Original subtitles

My name is Johannes,

and I have a condition.

I'm human.

I first realized that when I fell on my face on a concrete slab

on a beach in Italy.

I was four.

And it was clear to me:

beaches cannot be trusted,

I hated Italy,

and dreams can be broken.

The human is a narrative being.

We construct emotional machines...

so called stories, to communicate

to share the world in which we live

and make it collectively experienceable.

And we're pretty good at doing that.

Since the primoridial zoo Mendelized into primate brains,

we have either been fleeing from big cats

or telling others about our escapes

from the clutches of big cats.

Sitting around a campfire

interpreting and breaking-down the world,

charging it with meaning,

regardless of whether the details hold up to a Wikipedia check, or not.

The human is also a political being,

although many members of my species don't like that idea.

Get used to it.

You can't avoid being politcal.

The moment you choose to buy a sugar-free Red Bull™ at Walmart™,

you commit a political act.

The same is true when you drag a royalty-free

hip-hop version of Pachelbel's Canon in D

into your shopping basket @

pond5.com

Politics is the practice of distribution of power and resources

within the given community as well as the interrelationship between communities.

Period.

We project a certain story out to the world.

The story differs if you are a leftist, a progressive, or conservative,

but be assured,

most people I know who call themselves anarchists

are just stupid libertarians.

We communicate our views by using narrative and conceptual shortcuts.

Abbreviated terms like:

"freedom" or "privacy" and so on.

These shortcuts are important.

If someone had called 'global warming' something different,

let's say, 'atmosphere cancer,'

you wouldn't have problems explaining why it's a bad thing.

I always wanted to create a glossary of all-important terms.

Because Jesus Fuckin' McChrist,

they're always used and abused in common sections on the World Wide Web.

I wanted to give some of these golden calfs of discourse a second look,

to explain, re-evaluate, and maybe even sacrifice them.

I teamed up with my good friend Ishan Raval,

who definitely matches me in my political leanings.

I mean, look, we both have our hands on our chins

in our Google profile pics.

Pompous little fucks we are.

And because I know a lot of creative performers

who will do pretty much anything for almost nothing,

I decided to make this film.

How much longer do I have to hold this shit? It's heavy!

Well, y-you can put it in your resumé. I mean come on... a little bit longer.

-And we used my car.

You're the head of transportation fleets, okay?

So, well, never forget,

you don't hate Italy,

you hate capitalism.

What a big word! So big!

Capitalism.

One of the biggest words I know... and I know a lot of words.

There's

"Market" (true, but that one sounds a bit too mystical).

Oh! I think that's Brian Ewok.

Good to have a comfy seat

at my favorite hippster coffee shop and wine bar

enjoying free Wi-Fi

from a network whose password is "Helvetica."

I'm just minding my own business,

when I get spotted by Madame Juju,

the friendly hippster coffee shop and wine bar owner

who does sweat yoga.

Hello. How can I help you?

A double eggnog frappucino with tofu-breaded halibut?

There's a sticker for the Green Party candidate behind the bar.

Oh, I love the Greens!

So friendly! So caring!

So cuddly!

Marx once called the State

a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

Thank the non-existing God for it!

Because where management is possible, so also is mismanagement.

And some parts of the bourgeoisie,

especially those who do sweat yoga and keep their hearts wholesome,

might be persuaded to use that committee against their interests.

Basically, there are people who own the means of production.

Let's say fancy coffee machines, or servers, or farms, or server farms.

That's the bourgeoisie.

And then there are people who don't own the means of production or capital,

so they have to sell their work.

The workers. That's all the barristas and sandwich artists

and Ryanair® check in personnel.

But even if the bourgeoisie, which includes Madame Juju,

might not be united in its political allegiances

they play the same purpose.

It isn't her fault.

It isn't my fault.

In all corners and cortices of her brain,

she might just regard this as her job.

An innocent livelihood.

And even, a community service.

Oh, absolutely! People love me.

I am the Maggie Gyllenhaal of safron-based cake frosting.

All of that, it might be.

But capitalism is bigger than any of our lives and wills.

It produces net effects some capitalists don't realize.

Madame Juju's heart may not be driven by profit,

but her business must be.

Money must make more money.

More money must be made

so that it can keep up with competing coffee shops and wine bars,

which are constatly coming up and trying to out-perform Madame Juju.

It makes me cry.

It's not even enough for me to earn back the money I invested.

There has to be a good return on investment.

There have to be upgrades to match the latest

speedy, spicy, sprinkle trends;

or to keep paying an increasing rent

so that the coffee doesn't get more expensive.

Otherwise, everyone will go to...

Monsieur Dudu's down the street.

It's true.

His coffee is okay,

but his wine selection is out of this world.

So, Madame Juju is forced to cut costs

by not protecting the environment,

or by paying super-low wages.

