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Every time I see the word "consumer" being used in the context of digital media (music/movie/game/book/etc) it feels somehow wrong for me. I can't exactly put in words, but I don't really see how the word applies when nothing is being consumed (ie used up/transformed/destroyed). Something about it just feels like subversive language, I'm not sure. I tried to see if anyone else notices this or also feels uneasy, but I could only find it being discussed in the context of consumerism and corporatespeak (replacing customer/client with consumer), but nothing in the context of casual conversations. I find it weird because I have noticed more and more people casually using "consume" and "consumer" when talking about digital media and it never sits right with me.

>>41655 you know that's blue amongus ass in the sparkle of her eyes, right?

It's easy irony to placidly accept the fact they ARE engaging with garbage, but it does down easily and they acknowledge it so it's totally cool though :) This comes partially from the marrying of corporate and audience. Turn brands into cults and whatnot. The language IS meant to be subversive, in this case to appropriate the very notion of "art" or expression. It's to separate culture from lived human experience and to validate the anhedonic state of placid...content consumption...

Consuming the physical materials used to produce the hardware and the materials used to produce electricity are being consumed.

>>41655 That's because media is no longer an object with meaning in and of itself, but a product meant to be consumed. A record to be listened to and cherished, a VHS to be enjoyed with friends, and a book that teaches you something have all been subverted by the idea of digital media. mp3, netflix, pdf are now all files and services that are designed for a consumer market. They exist to move product to a buyer, not to provide people with meaningful things that they can enjoy and value, and maybe eventually pass on to the next person. So really it's just as >>41657 said, a corporate subversion of meaning and value, and an eventual conversion of the human experience into a marketable product. Don't even get me started on the VR life experiences that Amazon and pornhub sell.

A data stream has a producer and a consumer. The terms sound about right to me; or are you talking about something else?

>>41655 Yes. Relevant Luke smith video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI3GVw2JSEI Richard Stallman also has a few interesting takes on the use of words.

>>41655 > nothing is being consumed (ie used up/transformed/destroyed). The data on the medium is being copied and used to show us images/sound/etc, hence it is being consumed. Also, you are aware that you have two blue amonguses shaking their asses in your eyes?

>>41659 Oh come on man, this is total nonsense, born out of nostalgia and romanticism in your head. Why would an mp3 be less capable of being cherished and enjoyed with friends than a vinyl record? Stupid idea. Netflix is a totally different issue.

>the word applies when nothing is being consumed only if you think of 'consuming' as a verb and not an adjective, and the latter applies a lot more. the media consumes you.

Well, you’re not creating anything by consuming media. Helll, I study for university and it also feels like I consume all day and create nothing.

>>41663 DRM on files preventing passing them on to people. Though it is true something was lost with digital for example how there was a shift from people listening to albums to listening to and buying individual songs only which had an influence on the music industry.

>>41664 its more like you eating garbage information in literal sense - the consumer watching garbage media lets said information influence his brain just like consuming alcohol would. Consumer is just a nicer word for cattle eating the feed its provided.

>>41667 it's the equivalent of showing a monkey flashing pictures on a screen, and the monkey being so occupied with it that it eventually starves to death.

>>41663 A vinyl record is a hard good. An mp3 is intangible good in a device, and in many cases now hearing it is just a service. There is a ritualistic value of the process of enjoying music on a record. Like making a cup of coffee at your house instead of paying for starbucks on your phone and arriving at a window to a paper cup of unethically sourced almond milk sugar dirt water.

>>41669 Rituals can have value. But modern society is functional. Some people aren’t total chumps and are busy all the time with, you know, life - or in this imageboard’s context it might be a person working on code instead of smelling dust off a vinyl. There’s no time to do a coffee. 2 button presses later, one for the coffee machine and one for the music streaming service, that’s all it takes so you can go back to more important things that actually have an impact on your life. Get good

i miss the days when the cia drugged poor communities

>>41670 >modern society is functional There is nothing functional about obsessing over productivity and hustle culture as a wageslave living for work at the benefit of those who dont give a fuarrrk about you.

>>41672 You compete or you go down. The alternative is: be female

well maybe we ought to think about the etymology of the word "consume". Con obviously means negative trait, as in pros and cons, and sume comes from sumo, the nipponese wrestling style. Consumption therefore is about the negative traits of sumo wrestling, namely among them obesity and other significant health effects which rather reduce the average lifespan of sumo participants. Stereotypical Amerifats are excellent examples of consumers, obese and unhealthy, and without the sport pleasure of the nipponese wrestler. So how does this relate to digital media ? Well its tautological to say consumership is bad, but to understand the practice in a more abstract sense we need to go further back, to the mythological origins of sumo, which relate to the symbolic triumph of the divinity of conquest and swordsmanship (respectable, but purely destructive and non constructive arts) defeats a better rounded god associated with naturalist forces, as well as constructive agriculture and hunting. Sumo, and consumo moreso therefore embodies the destructive energies that assert victory over survival, and if the price of that is massive destruction so be it. Modern consumption is the embodiment of this careless rush forward without the thoughtful preparation of what is to come next. A netflix user therefore is an excellent example of consumption, he doesn't prepare, he merely enjoys for now.

