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lobelia321
May. 6th, 2011 09:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lobelia321So there are these new things called 'custom userheads' (I can't believe the rudeness of this term [or is it only me?] *g*).
They look like this, for example:wrangler; eyebrowofdoom; crazybutsound; cinzia; svmadelyn; fourth_rose; grondfic.
However! When does one see one's own 'userhead'? Does one now have to type in "brought to by you bylobelia321" every time one posts? Or festoon one's posts with gratuitous
And will such posts henceforth be called GUHPs (in homage to the GIP)?
Also, how does one go about choosing?? There are thousands! (Well, dozens.)
GIN (Gratuitous Ideological Note): The userhead page says: Update your look. Check out our collection of custom userheads and enhance your self-expression.
Enhance your self-expression! LJ, gotta hand it to you. You wear your individualist capitalist ideology all over your nouveau riche sleeve.
1) The word 'custom' makes the head seem unique and bespoke. (Which it isn't because it's off-the-peg and designed by unnamed person or persons. Not by self.)
2) Enhance and update. (Because capitalism and consumerism needs everything to be made new every few months. And technology has sped this up to every few nanominutes. Because in this ideology 'change' means 'making better', and 'making better' is human duty in this system: stasis = death. Also, obsolescence must be in-built or the profit-making machine may choke and stop. To wit: laptops, ipods, operating systems, narrow-gauge railways.
3) Self-expression. (Because this is the other ultimate goal of our current ideoology: ensure profit growth but also focus on self self self. Above all, forget that self is the product of social forces but think of self as generating the world. If only we all 'express' whatever this 'self' may be, then hooray!
4) 'Expression' of 'self' can be achieved painlessly by paying some money for off-the-peg tiny little pixel thingies which somehow, semiotically, are intimately connected to this 'self' and its 'expression'. In fact, the tiny little userheads become the self.
So of course, I am totally hooked and wantss the preciouss.
Upshot: in consumerist ideologies, the self comes down to choosing among available products. And if the choice becomes too bewildering (as for me in this case: which one? which one? which one? which one of these is Truly Meeee?) then we have selfplosion (TM).
Important ETA: This is an IR (ideological rant) not a veiled plea for gifting me a userhead! I would NOT BE HAPPY if anyone gifted me one of these (possibly evil) things. If any dubious ideology is to be inflicted, I'd need to inflict it myself. Rilly. :-)
They look like this, for example:
wrangler; eyebrowofdoom; crazybutsound; cinzia; svmadelyn; fourth_rose; grondfic.However! When does one see one's own 'userhead'? Does one now have to type in "brought to by you by
lobelia321" every time one posts? Or festoon one's posts with gratuitous And will such posts henceforth be called GUHPs (in homage to the GIP)?
Also, how does one go about choosing?? There are thousands! (Well, dozens.)
GIN (Gratuitous Ideological Note): The userhead page says: Update your look. Check out our collection of custom userheads and enhance your self-expression.
Enhance your self-expression! LJ, gotta hand it to you. You wear your individualist capitalist ideology all over your nouveau riche sleeve.
1) The word 'custom' makes the head seem unique and bespoke. (Which it isn't because it's off-the-peg and designed by unnamed person or persons. Not by self.)
2) Enhance and update. (Because capitalism and consumerism needs everything to be made new every few months. And technology has sped this up to every few nanominutes. Because in this ideology 'change' means 'making better', and 'making better' is human duty in this system: stasis = death. Also, obsolescence must be in-built or the profit-making machine may choke and stop. To wit: laptops, ipods, operating systems, narrow-gauge railways.
3) Self-expression. (Because this is the other ultimate goal of our current ideoology: ensure profit growth but also focus on self self self. Above all, forget that self is the product of social forces but think of self as generating the world. If only we all 'express' whatever this 'self' may be, then hooray!
4) 'Expression' of 'self' can be achieved painlessly by paying some money for off-the-peg tiny little pixel thingies which somehow, semiotically, are intimately connected to this 'self' and its 'expression'. In fact, the tiny little userheads become the self.
So of course, I am totally hooked and wantss the preciouss.
Upshot: in consumerist ideologies, the self comes down to choosing among available products. And if the choice becomes too bewildering (as for me in this case: which one? which one? which one? which one of these is Truly Meeee?) then we have selfplosion (TM).
Important ETA: This is an IR (ideological rant) not a veiled plea for gifting me a userhead! I would NOT BE HAPPY if anyone gifted me one of these (possibly evil) things. If any dubious ideology is to be inflicted, I'd need to inflict it myself. Rilly. :-)
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-06 01:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-06 01:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-06 04:51 pm (UTC)ETA because I realised you probably don't know Fugazi - decades ago they wrote/sang/played Blueprint:
"'Cause what a difference, what a difference, what a difference
A little difference would make" ending with
"never mind what's been selling, it's what you're buying" (undefiled).
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-06 05:47 pm (UTC)What I love about our neck of the interwebs is how we undercut sonsumerism and it's all about a barter economy. I give you fic, you give me love. I give you love, you give me icon. Of course, this is all happening on the back and within capitalism (paid user accounts, Hollywood product, mass television crap) but it's interstitial!
Fan!
Dom!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-06 06:00 pm (UTC)Tiny animals. IIRC penguins were the rage, naturally.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-06 10:34 pm (UTC)Penguins? I'm having a blank-out. Little tiny userhead penguins??
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-06 10:39 pm (UTC)When I google "lj tiny user icons animals" I ... get cathexys' user icon. But not the tiny animals I told you about.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-06 10:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-06 11:14 pm (UTC)