It is so very sad

but, I donate to Amnesty International.

Overall, the wealth of the world increases on the side of the capital,

be it money uninvested and stagnant...

There are some trillions of dollars around like that today.

or the things required for and by business.

And wealth decreases on the side of the world

where costs are cut.

People working for wages and the world itself.

Take atmosphere cancer.

Sadly it's not capitalism's side-effect,

but a sign of its normal functioning.

The system was for the last one hundred years,

running on cheap oil and making a huge profit with it.

Money still needs to make more money.

So more and more things have to be exchangeable for money.

Everything from gummy bears to DNA sequences,

to carbon dioxide emissions.

But Friedman says that

economic freedom is the precondition for political freedom.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!

Not so fast, Madame Juju.

Well, freedom is a huge word too, yes, yes, but

in the capitalist society

there is only one freedom:

the freedom of the market.

At its root, capitalism is based on three simple things:

working for a wage,

private ownership, or control of the means of production,

and production for exchange and profit.

And, it's all sold with the promise of liberty.

But that has been true since the beginning of time.

Capitalism didn't arise according to natural laws

that stem from human nature.

It was spread by organized violence.

The concept of private land

and means of production might seem like the natural state of things now,

however, we should remember it is a human concept... .

First in places like England:

enclosures drove self-sufficient peasants from communal land

into the cities to work in factories.

Under the reign of Henry the Eighth alone,

72,000 people were executed

for vagabondage.

Is that freedom?

Later, capitalism was spread rapidly and violently around the globe.

Do you remember that nice little girl, Alice?

Oh, yes, certainly!

Lovely!

She fell into Wonderland, used its resources,

and was highly judgmental of the natives.

A spoiled British imperialist brat!

But the Germans weren't much better.

It's the year 1818.

Powerful German merchants started to profit

from overseas commerce in Asia and Africa.

The German Empire supported this expansion by conquering large amounts of land

and established so-called "protectorates."

With fraud, Bible, alcohol and violence,

the German Empire grew to a staggering 2.6 million square kilometers,

five times the size of Germany...

reaching the third place in colonial power,

right after England and France.

The following sarcastic folk song, written in 1819,

has its own perspective on the matter:

But wait!

I like black people.

They've got the rhythm.

Equality and justice for everyone.

I don't like the super rich.

The middle class is under attack.

The goddamn politicians are to blame.

Most liberal cosmopolitan folks

lack faith in public institutions, ideals and poliiticians.

The notoriety of left-leaning authors

like Michael Moore or, Noam Chomsky,

shows that our fellow humans know very well

what Moore claims is the awful truth,

but they act as if they don't know.

We have to realize that everyone is part of the problem.

It's our habits, our procedures, that keep the game going.

There is no good or bad capitalism.

Inequality is an integral part of capitalism.

Everything including humans, is treated as a mere resource.

I like punk rock.

I make my own sweaters.

I recycle plastic bottles.

I enjoy books by Terry Pratchett.

I am a Buddhist.

That is nice of you.

But remember that market driven capitalism

musters the quasi-scientific discourses

of marketing and public relations

and increasingly, eastern religion,

to recommend products to consumers

as necessary means in the liberal pursuit of happiness,

self-fulfillment and personal freedom.

Sometimes, there is so much beauty in the world!

I feel like I can't take it!

Well, capitalism has its downsides.

But, it's way better than communism... ...that's really bad!

It killed people!

Even worse... it didn't work.

Let us quote Marx himself:

"The categorical imperative

"is to overthrow all relations

"in which man

is a debased, enslaved, forsaken, despicable being."

This imperative is true for all conditions.

Even the ones created by perverted misinterpretaions of his writings.

State communism killed a ton of people

and the sad truth

is that it was based on the principle of a state.

It created forms of property.

It had banks, police, even a market.

State communism was a badly adapted,

botched version of the rules of capitalism.

We shouldn't shed a tear for it.

True, and socialism penalizes high achievers,

rewards laziness, cuts freedom and stifles choice.

Ayn Rand says,

Ayn Rand died on welfare.

that socialism stifles competition,

impeding technological progess.

May I jump in an remark,

that one of the largest cooperative projects

and planned economies

was ironically,

the Apollo project

to put the middle class American on the moon.

So, let's have a ...

...and technology...

I'm at six G.

Excuse me for a moment...

This is Hans Platzgaumer.

He enjoys craft beer and gory movies...

in the Italian tradition.

And, he's a passionate gamer.

Jesus!

You're going to need some lube and a tow truck

to pull my boot out of your ass!

Do you have a minute to talk about something important?

Huh?

Where's this voice coming from?

I am your cerebral cortex.

Listen!

That's weird.

