouldn't be done, it's just kind of redundant, and it also can feel like there's something new being said here, which just isn't true, as intersubjectivity is a topic with a huge scientific and philosophical literature. but if you leave all that out & use just profilicity without the science, then you'll just understand less.

i feel like part of what makes donald trump (and "traditionalism") so attractive to some young white men is that he represents the idea of not having to engage in profilicity.

Insightful MF

Living between hall monitors. It has made people more repressed than any religious dogma.

I think you've invented a historical scheme that does the job for you a bit too neatly. On the descriptive side it's insightful to say that we live in an age of "profilicity" and that previously we had more "sincerity" and "authenticity". However, these are just labels of observation patterns, they don't carry any explanatory force in and of themselves. Specifically, I think it's invalid to infer that "proficility" must be accepted as a natural course of events with its own stable internal logic. For a lot of people, on the contrary, the advent of "profilicity" is not natural at all but is precisely experienced as a state of extreme narcissism that they don't want to contribute to. So they kill themselves (suicide rates higher than ever) or develop depression (again, higher than ever), drop out, or similar. In the way you apply your scheme, you seem to want to ignore or invalidate all cultural criticism, which doesn't work.

I hate that guy, and the concept of that show. It is so cynically manipulative and palpably inauthentic. How is it that *some* people see it the way I do, and *some other* people completely buy into it? Trump is of course in the same basket.

Mir is des alles wurscht

Bildung does not mean building, it comes from the word ´bild’ which means picture, and Bildung means education (making a determinate picture of someone). Building in German is bauen.

I try to understand what you mean but unfortunately i am really stupid 😭

Your taxonomy is cute, but it makes no allowance for the superfluity of bot-generated profiles, botnet generated movements, &c., and has thereby been sundered by AI. We've been post-profilicity for going on four years.

Reality tv creates absurd show. Calls it Jersey Shore. - Women ironically watch Jersey Shore for its absurdity. - Society becomes more like Jersey shore. - reality tv must become more absurd than reality - repeat ad infinitum.

The previous videos in the series are brilliant, unfortunately this one doesn't land for me. The most narcissistic way is definitely the authentic self, a monadic, pristine core of being, free from the world's opinions and only judged by "the Soul" (or an inner God). It was the product of the Modern Age, after all. The profilic self, on the other hand, is a cowardly, dependent and passive-aggressive degeneration of an amalgamation of the previous 2 ways. It's more like an act of despair when facing authoritarianism (technology or state). In other words, it's more like an in-between stage for identity.

I really like your theory of profilicity, but it is missing the factor time and the factor space. Without it, it stays bonded to the realm of social media as it exists today and the comments that are given by the general peer do not stick in the collective mind. That prevents your theory from really creating the paradigm shift in our thinking that we need.

Those flower things are a little cringey. Try authentic flowers.

sincerity focused societies have above average birthrates, authentic focused societies have replacement level birthrates, profilicity focused societies have negative birthrates.

First

I see that everyone's here for profilic jokes, so in order to avoid this unauthentic flock of sheep let me complement on your sincire work as a philosophy educator

bluster

I like some of this guy's vids but he seems ignorant of approx 30yrs of DIGITAL media theory from Castells onwards.

So the profile is essentially a type of idolatry. Thou shalt not worship graven images, hahaha!

This is so disingenuous

I guess I'm the odd one out, because while I have social media accounts, I never browse other people's media. I just use my accounts to promote and sell my paintings. I don't really like going personal or adding my picture in them. In real life, I'm more of a hermit too, I wear cheap, old clothes, and I don't like showing off. In concerts or events, I never take out my phone. I don't use my phone when eating either. In contrast, my 69 year old mother, does all the things you say, and is always presentable in order to look nice to others. She takes pictures of her food to put in FB food groups, and she watches events via her phone. Instead, I don't give a flying hoot about any of that. As for media, I prefer to watch sci-fi movies and TV series of the era of 1980 to 2010. I dislike most of the new stuff, I don't play complex modern computer games (i just rarely play 1990s games), and I only use youtube as a form of education, watching channels like yours, or painting tutorials. I do participate on reddit or the fediverse in discussions about a few hobby subjects, but that's about it... My most favorite thing in the world used to be painting. These days, I don't have a favorite thing. I find life (and people) utterly boring. So, where do I fit in?

You need to grow a beard like Hulk Hogan.