STEM fag here (not one of the meme fields, mechnical engineer). Ok so I have to take electives and meet breadth requirements to graduate, so for this summer session I decided to take a media studies course (the second year, intro level course) because no other courses in the humanities had an open wait list. Anyway...
I thought it was going to be BS shit, really subjective nonsense, white man hate bullshit. Mind you, I go to a university in canada so I was ready for like the waves upon waves of left progressive bs.
But... I think I got even more red pilled by the course. We covered this dude. I don't know if you know about him or other post-modernist theorists but they were right about everything and why this is happening. We literally have been since cable news living in a simulacra.
Am i crazy, has anyone else on here read his works?
>>78092732
Mind posting links or titles of books?
Or maybe his fucking name.
>>78092477
Post modernists are right about a few things. Nowadays it seems pretty obvious to say that meaning and sense are shaped by society and that mass media are obviously a supreme influence in the post war information age, but it wasn't so obvious a few decades ago. Baudrillard is French, and before the wave of post modern thinkers, mostly in the 50's, the intellectual and university life in his country was mainly a battle of conservative catholics or pseudo catholics against marxists, and those worldviews are objectivist in the sense that they both postulate that the true meaning of history and the place of man in cosmos can be known.
Post modernists broke that, although the roots of their line of thought were planted way before.
Glad you enjoyed your course OP. I'm a humanities guy, but I would love to get into STEM. I have many areas of interest, but the one I'd like to read about is genetics and molecular biology. Unfortunately I don't have the time. We only live once. Someday perhaps.
t. sociologist
>>78092840
Baudrillard.
Our prof included a selection of his work in our course reader. Simulacra and Simulation is his big one. His concepts of simulacra and hyperreality is weirdly prophetic given what is happening right now where groups of people can be 100% certain in their correctness while fundamentally in conflict with reality but on a systematic scale. It has everything to do with how experience and consume our media, including the internet to create what he considers the hyperreal.
just from wiki:
>hyperreality is an inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality,
We have lost the ability to do this, because according to him, we are too dependent on the content of our media. we are not connected to the world, we are connected to it through our media.
>>78093500
By that logic no one was ever connected to the world. Before the days of media, including newspapers, everyone would hear news via word of mouth. There's no difference between that media. Both can distort reality.
>>78093407
Cool but my prof said something about how post-modernists were trying to contend with emerging facets of the world at the time, mass media consumed in a consumer age where everyone can have a TV and a radio. He kept emphasizing that the relationship we have with the world is different because of how consumption of media feeds into the simulacra and he said something about fan fiction and that really resonated with me. Like, in our neck of the woods, we know what fanfiction can do to works, where people take it in weird places and add more and more to it.
>>78093743
No, that's not how that logic work. I had to take a logic course.
By the logic I articulated, we would understand the world differently back then, word of mouth would have a skepticism towards, making it less real than motion pictures or photos. think about it, before movies and television and radio (live in the moment broadcast, think the war of the worlds broadcast), people responded to things differently. Its our integration of our experience of media because media is becoming more encompassing that is making it difficult to create a distinction.
>>78093407
>re: stem
yep, we really only live once. After I'm done this course I doubt I will have time to even do more readings about this and I am certain I won't understand it on my own or even know where to go afterwards.
>>78094115
>No, that's not how that logic work. I had to take a logic course.
Do you think these two events are related?
Media literacy needs to be taught in K-12
>>78094338
I guess parsing the implications of those two claims isn't your strong suite. You took my statement to an illogical conclusion. I'm questioning whether you even know what logic means and how to properly utilize it. After all, fallacies happen when someone tries to connect two unrelated claims, and this is something you would have known if you actually took a course in logic and understood how logic works.
>>78092477
checked
>not one of the meme fields
>mechanical engr.
>hyperreality
>not just a fancy way of saying first-wolders are too coddled in their bubbles and circlejerks to think on their own
Aside from my shitposting, I'll probably check out his work.
if the masses had critical thinking there wouldn't be mass media
it would be local and individualistic unless something notable happened.
>>78094115
>He kept emphasizing that the relationship we have with the world is different because of how consumption of media feeds into the simulacra
It all depends on the prof and the context. I studied post modernists more than 10 years ago. I had no cell phone back then, so I'm pretty sure I would have a different understanding of what I studied. And I'm by no means an expert on the subject. I do agree with the gringo anon about word of mouth creating a similar effect. Myths and magical explanations of the world were the cosmovision of most mankind during millenia, shared by word of mouth, and we would hardly think about them as conected with "reality". At the same time, I do agree with mass media creating some sort of Matrix effect that wasn't seen before, in the sense that urban life and mass media transmited meanings provide a disconnection with nature that is something new in history.
The main point of postmodernism is the acceptance of the loss of meaning, that was being incubated for centuries. Postmodernists point to the lack of meaning in today's societies, but also shed light on the plasticity of meaning in previous moments of history. The qualitative difference that mass media provides is something that was discussed by Baudrillard indeed, but was kind of absent in other thinkers. The main work I would suggest is "The postmodern condition" by Jean Francois Lyotard.
>>78094215
>After I'm done this course I doubt I will have time to even do more readings about this and I am certain I won't understand it on my own or even know where to go afterwards.