Through the dark and not so dark millennia of human history,

we've organized ourselves into adversarial cliques,

communities and nations.

World events were like deadly ping pong balls hurtling towards us.

And these groups were the paddles, whose goal it was

to knock the ball into someone else's court.

What a crazy-ass metaphor!

Add military might,

as the means to hold in place

the lopsided system of distribution

in which workers create more and more economic value

for wages... that never quite grow at the same rate.

And, lo,

competion became the fabric

in which everyday life was dressed.

The technology necessary

for global cooperation

did not exist.

Comptetition was thus established

as the default way of interacting with the world.

In its genteel form, competition meant nobody got killed.

Gladiators turned to soccer....

or turned to table tennis.

By 1972,

computers became advanced enough to simulate competitive games...

and Pong was born.

Pong. Wha?

Humans are a competitive species.

But we shouldn't forget that cooperation and altruism

are as much hard-wired into our brains.

But what does that have to do with that old-school video game?

If we dont want the Pong ball to go off the table,

we can program the computer to control the paddles better

than any human can.

Our desire to play competitive Pong

versus other humans through obsolete hand operation

is nothing but a vain show of one-upmanship.

There's no other point to competitive gaming in the computer age.

What the actual fuck? Fuck! Fuck!

That's just your limbic system, trying to interfere.

Pay attention to me.

Technology could save us, if we'd let it.

There's enough material wealth for everyone on the planet

to have a sturdy home and a steady food supply.

If we stop competing

and use our global communication and computation capabilities

to level the playing field.

But, competition is wonderful!

I've come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass!

And I'm all out of bubblegum.

Competitive systems, such as evolution and capitalism,

are terriffic at creating unpredictable change very quickly.

It's the trial by error system.

If you're looking for a wide variety of output,

competitive systems are the best.

Not only will the product of such systems tend to improve over time,

they'll fill just about any niche available to them.

A competititive system, such as a market

also has its merits as a censor

in approximating what and how much people want.

See! See, it's a good thing!

Competition can be a great inspiration to develop skills related to the goal.

Which is great, if inspiration is needed

...and the skills are useful ones.

In a system like Pong, however,

you just wind-up getteing better at playing Pong.

A competitive system, also

is great for ensuring that people who are ahead in the game

get exactly what they want, when they want it.

A hawk uses highly evolved vision to catch its prey.

and first-worlders use their superior buying-power

to get iPad™s.

Hey, hey, hey, hey!

Don't speak about Steve Jobs' products in vain!

You're making me very angry!

Although competitive systems produce good things,

such as human beings and diet cola,

we also wind up with things

such as wooly mammoths and guided missles.

It's a horribly inefficient way of producing things people need.

Most energy in a competitive system

is spent not in producing a product,

but in staying competititve.

In evolution, this waste manifests

in a less-than-desireable cycle

of predator-prey adaptation-escalation,

where more energy is spent surviving, than enjoying life.

In capitalism,

it results in the same sort of relationship,

except between those with capital value and those without.

People who don't have capital value

are trapped working for those who do.

And their energy is directed towards keeping their team...

competitive.

I'm a team player.

In our competitive system,

most of our energy uses are redundant and wasteful.

Redundancy is the result of the wasted overhead

when multiple people are working on the same problem on different teams.

Team Coke™ and team Pepsi™ are both working on the cola problem.

But each spends

huge amounts of resources battling the other.

Even within a supposedly cooperative society,

most businesses exist in order to support other buisnesses.

How much would the production of our essential goods decrease

if we laid-off our accountants

and all the people who supply computers to them

and all the people who print brochures for the computer salesmen

and the people who produce the ink for those brochures

and the people who make packaged food

for the truckers who drive those materials around?

We have seen a ballooning of what David Graeber calls:

"bullshit jobs."

Bullshit jobs?

Services, like financial stuff or telemarketing.

Even ancillary industries like dog washers and all-night pizza delivery

exist only because everyone else

is spending so much of their time working in all the other ones.

In Pong, the fact that your opponent keeps hitting the ball at you

means you must spend your resources defending your goal,

instead of using your time for more noble endeavors.

That sounds like propaganda.

Boring!

Can we watch a blood film instead?

Boring!

Can we listen to propaganda again?

Evolution and capitalism have brought us to the point

where it's possible to propel ourselves out of our current state of affairs.

Things that used to be competitive games,

should now be cooperative ones, or not games at all.

We have the compuitational power needed

to ensure basic goods are produced and distributed optimally.

We can wisely respond to global crisis.

By breaking market dependency,

we could create an economy of complexity,

unpredictability

and genuine freedom

that capitalism has enabled

but also constrained.

In the new world,

we'll be able to relax

and let technology do the job.

Try it !

I control the ball

and it doesn't let me lose.

Awesome!

The Pong ball will never fall off the table again.