>>41675 You're going down anyways. You're kept driven with a carrot on a stick and doing someone's bidding but at the end of the day you're going to die more unhappy and lonely than those who didn't bother or saw through the bullshit. I'm guessing you're young (and prime feed for the machine), so take this as warning.

>>41670 As a wise lainon once said, why work out when you can just do steroids?

>>41677 Your defeatist attitude is despicable

>>41677 I mean let me elaborate instead of insulting you. What is the point of your life if you passively wait for death? You want to live like elites but can’t even excel among the cattle. I see such behavior a lot in shizoid nerds. There is a chance that you are indeed on the way of the way of a he Buddhist monk, I can’t judge this through the internet. but then again, if you are so enlightened, what the fuarrrk are you doing on the internet, pursuing such pointless matters as imageboard communication with strangers? See, actually I am getting older and that’s the point where I realized most people are weaklings all their lives, and I was like you too.

>>41680 I don't think conversation with the spirit of the times, to borrow the term, through the other in imageboards is all that negative when done in moderation. Moderation is definitely key though. And I also think the same about employment, which really was the point I wanted to make. I don't envy the elites, or at least not the public ones. They're on the same boat, only more willing to sacrifice what they have for less.

>>41681 You seem to imply that being busy means employment. I have friends who became fathers recently. They are so busy with the kids and other soykaf, they realistically won’t have a damn vinyl hobby or waste their time with cooking coffee. Also let me quickly throw in the topic of contribution to society. You can’t do this passively either, it’s an active thing and you’d be quite busy if you’d do it right. Let me name a 3rd thing that takes a lot of time that isn’t employment. Physical maintenance. Working out and physical activity becomes more important the more you age. Still have time for that coffee cooking and your vinyls? Congrats, you are a superhuman compared to the average person.

>>41682 I'm going to keep the coffee example because it's a good one. How long does it take you to boil some water and make your coffee with your preferred method and tools? Ten minutes? That's ten minutes in a routine where you face complete stillness, if you want, and your "waste of time" can give space to the philosophical thoughts that torment all of us. Ten minutes in an early morning routine spent in the hell of self-reflection, devoid of stimulation, devoid of the noise of society, kept to yourself. Is that really so long? And are your responsibilities really why you avoid it? The tick of the clock can drive you mad for a myriad reasons (I'll admit it keeps me awake at night, sometimes), but at the core of modern life, of spending your time productively and obsessing with productivity and failing to taste the simpler pleasures of merely living, you're giving away something very important. In seeking endless acknowledgement and stimulation and belonging in the Other your Self melts away. Maybe to some philosophies that's alright, but drawing the line is how you cultivate a deeper sense of being. Notice you're ultimately wasting your life in trivialities that bereft you of the thing you're so afraid of wasting. Hilarious! These observable ironies lead to a conclusion, or my conclusion anyways: stay centered. Walk the middle road. Instant coffee tastes like garbage and "wasting" a comfortable sunrise sitting down with an album from time to time isn't so bad. You're driven mad by demons that aren't yours.

>>41682 not op, but i think you're missing the point entirely. i'm nearly 30 now, and yeah life gets busy, but i still find time for those little rituals. you mention working out, i like to get in my car and drive to the woods to go for a run instead of paying for a gym membership and running on a treadmill like a lab rat. it takes up some of my time, but saves money while making the chore of self-maintenance a lot less soulless and boring. it's the same with other dumb soykaf life forces you to do, you can do it hastily and soykafty just to get it done, or you can try to make it an enjoyable part of your life you actually look forward to.

Plus a little addendum. It's this willingness to disintegrate that ultimately shapes the world into what it is now, a machine ready to take and never quite give back. I need to derive my sense of self through others and perceived success, hence I'll never build a proper self; I'll use pleasures to escape the creeping thoughts of death and worthlessness; I need to make a future for my children, and so I'll never be there for them; I only really care about myself, but I want this care from others; I'm willing to give away and away to never live with myself, so take, take, and normalize this behavior, quell my pains, I beg thee, o LORD. Control me and control him through me. And so He does. The invisible hand now pushes this on you at every corner. You can really just say no though.

