Kendall Jenner is Not Your Friend
Archived from Oct 12, 2023:
Sometimes, not to be too self centered, I feel like I’m being tested. It feels like our reality is a shitty video game, seeing how many things it can throw at me before I give up or take the evil route. I cannot stress enough that I am incapable of doing an evil run in a game, feels bad man.
Now, I don’t actually think that this is what’s happening, or that I’m the center of some messed up simulation. I am very concerned with the humanity and internal lives of my loved ones, as well the world at large. But man, sometimes, you see shit like this:
I have written at length about how baffling I find the impulse to recreate the world in digital form, and this liquified my brain and it is now pouring out on to the desk. I had intended on publishing the other piece I’ve been working on this week but this is just such an absurd and perfect amalgamation of things I think about that I had to push it up. As such, this is going to be more of a list of things that occurred to me while watching this, some of which are two sides of the same coin, and some of which are only barely connected. Let’s go.
1 - This is such an intense form of parasocial relationship. I like a lot of art, and I totally understand the emotional impact certain works can have on a person. There’s a few types of parasocial relationship, the one I understand a bit more being that with people whose job it is to be some believable version themselves online. I think of a lot of the YouTubers I like; when you spend time watching hours of a person’s opinions, talking and research, it is very easy to admire them not just as a writer, but it feels like you admire them as a person. That maybe, in some world where we collide, we would get along. There’s something intimate about a smaller, more immediate platform and style. Then there’s the Swifties, who I will use as an example for any excessive focus on a person who is quite removed from their fans, whether it be due to media training or financial status. It’s not bad to enjoy their interviews and whatnot, when it’s done with an understanding of the parasocial nature. I use Swifties as an example because they’re known for being quite rabid and speaking as though they know Taylor Swift personally. It is even stranger to me, then, that the AI insists it is not the person that it was completely and explicitly modeled after. It simultaneously seems like an attempt to humanize these larger than life celebrities, while in some way seeming to gesture at the idea that you wouldn’t really like talking to them all that much.
2 - All of these people are very wealthy, and they were paid to the tune of millions to sit with Meta engineers and have their likeness licensed away. This feels like an artificial attempt to break down the walls that separate us and them, because lord knows not a single one of them would ever actually give up any of their massive amount of wealth and comfort that actually separate them from the world. This launch whether intentionally or not, is a method of humanizing the massively wealthy who are statistically some of the worst individual contributors to climate change, and increasingly hoard their wealth while the rest of the world can barely afford groceries. It’s not cute or fun, it’s repulsive. By using their likeness but making no attempt to mirror their personalities, it tacitly says that you are not worthy of actually speaking to them. And, frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if many of them would agree with this. If they seriously cared about anyone outside their own wild stratosphere of wealth, they wouldn’t ever have become as wealthy as they are. Finally, if it were their real personalities, it would probably also result in a lot of PR clean up on their parts. These people cannot relate to most people, they likely aren’t particularly kind or charming and a lot of them love talking about how much they hate poor people. You are not the exception, so a whole, fake personality needs to be manufactured so you don’t wind up, very justifiably, hating them.
3 - The fact that this is planned to be made available to all users next year is both grim and funny. Funny because the Metaverse went so poorly, and this is could very well be a ploy to try to bump their numbers, possibly by signing away your computer generated avatar’s likeness to be plopped in some digital wasteland, in an effort for it to seem populated. This is an extension of the weird techevangelist foaming at the mouth to digitally recreate the world around them for no reason other than a profit. They see a dying planet with limited extractable resources and want to know how they can put your fucking soul into a server farm so you can be exploited forever. They don’t know joy and assume that their cheap, shitty approximations of the world are immersive enough to replace it. They are not interested in this solving our massive loneliness epidemic by giving you a new, exciting friend. This is intended to be helpful to no one but Meta and its shareholders. They do not care if it breeds unhealthy obsession with strangers, isolates users and ruins the body image of even more people. This is done to keep you staring, swiping, clicking and generating data. This is designed to keep you fixated and addicted and exhausted.
4 - The next step in your data is your biometrics. Sure, eventually they’d like your medical history too, but for now they’ll settle for a nice scan of your face. Let’s be clear, you will not be paid 5 million dollars, nor will you be invited to Meta’s offices to receive a state of the art scan. You’ll do it for free and click agree on a long, legalese laden form you won’t read and sign away your likeness. And then who knows, but it’s hard not to know it won’t be good. Maybe they’ll undermine SAG-AFTRA contracts by never hiring another background character ever again, subbing you and your friends in to whatever American dream hypermilitarized propaganda they please. Worse, they'll likely sell it to one of the growing AI companies vying to make “unbiased” border control with facial recognition. They want the financialization of everything, so that they can build their fucking doomsday bunkers. Funny, when it comes to the private security these leeches need, they seek out flesh and blood.
It’s all bad. It’s careening towards devastation for no reason other than “line go up”. It’s shallow people who think they alone are above others, doing whatever they can to save their version of the world, not the one 99% of people would actually want. Their world is surrounded by the security they assume they’ll have, barring one of their militarized forces killing them outright, as alone as they ever have been in their underground bunkers. It is a pathetic, self-absorbed vision for the future, it eschews all visions of collective thriving, abundance and joy. These are hyperindividualistic, childish versions of what it means to survive, held by cruel people with fragile egos. What, perhaps, is most repulsive, is that our so called innovators have such an unimaginative vision for the future, and unless we do something, we will be the ones suffering for it.
Thank you, as always, for being here friends and happy fall. Take that as you will. It’s been delightfully cool in Toronto, and other than the sunset happening earlier every day, this really is my favourite time of year, and the cool breeze helps to quell the fury I perpetually feel.