A fresh idea isn't it? So neat, so different, so countercultural.

It's the early 19th century.

The Catholic township of Oberstetten, in Württemberg, now a part of Germany,

announces to the neighboring commune of Bernloch,

that the cows of Bernloch will

no longer be mounted by the bull of Uberstetsin.

Bernloch had voted to become Protestant.

Some creative contermporaries,

hmm, well, they write a song about the case:

Hello, I would like to exchange fifty euros to dollars.

Okay, Here's your receipt.

Dollars.

Thank you very much. And now, I would like to exchange these

to euros.

We can cancel that.

No.

But you'll take a loss on that.

Well, that's the nature of things.

Forty-four euros. There you are.

Ah, the leftovers.

So, this is your thirty-five dollars.

Fine, I'll have these exchanged to euros, then.

Uh-ha.

So, there's the thirty-one, thirty-five for you.

I'll exchange them for dollars.

Have you got some change left? I need eighty-seven cents.

Okay.

Okay, you get twenty-seven.

Well, can you exchange them for euros then?

Twenty-three euros, fifty-nine.

Fine by me.

Alright, let's exchange that for dollars.

What will that be?

I need twenty-three, fifty.

That was nineteen... okay.

Can I get euros for this, please?

And I'll have dollars for that.

Eleven dollars.

I see, fine. In euros, please.

Thanks. - Let's have a look.

I'd like these exchanged to dollars.

We'll be done in no time now.

I'll have these four, exchange them please.

Forty cents. You can't change this?

No. - Okay, I will bid you thanks, then.

You're welcome.

The worldwide amount of cash, in coins and banknotes,

is twenty trillion euros.

So, imagine

to change that amount

from euros to dollars to euros to dollars, back and forth, back and forth,

how many times would it take for fees to eat up all that cash?

Well, guess.

Here is the formula.

We put it into an Excel™ sheet.

And the answer is, eight hundred, forty-nine times.

Eighteen cents remain.

And two cents get eaten by Microsoft® Excel™ rounding errors.

But Microsoft® always gets its fair share.

I need a break.

I don't know why I keep returning to coffee shops, I don't even like coffee.

I'm a bad Austrian.

Well, at least this one is a hipster-free zone.

Waiter!

Hello, Herr Walter,

I'd like one scandal, please.

Certainly, Frau Schlammpeitzinger.

We have a prescription drug scandal.

A healthcare scandal.

Or, a corruption scandal.

Each topped with whipped cream.

No other scandal?

No, ma'am.

Oh! What a disappointment! How I would love an art scandal!

That might be a little difficult, madam,

We no loger live in the sixties.

Oh please! Just a couple of years ago,

there was one in Salzburg,

the one with the plasticine penies on that horse.

And what about Sárkány ??

And that is what madam would consider a proper art scandal? Please!

If madam would allow me a remark,

the longevity of such a scandal is negligible,

on a par with the music of a tweeter.

We'll catch hell from the health department if we serve you something like that.

A poor excuse for an art scandal.

C'mon!

This may be the last time I'm in Vienna

and I want my art scandal!

Like old times, 1968,

une flèchele, you know ??

When the Viennese actionists shit on a desk at the university.

Something risky!

I'm an elderly woman,

and I'm used to a certain level of artistic extravagance.

I see. I see.

However, if that is what you are after,

you'd have to live in a disciplinary society,

and you're in the wrong place for that.

Oh, would you kindly explain?

The last philosopher I read was Habermas, in 1975.

Let's explain discipline.

In the course of a lifetime, an individual

switches from one closed framework of confinement to another.

Where each one operates according to its own laws.

From a family, to a school, then to a university,

or factory, or the military,

from time to time to the hospital

and eventually, to the quintessential framework of confinement,

the prison.

The function is always clear.

Discipline and punishment.

And, and how does one go about escaping?

I can imagine it must be difficult.

It's indeed difficult, as you say, but not impossible.

Discipline and punishment are certainly effective,

yet at least it will produce an inner resistance

as well as the possibility to avoid either.

It's hard to monitor in absolute terms.

And there are always ways of avoiding,

if not hacking and ridiculing these mechanisms of control.

Let's take work as an example.

You hate your boss,

he commands you all the time, he doesn't pay you enough,

so you look for loopholes and niches, like long trips to the toilet,

theft of work materials, misuse of hard and software,

sick leave, pretending to look busy, playing dumb.

I want my art scandal!

Forgive me madam, you don't seem to understand.

We are not really living in a disciplinary society anymore

and the world is changing into a control society.

For example, surveillance cameras now have stickers on them that read:

"Smile! You are on camera!"

It's friendly and abrasive!

Or, Google® created a free alternate reality game called Ingress™.

It is played and loved by millions of people.

