Uploads from the|G|™, tagged status

why the fuck are you so unhappy?

nobody@flickr.com (the|G|™) — Sun, 27 May 2012 15:59:28 -0700

the|G|™ posted a photo:

:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru3gH27Fn6E

:

damn you new car, kitchen and bathroom hard to please decorating house three times a year world product cancer modish motherfucker finite resource wasting dumb ass first world cunt.

:

apologies to carol.

:

we are what we are.

:

never fear dear............

i am just the same shallow cunt as you.

:

carry on.

:

g

a modest proposal

nobody@flickr.com (the|G|™) — Sat, 19 May 2012 07:23:57 -0700

the|G|™ posted a photo:

:

a modest proposal.

:

question provided by my great friend the polymath, libertarian and freethinker mr. robert weir:

www.facebook.com/rwmoby

www.flickr.com/photos/9315995@N06/

:

consider the issues below:

:

global poverty.

rapid depletion of finite resources.

peak oil.

child slavery.

sweatshops.

pollution.

corporate influence of government policy.

unchecked consumption.

untrammelled greed.

personal debt crisis.

national debt crisis.

credit crunch.

unparalleled financial crisis.

bankrupt nation states.

record foreclosures.

ponzi schemes.

sub prime.

unregulated financial institutions.

criminal behaviour of corporations.

industrial disasters.

slavery.

child labour.

:

now ask yourself the question again.

:

does it sound in any way sensible?

does it sound in any way ethical?

does it sound in any way achievable?

:

given the current [insane] climate of unparalleled greed, ludicrous high risk business models, entirely unregulated financial markets, lunatic avarice and egregiously destructive consumption, i would suggest that many people would look at this question and quite simply fail to understand it.

i would suggest that many people would think this question to be one that verges on insanity.

consume less!!

less!!

how on earth is that possible?

how on earth is that workable?

i want more and more and more and more and more.

i do as i am told.

:

given time, this question may well answer itself.

given time, we may well have no other choice.

:

i firmly believe that unconscionable greed will one day radically redefine our species.

:

and i say..............................

let that motherfucker roll!

:

g

:

makewealthhistory.org/

the planet [carlin]

nobody@flickr.com (the|G|™) — Sat, 12 May 2012 05:26:05 -0700

the|G|™ posted a photo:

:

george:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Carlin

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cjRGee5ipM&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rh6qqsmxNs&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeSSwKffj9o

www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDkhzHQO7jY

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKQs-jDI7j8&feature=related

:

g

should everything be disposable?

nobody@flickr.com (the|G|™) — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 03:09:41 -0700

the|G|™ posted a photo:

:

should everything be disposable?

:

disposable.

:

diapers.

love.

televisions.

furniture.

beds.

jewellery.

cars.

people.

jobs.

family.

money.

animals.

friends.

income.

come.

ejaculate.

bodies.

workers.

humans.

politicians.

sugar.

leaders.

hope.

comedians.

terror.

disbelief.

belief.

planets.

et al.

:

given our current system of existence.

yes.

:

every single thing should be disposable.

:

and every single thing should exist for one reason alone.

:

PROFIT.

:

g

heaven [social status in an afterlife]

nobody@flickr.com (the|G|™) — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 05:44:16 -0800

the|G|™ posted a photo:

:

reasonably simple question.

:

well do we?

:

priests, clerics and all true believers most welcome to answer.

:

g

the true meaning of jewellery

nobody@flickr.com (the|G|™) — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 11:30:13 -0700

the|G|™ posted a photo:

.

what does jewellery mean?

g

the tangible benefits of bureaucracy #1

nobody@flickr.com (the|G|™) — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 01:37:03 -0700

the|G|™ posted a photo:

.

offices are exceptionally depressing places.

[mobile]

bags, ink pens and status anxiety [a short discourse]

nobody@flickr.com (the|G|™) — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 12:11:16 -0700

the|G|™ posted a photo:

.

luis vuitton, mont blanc and status anxiety [a short discourse].

.

when we talk about such things as louis vuitton luggage and mont blanc pens we are talking primarily [and almost entirely] about status symbols.

in a utilitarian sense, [and arguably an aesthetic sense] a louis vuitton bag or mont blanc pen is no more useful or beautiful than a similar product costing 10 or 20 times less.

given this fact, what is the purpose of such products as louis vuitton luggage and mont blanc ink pens?

the real purpose behind products such as these is not necessarily to please the owner, their social utility resides in what they communicate to everybody else who looks at these products and thence whoever owns them.

and if the viewer is aware of the language, the message that the status symbol 'should' send to the culturally initiated, then they may read the story.

