Freddie deBoer's The Resentment Machine is a scathing critique of the current Internet as a vehicle for the aggrandizement of consumption, driven by the competitive forces inherent in our society. It is well-argued and worth a careful read.
DeBoer's analysis focuses on the "postcollegiate, culturally savvy tastemakers" of the Internet and the ultimate triviality of their online discourse. It's easy to agree with him that "buying an iPad does nothing to delineate you from anyone else." That said, I think he's missing the larger context.
When the popular Internet arrived I was already an adult. I can testify without reservation to the fact that competitive consumption was already a way of life in America well before Internet hipsters showed up.
It can be difficult to remember now, but in the 1980s the television reigned supreme. It told you what to wear, what to eat, what was cool, what was out of style, and how to act. And people wanted so badly to do what their televisions told them to do. Most of the people who bought K-Tel disco albums had never set foot in a dance club, but they'd seen plenty of disco on TV, and they knew they were supposed to like it.
Before the television, radio told Americans how they should think. Before that it was newspapers. Now we all just tell each other how to think and what to consume. We argue about it. I'm not sure if that's better or worse than simply being told what to consume and how to consume it by broadcast boxes.
Are we unable to create meaningful self-identity because we are too busy blogging, tweeting, linking, and liking? In those musty pre-Internet days we didn't assemble our identities online, but we didn't create them from scratch either. DeBoer seems to believe that you can either be a consumer and critic, or you can engage in some sort of artistically meaningful and authentic endeavor of your own.
But authenticity is a will-o-the-wisp. Every time you think you've got a handle on it you realize you've just grabbed hold of a nascent trend or reconfigured artifact from the past. Today's earnest striving is tomorrow's ironic nod, and today's irony is tomorrow's deeply held conviction. The pieces from which we assemble identity are not unique; it's the manner in which they are assembled that defines us.
DeBoer does an excellent job of laying out the grim reality of an unexamined life. He merely misses the larger truths: The Internet did not create nor did it necessarily magnify competitive consumption, and the quest for an authentically-constructed self has always been and will always be difficult.
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twitter: @erikschmidt