The players don't realize that they are actually entering

geographical information that could be used as themselves.

Google® turned expensive, labor intensve data entry into a game.

And now people work for them free, without even knowing it.

One of the best examples is my old religious studies book

from the 1980s.

It propagated a responsible treatment of sexuality,

instead of the age-old catechistic way.

Masturbation was suddenly okay.

But you had to do it in a responsible way. [Easy Living Catholic Religion]

Madam, I hope you can understand

that it is impossible to maintain a responsible erection.

It was all a perfidious trick to internalize control.

Smelling? Playing? "Mestur-bating?"

The moment a person internalizes the control,

making it an integral part of their psychological make-up and their thinking,

it becomes absolute.

There is no longer anything external to that component.

You don't have to be told to behave anymore,

you want to behave.

Because you think it's good for you.

And it's very hard to subvert yourself.

This is especially perfidious for your breadwinning chunk.

Your boss is your friend nowadays,

because it makes it easier to exploit you.

Workers, now called employees,

begin to identify with the corporate identity of the firm itself,

resulting in a kind of spiritual share in the company.

Did you know that many corporations now have their own anthems?

Look, here's the one of Gazprom® performed by Vladimir Tumayev.

New liberal Russian drinking songs? This is too much!

I don't even like rum in my tea!

My doctor tells me I don't have much longer to live

and just once more,

I would love to experience a genuine art scandal.

Where there are distinct boundaries,

where there are established codes,

that's where one can effectively take action against them.

Where there is a wall, there's a hammer that fits.

Cast your mind back,

the police once arrested members of the Viennese actualists

for painting with blood, or similar things.

The outrage! (Great word of the public.)

Now, if you will consider the context of the 1960s:

A substantial Catholic society living in Austria.

Nowadays, if you want to put-on a blood-painting performance,

you would probably not even come-up on the Facebook®

in time enough for a Slovak toothist.

But waiter, that's still no excuse.

If one looks for it, one can find a boundary.

There are always boundaries.

Because, look, see, if I were to grab a pretzel,

and stick it in my rather old cunt, for all to see...

I think that's a case in which one might call it a 'transgression.'

Naturally, you could do that,

but the boundaries that you are transgressing, are arbitrary,

and as far as Austria is concerned, and I mean Austria as a social entity,

I think it couldn't care less.

I'm fainting!

Calm down madam, drink a glass of water.

A scandal must involve an outrage

in the sense of a moral and passionate response.

In a world of micro-societies and niche capital,

it is hard to hold a mirror to society.

But waiter, that would be horrible!

Madam, you are right.

But I refer you

to an aural "F***" interview with the German hip-hop maverick,

Jan Delay.

Where he says that he wouldn't think twice

about calling the Pope gay,

but, mocking his land

is something he would never do... out of too much respect.

What a coward!

In other words,

as long as people have boundaries of respect,

there will be scandals?

Yes!

More or less.

But these boundaries of respect

are becoming progressively smaller and smaller.

Punk is dead.

So what am I to do?

Simply seek out a new geographical focus for your life.

You're saying, I should leave beautiful Austria?

Don't get nostalgic.

There would be no highway waves of

the wonderful and disciplined People's Republic of China.

And Iran is also pretty.

By all accounts, the weather there is idyllic

and everyday people are offed, because of their...

for example, their views...

and their sexual orientation.

Thank you!

Then I think I'll give the menu another glance.

As madam wishes.

Call me when you've selected something to your liking.

- Waiter! - Yes madam?

Could you at least give me the recipe for a real art scandal?

I'm just a nostalgic type of person.

I'm sorry, but our old cook passed away the year before last.

However, I could bring you an event...

...and some say, you can't even taste the difference.

Oh, it's a birth simulator!

- I blame society for "sexnitis correa."

In 1914,

the German Reich declared war against Russia and France,

effectively starting World War One.

The elite wanted a German Reich from Brittany to Saint Petersburg.

A lot of walking for simple soldiers.

How can this be the future?

That's not what Blade Runner promised me.

Global communication is organized

and institutionalized

by interconnected machines that we call...

Satellite dishes, YouTube channels, Snapchat and The Guardian,

The Onion, Tender...

...you get the point.

I would emphasize the fiber optic cables that traverse the whole globe,

not only holding together the current information economy,

but scrambling our system of nation states.

Such a smart ass!

Ahh...hh! Ouch!

Bottom line,

media is the strongest

political, economic and heruristic power in the modern world.

I own some, you own some,

but most of it is owned by, well... someone else.

Recently, I asked my friend, David Fine,

to do a research study on his lunch-break.

His result suggested that thirty-five percent of the media

is owned by Mark Zuckerberg.

I first offered him twenty-five euros

if he could find that it's actually forty-five percent,

but he said nobody would believe that.

We agreed on thirty-five percent for twenty euros.