.

stories through product.

every single thing we own, every single thing we wear, every single thing in our homes tells a story about us.

owned objects tell stories about those who own them.

though some objects have developed into 'personal advertisements' which behave in a very particular way.

many [usually expensive] objects are bought primarily not as useful or even beautiful things, they are bought simply as objects to be seen by other people.

to be clear again, these objects are called status symbols.

with respect to a piece of louis vuitton luggage, or a mont blanc pen, there are no good utilitarian, qualitative or aesthetic reasons whatsoever for buying these products.

they are not even necessarily 'the best' of that particular product a consumer can possibly buy.

there are products that serve exactly the same purpose, and work equally as well as those products which are status symbols, but cost considerably less.

but these products do not function successfully as status symbols.

this is because they do not communicate those things which the buyer of a status symbol wants their purchased status symbol to communicate.

a mont blanc pen or louis vuitton bag exists primarily as a signal; it exists as a recognisable physical manifestation and personal advertisement of the perceived status of the consumer that owns it.

again, the status symbol product very often functions no better in any utile sense than their non-status-symbol equivalents, but costs ten, twenty or thirty times more.

odd.

.

a strange thing regarding status symbols.

of course, the strange thing about status symbols is that the people looking at them need to know exactly what the object is worth to receive the signal the owner wishes to send.

they need to know exactly what the status symbol is meant to mean.

what that status symbol is meant to say.

if a person owns an £800 mont blanc pen, and the person looking at the pen is entirely unaware of the brand or the ludicrously high price, then the pen simply becomes the same as every other pen.

when the viewer is unaware of what the status symbol 'should' be saying, the status symbol ceases entirely to be effective in terms of communicating the correct social and status signal to the viewer.

it is reduced to the status of base product, and as such communicates nothing other than the fact it is yet another product. yet another purchased object amongst countless other purchased objects.

this is why advertising and fashion media outlets make sure as many people as is possible know the correct signal any given status symbol should communicate.

.

product - the lingua franca of the socially anxious.

in effect what we have are groups of peers signalling to each other their social status using purchased products.

in order to understand french people i need to be able to speak french.

in order to understand what a person's status symbols are saying about that person, i need to understand the language of their status symbols.

so it is not any notion of quality or craftsmanship that makes a status symbol expensive, it is its power to tell those who understand the status symbol something [often entirely false] about the owner.

alain de botton proposes the theory of status anxiety in his exceptional book of the same name.

i think the behaviour patterns that come about as a result of status anxiety have existed for a very long time indeed.

that said, i think we now live in an age where status anxiety and conspicuous consumption can be said to be amongst the primary driving forces of almost every human being in any given developed nation.

as i mentioned, much more often than not, the function of a status symbol has little or nothing to do with its utilitarian, or indeed, aesthetic value.

it exists to tell other people exactly how much you spent in buying it.

this seems pitiful to me.

are the vast majority of people so personally and socially insecure that they need to commit themselves to purchase ever more products to ensure their position and status in their given peer group.

once again, i assert that these people are displaying the symptoms of mental illness.

.

we buy to be who we are not.

as we can see with the preposterous rise of the 'designer label'.

anything can be called a designer product.

a pen; a car, a table, a pair of sunglasses, an item of clothing, a camera, running shoes, a handbag, and item of crockery, and item of cutlery.

anything can be called a designer product.

anything can be a status symbol.

you simply have to convince people of the correct 'story' it tells with regard to the owner.

once you can do this successfully, you can sell any monkey buyer 'shit with a ribbon on' [as my father used to call products of this nature].

.

a distant acquaintance twice removed has a daughter.

a few years ago the daughter found herself in a position of owning a great deal of money in terms of personal debt. thousands and thousands of pounds.

she asked her parents if they would buy her a mont blanc pen as a birthday present for her.

once again, i have a say that this is, to me, mental illness.

i can see no other sensible name to give these patterns of behaviour.

my apologies to natalia :)

.

links of further interest:

alain de botton - status anxiety:
www.youtube.com/results?search_query=status+anxiety+part+...

