How Blogs Castrate Us

Today I would like to talk to you about blogging. It would seem that some bloggers have, um, missed the point entirely.

Blogging is far more than a way to publish writings you couldn’t otherwise have published, more than a shameless capitalistic advertisement to further a career, even more than a way to publish writings anonymously a la Kierkegaard, more even than a public diary. Which is to say, the blogosphere does encompass all these things. But these are merely symptoms of a virulent technological mutation (extension qua Marshall McLuhan) gone awry. Indeed, the blogosphere really is an elaborate holocaust of sensibility, a total abandonment of synesthetic possibility. 

At first, it would seem to parallel reality, and more interestingly, to ground Foucault: the internet is the panopticon par excellence. Think about it: just as our identity in society is molded by the gaze of others, the constant fear of humiliation, so it is with blogs. The total effacement of the expert, of editors, brings with it a bevy of relentless and merciless bloggers waiting to criticize every word you write. And in effect—to shape your identity, to inaugurate your soul. And stranger, blogs, unlike prisons, even unlike society itself, are voluntarily chosen. Do you understand what I just said? People are actually seeking humiliation!

And what, then, becomes of synesthesia? Our attentions, obviously, are directed elsewhere—as if in a prison, quite literally, our behavior transforms before our very eyes, unconsciously. We are castrated so thoroughly, so thoroughly sucked of vitality—we become bile-drenched zombies, utterly abandoning the notion of anything interesting, indeed stripped bare of that synesthesia we so desperately need as we try to war off shame and humiliation. This is no different from the Renaissance: the total effacement of synesthesia, as rampant societal discourse shames us, humiliates us, makes cuckolds of us all.

Do they (that is, us bloggers) really think we can bask in our synesthesia as cuckolds? Can that really be a question at all? It all seems so obvious now: blogs are the root of everything evil in this world, of the recent surge in terrorism, the depression, etc. How can politicians have missed this blindingly obvious fact—blogs are hell bent on castrating us left and right, and we are desiring it, even going so far as to give up our synesthesia voluntarily. For what?

Take this as a call to action: abandon the blogosphere. And question. Question identity, and question society. Always.

Demand your synesthesia.