David Fine completed his study in under two minutes.

Five stars. Would buy again.

You see, it's redundant to talk about fake news,

because news is, by definition, fake.

Ask the constructivist.

That's right!

News is fake because it is created and edited in a specific way,

for a specific target group, for a specific purpose.

The idea of freedom of the press and journalistic objectivity

is strange in a world so obviously

based on power relationships.

Facts used to be a driving force

and selling point of journalism,

but, research is expensive and market forces

don't care if you sell something

because it's researched well or faked well.

Free speech! Free speech! Free speech!

"Freeze peach"?

Free speech! Free speech! Free speech!

Shut your piehole!

Who or what do people imagine

delivers the right to free speech?

The question should not be

"do you believe in free speech?"

The question should be:

Defending the free speech of Nazis

doesn't guarantee the free speech of anti-facists.

The content of speech or in your right to it,

isn't what's important.

The provision of labor, power and social inclusion

determines the affordance anyone's speech is given.

But that means we have to uphold the ideal of free speech for all

otherwise the bourgeois state enforces its domination and have an excuse to--

Smartass... again!

Ouch!

Let's not act as if we live in a world

where everyone has the same free speech.

There was no freedom of speech in Eastern Germany,

yet there was very active communication

channels, pamphlets and discussions,

all beneath the radar of the state.

The open media world of liberal societies

always encouraged free-ish speech,

but in a way of calming-down dissent.

But comedy functions as an important--

Ahh! God damn it!

The oh, so wonderful heroes of liberals,

never really changed anything.

Our naked emperor is still an emperor!

Free speech! Free speech! Free speech!

We are a free society! You can say whatever you want,

whenever you want, on all of the channels you want!

Sure!

But it's irrelevant... and we all know it.

How can we find a way to communicate

when no one wants to listen?

To attack normality and reality would also mean to attack this structure,

something folks have referred to as:

the semiotics of reality, or

social semantics.

Have you heard about the Bechdel test?

No. What's that?

It's a test for movies.

Oh, I see.

So this film passes the test now?

Yes. We are the token conversation.

Oh, that's very nice then.

It's important to analyze

how something is represented

and what is not represented,

or how it lacks representation.

It is not Zuckerberg, whose ass-holishness is not in dispute,

we should attack.

But, rather, the cultural grammar of the public space.

Power is formed within such a grammar.

Access and nonaccess to everything is regulated in its realm.

Meanings are negotiated there.

Good and evil are determined.

It is a common reflex for people to think

they are helpless against

almighty governments and corporate powers.

But, power is more like an icky jellyfish, than a solid brick wall.

Play with it!

Y--yes, madame!

And that's how I like my pundits!

We live... in a paradoxical world.

The largest phone providers own no telco infrastructure.

The most popular media own or creates almost no content.

The world's largest media house owns no cinemas.

The world's largest software vendors create no apps.

And so on... .

What is this sorcery?

Yet, we obviously live in a highly material world.

Our freedom of yada-yada-yada

seems a bit sketchy, when you consider

that all our lovely Pepe the Frog fan-blogs

and anachro-syndicalist forums

would be gone in a heartbeat,

if just one company decides to shut-down their

♪ itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka-deepsea cable. ♪

Or, imagine if our home country wants to pull an Egypt or a Turkey on us.

I know now why you cry, but it's something I can never do.

Prost!

There is no freedom of information until...

let's put it in simple terms,

you can download your hardware.

Not gonna happen,

even the wonderful D.I.Y. revolution can't change that.

All our happy gadgets and our Adrenos® and our Linux notebooks

are made from the same raw materials as the corporate hardware...

mined under horrific conditions by twenty-first century slaves,

assembled by folks with a similar fate.

Here's a crazy,

yet strangely compelling piece of music,

first presented at the German Evangelical Church Assembly in 1975.

A mixture of Christian Revival attitude

and left-leaning agitprop.

Quite something, isn't it Pontius?

I'm useless as an artist.

There's nothing left to do!

Oh...

A video filter that makes videos look like they're really old.

This changes everything!

Hey!

You!

Yeah, you!

What? Is someone there, you're asking.

Is someone watching you?

Of course there is!

But don't be scared.

You are my big brother. The modern subject.

I know.

You haven't known me personally since our parents

Father Honor, and Mother Concern,

sent you away to the Boarding School of Bourgeois Privacy

when you were young.

But those years of your life are over.

I'm here to pick you up and guide you into a new tomorrow.

Let me give you a hug!

No.

You miss Bourgeois Privacy?

Oh, my... my...

Hey, don't cry.

You say your liberty was protected in there.

You felt safe

having a personal space that felt hidden

from outside curiosities, views and disapproval.

You don't understand, big brother.