Know the feeling. But there's always mass media to help you. I don't usually watch documentaries related to humanities, but I love documentaries about STEM subjects.
God, I love my career and I love my job, but how I'd love to know about genetics and study human evolution and migrations. I'll retire at 70. Hope to be alive by that time. Perhaps STEM lords like you help me to live a long and healthy live. I'd love to go to college again and do something completely different.
>>78094911
And I take it you don't recognize a meme when he slaps you in the face. Congratulations: You fell for the number one logic trap there is: Overthinking. Now go prove the chair you are sitting on doesn't exist. It should take you exactly two words.
>>78094953
>hyperreality
no, it isn't about thinking. it's weirder than that. We all have the capacity to think and respond to what we are experiencing, but hyperreality is the confusion that arises because we cannot distinguish between what is real from the simulation of reality (those media pictures).
Baudrillard said the first hyperreal war was the first gulf war. People experienced it through cable news and responded to it through those simulations of reality. The way movies work in how they can suck us in through picture, sound, and the impetus of plot, creates a break from reality but the media we consume which doesn't have an ending like a film, something we can walk away from, it has the same effect.
Also even a lack of trust in the media, or in the message, that still has responding to the message in a way where we can't just like leave the 'theater' and say, ok, the movie is over, those characters are not real. The lack of trust in the media is us just responding to what in effect just words, pictures and sounds.
>>78093500
>Simulacra and Simulation
Swoon. Baudrillard is up there with Manuel Delanda and Marshal McLuhan for me.
He's brilliant at discussing the compression and perceptual or phenomenological changes created by always-on media.
>>78095697
Stop trying to sound smart. I'm sure you are, but don't be a show off.
>>78095191
>The main work I would suggest is "The postmodern condition" by Jean Francois Lyotard.
Thanks anon from a rare flag. At my school they give retired seniors the ability to take courses without any prerequisites.
>word of mouth
Maybe you are right. Right now, I don't have the same relationship with word of mouth like those in the past. But I notice how my perception of things, of people, are difficult to separate from how people talk about those people.
>>78095697
that's the word/term 'always-on' media.
how do you break out of it?
>>78095287
If overthinking is a logical trap, then so is overly construed rebuttals.
>>78094115
>word of mouth would have a skepticism towards, making it less real than motion pictures or photos.
>before movies and television and radio
Video as a medium is psycho-mimetic. It so closely matches how we see reality that it becomes very difficult to differentiate the two.
If I show you video of someone's head exploding, did it really explode or are you just convinced that you experienced watching their head assplode?
>>78096325
no, because of context. but context is provided by an always-on media.
>>78095909
Oh, right, 4chin is where smart kids go to act stupid. Forgot.
> t. PhD student
> tfw not smart just persistent
>>78095978
Turn the machines off. Go for a walk without your phone. Don't turn laptop on when you return. Get a job that doesn't involve minimal activity in front of an Internet-capable machine. Ignore CNNFOXMSNBC like the mental virii they are.
>>78096666
HOLY SHIT KEK HAS SPOKEN!
>>78096469
Context is really important. Anon # >>78094552
has the answer.
>>78095191
>Myths and magical explanations of the world were the cosmovision of most mankind during millenia, shared by word of mouth, and we would hardly think about them as conected with "reality". At the same time, I do agree with mass media creating some sort of Matrix effect that wasn't seen before, in the sense that urban life and mass media transmited meanings provide a disconnection with nature that is something new in history.
Have you ever heard about René Girrard ? He got some interesting work about mimetic desire, myths (ethnology/historiography) and in particular scapegoating in pre-modern societies.
It is bretty cool.
>>78095978
>Thanks anon from a rare flag.
Not that rare. Come on.
>>78097263
>Have you ever heard about René Girrard ?
No. But I'm very interested in the subject. I read a few things from Feyerabend about it and found it very cool.
Merci pour la recommendation. Je vais essayer de le chercher apres mardi prochene (Je vais passer mon DELF B2).
>>78097635
>Merci pour la recommendation. Je vais essayer de le chercher apres mardi prochene (Je vais passer mon DELF B2).
Bien, tu me diras ce que tu en penses mon ami !
>>78098114
>>78097635
Could Baudrillard help make sense of the SJW plague in how they want to take control of meaning?
Media-centric major here.
Literally nothing will redpill you about propaganda more than learning how it's made.
>>78092477
Hey OP, you should really check out some info on Marshall McLuhan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan
In fact everyone should, he some very profound ideas on how different mediums of communication change the way we perceive the world.
>>78098675
We covered him in our class.
>>78098807
No shit, who/what else do they cover? Shit like that has always fascinated me, but me being a simple man of simple means I have but the Internet to guide me.
>>78099210
I'll scan our course reader and upload it. I hate how much I have to pay for this shit. 500 for the course, 100 for a print on demand, spiral binded collection of articles and photocopies of chapters from books.
>>78099447
I'd be much obliged anon
Baudrillard is shit. If you want to read media studies, you're better off reading mcluhan or postman.
>>78092477
>Mechanical Engineering
>not one of the meme fields
pick one
>>78100073
CS, math, welding, accounting are STEM meme fields.