TED lecture - tim jackson - economic reality check:
www.ted.com/talks/tim_jackson_s_economic_reality_check.html

NB one very important thing i will add.

if you change your circle of friends, you can change your life.

i think you know very well what i mean.

fin

PS - the question has been asked of me 'why che'?

i think i will leave it to a flickr contact to explain the reason:

www.flickr.com/photos/japaneseforms/sets/72157605449273329/

you see?

the plan

nobody@flickr.com (the|G|™) — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 07:54:12 -0700

the|G|™ posted a photo:

.

the plan

.

first we scare the fuck out of you
then we reassure you
then you buy the shit

.

firstly, we are going to convince you that all your peers are one rung above you on the shiny ladder of social status.

[what we do not tell you is that we are convincing all your peers that they are in the same position with regard to you]

then we reassure you that buying our product will allow you to ascend that one vital rung and gain parity with your peers.

then you buy the shit.

then we begin the process all over again.

.

secondly, we are going to convince you that you are a personal failure. the entire world looks upon you with scorn and observes a second class citizen.

then we are going to reassure you that taking out the loan will allow you to buy those important products that will prove to the entire world that you are actually a success.

then you buy the shit.

then we begin the process all over again.

.

thirdly, we are going to convince you that you live in abject filth, that your house is crawling with dangerous bacteria and is filled with nauseating odours. we will convince you that you are bad parents, and that you owe it to your children to keep your house as clean as we say it needs to be.

then we reassure you that our products will transform your house into a completely bacteria and odour free fully sterile environment.

then you buy the shit.

then we begin the process all over again.

.

then we begin these processes [and many more] all over again....

and again

and again

and again

and again

and again

and again

and again

and again

and again

and again

suits [uniform and uniformity]

nobody@flickr.com (the|G|™) — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 07:42:22 -0700

the|G|™ posted a photo:

.

firstly, an apology to jane austen for my shameless plagiarism :)

onward.

certainly far less controversial than the accompanying burka piece, still a subject i feel is worthy of discussion.

why are these suits and not uniforms?

well, to answer my own question, it seems a suit can have some latitude with respect to style, colour and cut.

a uniform may not.

[ i refer to uniform above in the sense of the uniform of a certain regiment or organisation, rather than uniforms in general]

though i still feel the suit is essentially a uniform.

it behaves in much the same way.

a suit is a communication device.

a suit is worn to communicate the wearers opinion of him or herself to others.

it is a social status communicator.

when worn, it stridently states 'i am not a manual worker'.

fundamentally, i feel the suit [especially early iterations] is worn to serve just that very purpose; the differentiation of those who work in certain occupations demanding no physical labour from those who work in jobs that involve manual labour.

otherwise, why suits?

in seeking to communicate this differentiation, a suit suggests the wearers position in a social hierarchy.

the clothes of a manual worker are more often than not almost entirely utilitarian.

they offer physical freedom of movement and have no reason whatsoever to communicate the wearers social or financial status.

a business suit has no need to be a utilitarian garment.

in this sense, 'form follows function' does not apply to the business suit.

it is predominantly an identifier and communicator.

and as such, notions such as 'style' and 'fashion' can be [and are] taken into consideration.

so why suit and not uniform?

well, saying 'i'm wearing my business uniform' doesn't sound quite right does it.

but conceptually, it is excactly that.

a uniform.

nb - i am aware that almost every garment is the wearers communicable 'advertisement' of themselves.

and anti-fashion is still a fashion.

such is the psychological complexity of 'fashion' [which is predicated upon death].

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suit_(clothing)

personally, i still think there is an exceptionally bland uniformity with regard to business suits.

now, where's my wife beater?

mensfashion.about.com/od/wardrobebasics/tp/TopTanks.htm

giacometti [aka $104.300.000 stickman]

nobody@flickr.com (the|G|™) — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 10:47:32 -0700

the|G|™ posted a photo:

www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/02/giacometti_walking_m...

the above is actually utterly and totally obscene to me.

and wholly and entirely insane.

i can only reach one conclusion, and the conclusion is that there are two very separate giacometti sculptures at work here.

and one is not a work of art.

the first sculpture is that which we may see in the gallery.

when we look at this sculpture we need not consider the financial value of the work in any way whatsoever.