The privacy you've had so far,

is a historical contingency...

not a universal fact.

You can't stay in school for ever.

It's a stage in the life of a subject, like you.

See, privacy as we think of it, is only three hundred years old.

It doesn't exist in its precise western bourgeois form in eastern cultures,

but, as common goods came to be held in fewer hands,

creating separate private and public spheres,

an ever more tightly defined family protected itself and its wealth

against the street, against the remaining population.

The bourgeoisie

often defined its moral superiority over the masses of workers

through the latter's lack of proper privacy.

Although, the workers simply couldn't afford adequate living conditions.

Heinrich Heine wrote this lovely revolutionary ditty,

just a couple of weeks after the uprising of the weavers

of Langenbielau and Peterswaldau in Silesia, in 1844:

They were weaving and weaving ♪

and their bosses had money, ♪

spare time, and... ♪

privacy. ♪

But privacy was already being undermined.

The technological advances toward the end of the nineteenth century,

were discussed just as much as today's are.

The telephone was dangerous for opening the home's safe space

to far away ears.

X-rays were

'a weapon to peek beyond walls into the most private quarters.'

Hahh...

Calls for strong laws to protect privacy

against such threats emerged, most famously

in the 1890 essay:

"The Right to Privacy"

which is still prevalent in privacy legislation debates.

The problems were not limited to the intrusions into individual's lives.

Disrespect the line beween public and private,

and you set poor moral examples

and degenerate proper public discourse.

For example, the authors warned against

newspaper stories leading to

improper public discussions of private matters.

Such stories can matter to the demos

and become a matter of politics.

Hmm...

In the twentieth century,

liberal democracies

promoted privacy as a liberal counter against populist doctrines,

be they communist or fascist.

This period was also

when the welfare capitalism of liberal democracies,

through their surpluses from colonialism or imperialism,

raised the living standards of most of their populace.

The so called 'middle class' had privacy too,

but, these very economic conditions enabled marginalized parts of

bourgeois society to think about the good and the bad of privacy.

Feminist activists used drastic publicity tactics

to start discussions of issues

formerly hidden by privacy and taboo.

For example, in France and Germany,

they started public mass confessions

involving prominent women stating: 'we had abortions.'

Similar tacts were used by homosexual activists.

Oh. Eh...

I got carried away.

What did you say, big brother?

Oh, eh, it's not all bad... especially for marginalized groups.

It is useful to have space free from authoritarian eyes.

But privacy is under attack.

This time, the troubles might be terminal,

along with probably so many other troubles of bourgeois political economy.

Dear big brother, put in your earbuds.

Here is an interesting song from the 1970s,

It's called Die Nummer, by: Info Music Bamberg.

This song is a great example of middle class angst at the

♪ dawning of the age of computer-is ♪

Sorry, just listen to the song:

Our lives are being rewired to form one global infrastructure,

that works on the basis of our information.

Privacy is not under attack by some evil outside forces,

it's under attack by our own collective behavior.

These trends could be stopped only by massive efforts.

People wouldn't be able to share stuff online.

Mongolian barbecue is neither Mongolian nor barbecue.

We would have to get rid of the internet as we know it.

But you don't want to do that. Right?

You'd make the right choice,

wouldn't you, big brother?

You wouldn't sacrifice memes and...

porn

for bourgeois privacy?

Right?

Our information is out there.

It's not by choice.

It's a necessary entanglement

and it's adding up to something big and beautiful...

presupposing we take the right actions.

If nice things are being made on the basis of mass data collection and utilization,

you should have those things.

The problem isn't data.

It's the power relations that lie behind the data and its use.

Our liberty depends on factors other than the secrecy of our actions.

You wouldn't hide your weed from Father Honor and Mother Concern

if they didn't still have some power over you, right?

Institutions might be forced into greater efficiency and honesty

if all corruption were to leak out.

Actually, this process is already starting.

Think of WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden.

There's a cool game, it's called:

'don't think about Julian Assange molesting a chicken.'

You lost.

I got the weirdest boner.

A democratization of surveillance

would allow it to be turned against the powerful.

Post-privacy will be difficult, though, if the playing field isn't level,

if information is released, but the same groups have the power.

But if we hold the information,

if we decide how it's used,

given how important it is to everything that happens today,

we can settle historical power imbalances.

See,

I'm not the state,

or Wall Street, or the servers of silicon valley.

I'm little brother.

I own no means of production,

except all of the information I have about you and your friends.

What we need today is a network, a platform, or

some equivalent institution of little brothers, like me,

who have no monopoly over violence,

power over your credit rating, or

ownership of your debt.

My sole power rests on having all this data.

But I'm not alienated from you.

I'm on your side.

So let's attack the forces that make us fear for the loss of privacy

at their roots.

Because we have the core productive force of the day in our hands,

we can take these forces on... together.