>>41682 >they realistically won’t have a damn vinyl hobby or waste their time with cooking coffee. If you get to the point where you don't have 5 spare minutes to brew coffee, you might want to take a step back and think where the hell everything went to wrong. Oh, wait. You wouldn't have time even for that. I think this is the real problem with all these modern conveniences that supposedly help you "save time". They are ultimately used to make you instead spend the time you "saved" in even more soul crushing activities. "I don't have to waste time doing house chores anymore? Great! Now I will work longer hours filling the man's pocket, away from my family." Or getting a job further from home, needing a longer commute time, which is an even bigger waste of time than manually washing your dishes. You know, there was a time when families worked together, so being a father and being a worker weren't two separate activities with separate cells on the timetable. People didn't need timetables. Labouring and exercising weren't separate either, so you didn't have to go out of your way to keep your body active. In the end, all these "time savers" are shoved in your life just so you can dedicate yourself to feeding the meatgrinder more efficiently to keep it expanding, at your own expense.

>>41682 Everyone has time for those things, if you say you don't you're just lying. Just like how people lie when they say they don't have time to work out, it takes me 3 hours a week and no brain power, that's nothing. If you don't have at least 4 hours of completely free time every day, you're less productive than someone that does, it doesn't matter if you're working all day, you're not getting anything done you're just coping by overworking and a slave to yourself (just like the morons on youtube doing 12 hours study stream, that crap is disturbing, try doing anything meaningful and you'll see throwing time at a problem won't do anything you'll just burn out, you need patience and to REST).

>>41687 >meaningful by what definition? you have to work toward something Together we can stop them. They cannot stop all of us. We need to join together. The more "well off" of us should directly support the less "well off" i.e. through food, water, shelter

>>41691 What the fuarrrk are you talking about

>>41691 >the more well off should directly support the less well off of us t. lazy parasite

>>15761 More like someone that doesn't enjoy parasitic social classes leeching off the land that belongs to all, and for some reason those same social classes are in charge of all government and all business. To consume is to simply ingest without engaging. The difference between "I read a book" and "I consumed some content" is that in the former, the reader is supposedly mentally alert and really getting engrossed in fiction or being fascinated by nonfiction. In the latter, the consumer is just mindlessly having slop fed into their eyes and ears to kill time.

If you want to describe a feeling of comfort and satisfaction, by all means say you are "content," but using the word as a noun to describe works and communications through which people have expressed themselves adopts an attitude you might rather avoid: it treats them as a commodity whose purpose is to fill a box and make money. In effect, it disparages all the works by focusing on the box that is full. To avoid taking that attitude, you can call them "works," "publications," "messages," "communications," as well as various other words that are more specific. Those who use the term "content" are often the publishers that push for increased copyright power in the name of the authors ("creators," as they say) of the works. The term "content" reveals their real attitude towards these works and their authors. The same word, "content," has another usage which is different enough in meaning that it does not raise this issue. It appears in the expression, "technical content." The usage of that expression generally relates to one specific document or publication, and refers to "the information in that one." This usage doesn't embody any attitude towards publications and communications in general. Likewise, the word "contents" does not raise this issue. It is a form of the word "content," but it has a different meaning. Talking about the "contents" of a file or the "table of contents" of a book does not imply an attitude towards files in general or books in general. We first condemned this usage of "content" in 2002. Since then, Tom Chatfield recognized the same point in The Guardian: >Content itself is beside the point—as the very use of words like content suggests. The moment you start labelling every single piece of writing in the world "content," you have conceded its interchangeability: its primary purpose as mere grist to the metrical mill. In other words, "content" reduces publications and writings to a sort of pap, fit to be metered and piped through the "tubes" of the internet. Later, Peter Bradshaw noticed it too. >This is what happens when studios treat movies as pure, undifferentiated corporate "content," a Gazprom pipeline of superhero mush which can be turned off when the accountants say that it makes sense to do so. Martin Scorsese condemned the attitude of "content" in regard to films. The attitude implied by "content" is illustrated pointedly in this critical description of the development path of platforms run by people who base their thinking on that concept. The article uses this word over and over, along with "consume" and "creators." Perhaps that is meant to illustrate the way those people like to think. See also Courtney Love's open letter to Steve Case and search for "content provider" in that page. Alas, Ms. Love is unaware that the term "intellectual property" is also biased and confusing. However, as long as other people use the term "content provider," political dissidents can well call themselves "malcontent providers." The term "content management" takes the prize for vacuity. "Content" means "some sort of information," and "management" in this context means "doing something with it." So a "content management system" is a system for doing something to some sort of information. Nearly all programs fit that description. In most cases, that term really refers to a system for updating pages on a web site. For that, we recommend the term "web site revision system" or "website revision system" (WRS).

this specific cultural situation paves way for "ai content". culture has been shifted into a mass-production paradigm. john the savage whipped himself bloody for a reason, and when the activity was stripped of its significance, hanged. who cares about why it exists, so long as it fits the mold? creativity will be a long-forgotten arcane word in due time.