RE: https://zirk.us/@Doomscroll/116574682639203727

I’m thinking of starting a Mastodon book club and kicking it off with Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle.

Modern life mediated by images, commodities, performance, and passive consumption?

Feels… relevant.

Let me know if you’d want in.

#BookClub #GuyDebord #SocietyOfTheSpectacle #MediaTheory #MastodonBooks

" Cole Allen was dangerous. “Cole Allen,” the political narrative, is dangerous, a tool with which MAGA polices its internal dissenters—”I bet Tucker would have cried”—and reinforces the implicit divinity of its primary ego. But not for long! Both will likely be mostly forgotten in days. Tomorrow King Charles is coming to America! Maybe Tuesday we’ll take Cuba. The Straits will be closed this Wednesday, but victory will be restored by Thursday evening. There’ll be more Epstein disclosures, or another kerfuffle with the pope, or just a new poll, and we’ll know finally and at last that Trump is “DONE.” We may not notice, as we post the “BREAKING” news, how all-caps have crept into our language. We won’t have time, because we have moved onto a new spectacle, or we will have tuned out from spectacle. (I think of a liberal friend who acknowledges he hasn’t read the news since the election because he just can’t, and a left colleague who boasts that he hasn’t because he can—ignore it all, that is.) It’s into this quickening current that both Cole Allens will disappear, along with our memory of a time when one did not have to debate how many assassination attempts the president had survived, or staged, whether it is three or four or five or even more, much like the unknowable number of wars he has ended."

--from "Cole Allen": On the already-fading meanings of Cole Allen, man, meme, prop, and spectacle, by Jeff Sharlet,
Apr 26, 2026

#Spectacle #USpol #SocietyOfTheSpectacle #ScenesFromASlowCivilWar

https://slowcivilwar.substack.com/p/cole-allen

"If [Guy] Debord were alive today, he would almost certainly extend his analysis of the spectacle to the Internet and social media. Debord would no doubt have been horrified by social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter, which monetize our friendships, opinions, and emotions. Our internal thoughts and experiences are now commodifiable assets."

#TiernanMorgan, #LaurenPurje, 2016

https://hyperallergic.com/an-illustrated-guide-to-guy-debords-the-society-of-the-spectacle/

#GuyDebord #spectacle #SocietyOfTheSpectacle

less than 5 mins of “the society of the spectacle” / guy debord. 1974

#GuyDebord #laSocietàDelloSpettacolo #slowforward #societàDelloSpettacolo #societyOfTheSpectacle #theSocietyOfTheSpectacle

Reading recommendation for libs.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/guy-debord-the-society-of-the-spectacle

#GuyDebord #SocietyOfTheSpectacle #Anarchism

They say it would take 3.5% marching to affect any real change.

In the US that means 11.9 million people in the streets with pitchforks.

If #biden aiding #genocide was a wake up call, #trump is a bucket of cold water poured on a sleeping society.

Still, he’d have to do something incredibly drastic like increase their monthly #amazonprime or #netflix membership fee to inspire “the #societyofthespectacle to mount any kinda #grassroots response.

I’m being cynical….but grasping at the sad truth.