As a kind of introduction to the media and the meltdown, Bjork– intentionally or serendipitously–outlines some of the stranger facets of living with media as a “millenial”:
I would want to remove the back from my television if i used it to watch anything besides DVDs. But instead, I’m essentially– rather doubtfully– speaking to myself on this blog in the hopes of “taking the back off” from my own investment in consuming media. Perhaps after doing so, I’ll have a theory, or a more holistic vision into which I can insert my obsessive need to know what is going on everywhere.
Part of this theorizing, I guess, is an accounting for the kinds of media I consume and what kind of affective charge I gain from it– for it certainly is at times, as much the pursuit of an aesthetic experience as it is pursuit of intellectual satisfaciton. Like many “millenials”, my first pass at the news is not usually a “traditional” news source: it’s often The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, or The Rachel Maddow Show, or the delightfully snarky and prescient blog Wonkette. To be honest, I am never more than about four hours away from listening to NPR or an NPR podcast, which at least postures itself as more fact and less sensibility.
The sensibility that I pursue, is a sort of wide-eyed double-voiced speech– both totally ironic and snarky and totally, genuinely horrified at what’s going down.
Despite the best efforts of my analytic philosophy professors from undergrad, I do honestly feel as though, at times, when I sit back and watch my chosen media that there is some sort of World Spirit upon whose back we are all riding towards the End of History. And this, despite my long-term relationships with Kiergegaard and Nietszche.
