Virtual Snake Oil

An Ode to Trailer Park Venus

There are millions of people for whom the projects of their lives are arranged around how to feed their starving bellies through Internet Relevance. They are artists, creatives, small business owners, spiritual healers, life coaches—many of them absolute muppets. But not all of them. Some are driven by a burdensome sense of urgency to honour a calling they cannot ignore.

They are desperate for followers, likes and engagement, in a way you ‘Normal’ internet users cannot really understand or appreciate.

It is like the way you don’t miss the access ramp because you’re not in a wheelchair. It’s like that.

This is me speaking to that painful mess, to the reality of the honest folks trying to sell real medicine in a Walmart of virtual Snake Oil. This is my ode to trailer park Venus.

That’s how they get you man! —The fear of scarcity.

They’ll give you a tricklefeed of virtual crack, you know, the little red numbers above the notification icon, the magic ‘9+’ counter that lets you know ten or more of something happened, that means you might be okay one day.

And then they’ll rub, right in your face, the digital fact of someone posting something inane and getting thousands of engagement tokens and algorithm credits.

What did they have that I don’t? Should I copy this, or should I now do that? “It’s the question that drives us, Neo. It’s the question that brought you here.”

And it makes you throw yourself deeper into the crab bucket project of funnels and hashtags, neurotically crafting your hooks and polishing the shiny baubles to get those sweet likes; clambering over the other hapless, desperate crabs to scrabble towards an elusive rim that is, and will forever remain, eternally out of reach.

The whole internet attention economy is a grift, and everyone is playing it and being played. How else could a con man become President of the Disunited States?

This is the great social media grift of our time. And there ain’t nothing great about it neither. It’s maddening—Van Gogh cut his own ear off for this shit.

But this ain’t Arles motherfucker. This isn’t Starry Night, and you’re no Van Gogh.

You’re not Theseus. You’re not even Ariadne, you know, the one who helped him by spinning the red thread. You’re the Minotaur man. You’re a hungry thing, hidden away from the world, chasing butterflies in the Labyrinth. None of this, is real.

That’s right, folks… Step right up! None of this is real.

It would be a kind of acceptable karma if one didn’t actually have something of real consequence to say either.

You do have something meaningful to say right?

And, just to be clear, that one who makes it, their schtick was just peppy enough, juuuuuust preppy enough, maybe not in tone, but in overall substance, their action in the world just benign enough to not be flagged for suppression, and their “content” just sugary enough for the algorithm to accidentally, or deliberately, green-light them for viral stardom.

That one, and the tiny handful that you saw, actually make it? They’re just there to keep you hungry and keep some agonised dream in you alive. Their stardom is amplified and magnified in this fish-eye reality.

They are one in a million statistics. It’s the grind for us boyo.

Most of us eke out an existence by pouring our souls through our work, wringing ourselves out, dancing for our supper, for a few thin pennies in our crumpled hat. We try to share our pennies around so all of us can eat.

The rest, the rabble; they didn’t even think to bring their pennies. They’re just here for the circus, the free bread, and the drama of the machinations of the caesars.

And so we all eat lies because our hearts are hungry.

Me? I’m staging a coup—a prison break. I’m looking for crabs that can walk without their old shells for a spell, who are down to arrange themselves like acrobats, so we can defy the physics of these prison walls and help others like us, defy this whole macabre fate and reach toward our waiting destinies. I’m setting up blind dates with the Muse. I’m handing out blue pills like fucking acid tabs at a Greatful Dead concert.

You think that’s air you’re breathing?

You think those are real likes?

Let me tell you something friend—

A real like is a share or a follow. A real follow is a ‘subscribe’. A real subscribe is a paid subscription. Everything is named something more than it is, overvalued and thereby depreciating the value of the things whose name it stole. So now none of this can be real.

Are you awake, or are you still dreaming?

Vaya con dios, fellow bucket dweller,

or perhaps

“Knock, knock…

…Follow the white rabbit.”

PAGING NOAH 

The art is all fake,
the sincerity is plastic,
the fitness tips are lame,
the life advice is trite,
the quotes are all regurgitated,
the jokes are all plagiarised,

the bro-marketers keep bro-marketing.
The coaches keep coaching.
The hackers keep hacking, and 
the memes are a virtual showcase
of the wide and enduring truth
that quantity
is a poor substitute for quality.

Originality is raped,
the message is noise,
the ethic is cringe,
the aesthetic is synthetic,
the wisdom is stale,

and it is all passed off as fresh.

The flesh is flashed.
The small-minded
are entertained.

The rest of us?
We’re settling,
for this.

Pease click like
and share.

© Rocco Jarman

Go on, you sonsofbitches! I’ve danced for my supper. Put a shiny dollar in the hat.

Buy me a coffee!