this consideration need not play any part in our reading of the work.

the second sculpture is that which is sold in the auction room.

this sculpture ceases to be a work of art. its inclusion in auction makes it simply one more commodity in the vast range of commodities that human beings bid for in sale rooms and auction rooms worldwide.

this commodity could be an antique, a car, an autograph, a krugerrand, a diamond.

the 'fine art' auction room is a communal urinal; a stage for a class based pissing contest in which very wealthy people outbid each other to secure cachet, and [of course] generate profit.

in my opinion, the world of the sale room, the world of the auction, is wholly divorced from the fundamental notions of art.

in the many galleries i have visited to see the many works that I have seen, I cannot remember a single occasion when I considered the cost of a work when considering what that work conveyed to me.

the BBC ran a documentary series called 'the genius of photography.'

one of the episodes featured the auction sale [sothebys new york i believe] of a very early photograph.

this was the first auction wherein a single photograph was expected to fetch a price of one million dollars or more.

the actual sale price when the hammer fell was considerably more than one million dollars.

the saleroom crowd actually applauded!

i found this utterly fucking appalling. i found it to be one of the most perfect examples of philistinism i have ever witnessed.

they did not applaud the beautiful work of the photographer.

they applauded an amount of money.

they applauded a number.

the irony that these people will almost certainly feel themselves to be the final and unarguable arbiters of taste does not escape me.

though it seems to me that they are the very opposite, they are the arbiters of utterly crass tastelessness.

rightly is the philistine thus named.

nb - bids of over one million sterling will be gratefully accepted for this piece.

expect little if any profit.

the|G|™

sellebrity

nobody@flickr.com (the|G|™) — Sat, 23 May 2009 14:34:03 -0700

the|G|™ posted a photo:

i dont need that

nobody@flickr.com (the|G|™) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:46:17 -0700

the|G|™ posted a photo:

love new york city

nobody@flickr.com (the|G|™) — Fri, 18 May 2012 13:14:30 -0700

the|G|™ posted a photo:

:

location - southport | england.

www.flickr.com/photos/the-g-uk/6989283804/in/photostream/...

:

odd.

vacuous.

perfectly understandable.

:

why love new york?

why not love where you live?*

:

* [those people who live in new york are exempt]

:

fashion is madness.

mashion is fadness.

:

g

keep buying the crap bubbles

nobody@flickr.com (the|G|™) — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 10:39:36 -0700

the|G|™ posted a photo:

.

TED lecture.

for all you wonderful conspicuous consumers:

www.ted.com/talks/tim_jackson_s_economic_reality_check.html

why are you so incredibly frightened of what other human beings will think of you?

are you so weak that you cannot explain yourself as a human being in your own terms?

without product?

to match yourself against your equally simian peers?

without:

without your watch, car, television, holiday, decor, kitchen?

without the plethora of endless products that delineate your life to your equally moronic and slavish clan?

without your cards, cash and crap?

without buying all those important things that let your equally asinine gang know where you are on that endless peer driven purchase cluster fuck ladder?

without you having the balls to be different?

why are you scared to be different?

forgive that question, i know why.

sad fucking robot.

keep buying the crap bubbles.

g

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction

how much did your wedding cost?

nobody@flickr.com (the|G|™) — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 14:21:53 -0800

the|G|™ posted a photo:

you don't need money to celebrate your love

i should have explained that this particular question was prompted by a recollection.

i remembered that the daughter of my mother's neighbour contrived to spend just under £17,000 sterling on her wedding.

they divorced after roughly 16 months.

i can only put this amount of money spent on a wedding down to actual mental illness.

i am very serious indeed in that assertion.

and by the way, don't insult my intelligence by telling me you wanted 'a day to remember'. you don't need to spend huge amounts of money to make memories.

personally [as ever] i think that once you pass a certain level of expenditure, you are simply telling your guests how much you 'can' spend. it's less of a ceremony to bind two lovers together, more of a day long advertising campaign highlighting your [personally perceived] social/financial status.

i will be working on a companion graphic today exploring this particular type of [endemic] mental illness, and the catastrophic effects that may well be felt this century as a consequence of this worldwide disease.

and your wedding?

money well spent?
pissing contest?
did you impress your peers?
did it last?
look at our money people!
expense as adveritising.
the usual.
moo.
cow.
of course.
love may find a way.