I once met a pansexual German paratrooper

who thought Michael Haneke is totally overrated.

Clever fellow.

He invited me to check out Vienna's Museum of Natural History.

I joined him and he told me an interesting story.

In 1952,

Austrian big game hunter in Africa,

researcher,

Ernst Zwillinge,

colonial revisionist, a member of the Nazi party;

brought a male chimpanzee from Cameroon to Schonbrunn,

the Viennese zoo.

In his African home, Honzo had reportedly been

a friendly and likable animal.

But in the zoo, he began to show a violent temper.

Due to his choleric outbreaks,

poor Honzo was kept in solitary confinement.

The chimpanzee was given beer and cigarettes.

He got addicted, and died an alcoholic and chain-smoker.

After his death, the chimp was taxidermed

and put into the Museum of Natural History.

Now people from all over the world stare at him.

That's gotta be an allegory for something.

"There is no such thing as men.

"I have seen Frenchmen, Italians,

"and Russians.

"As for men,

I have never come across him anywhere."

Occupied by Occupy Bathroom.

Fuck!

Das 'Lied der Arbeit,'

the 'Song of Work,'

was first presented to the world in 1868.

It is the official anthem of Austrian Social Democracy.

♪ And I say to thee, what the fuckity fuck? ♪

It's such a horrendous fetishization of work.

I want to puke and build a factory out of it.

Let's listen to an interpretation by Mira Sophia Ulz, from 2009.

Mira won the Austrian Kiddie Contest, a song contest for young singers.

And so the Social Democrats invited her to celebrate with them.

Not sure she deserved that... .

I asked wobblersound to create the proper remix.

Mmm.

Democracy. Mmm.

One ruling form that rules them all.

The young adult novel of governmental systems:

it does't work, but, people still go with it.

Every couple of years we vote for our representatives.

Yet, the rest of our lives is very undemocratic.

Work life is no democracy,

sports are undemocratic,

art isn't democratic,

and, just as a nudge:

imagine NASA is planning a mission to Mars.

Do you believe a democratic process will determine who goes on that mission?

They won't waste billions of dollars sending unqualified personnel.

They will peer fuckin' review it.

The question is,

why do we use democracy to run nations?

The answer, you might imagine, is:

if you believe you have power,

you don't challenge power.

Let's have a look at a specific subgenre of democracy:

It is 1926.

Erich Mühsam dedicates the lyrics of

the upcoming song

to the leading cadre of the German Social Democratic movement,

because they're constantly collaborating with police,

justice, military, and administration.

The Social Democrats were thus supporting and perpetuating

the societal order of the German Empire.

Enough said.

Maybe Social Democracy learned from its failures.

Let's visit a meeting in the nation of Sirkennethbranaghkhgkia,

the state that owes its name to lack of creativity.

Anyways, the newly elected president, Ödem von Horvath sits at his desk,

two advisors beside him...

Biological Male and Biological Female.

Emmhh!

I sure hope the hot water is working soon.

I'm sure it will be, Mr. President.

Okay, so, what's on the agenda?

We promised free healthcare,

free education, wage increases,

two months paid vacation,

strong housing and transportation programs

and more. - Superb!

Shouldn't be a problem, right?

Just tax the rich!

- Well, to do that, we must first have a robust economy,

with a thriving private sector

that enjoys production and marketing advantages

over the economies of other nations.

Ah! Is that so?

- Let's model it out. - Mmm.

♪ Halleluja ♪

So, more for us.

This is how, right?

More for our companies in market share and profits.

- Yes.

Eh!

Oh, why isn't it working?

- I can't say.

In the 1950s and '60s--

You mean the golden age of capitalism?

Oh, yes!

- Um, but to go on... then it was easy!

Other world economies weren't as good.

Ah! Our firms could easily outcompete them.

But, in the 1970s, the rest of the world

started to catch-up and need an increased money supply.

So the system of fixed exchange rates around the dollar was gutted.

Increases in oil prices destabilized the system further.

And companies struggling against national competitions

withdrew from their compromise with labor.

I don't know what we can do now, though.

Mmm. - Hahh!

I've got an idea.

We could put a pump

in the other parts of this...

congealed labor it is... very precious.

- Congealed labor is the amount of labor intangibly present in a commodity,

which in the market is roughly expressed as exchange value, or 'price.'

- Marvel of capitalism, really,

allows innovators such as ourselves, to model the world

before it is directly lived as an accumulation of representation.

Yes. Very good.

We can put a pump in congealed labor that isn't ours

and we can just...

throw away some congealed labor from other parts of the world.

- Excellent idea!

Ah, just make sure what we do doesn't look like colonialism or imperialism,

that really alienates those millennials from our party.

Of course!

And it's clear how it can be done!

I'll call China and India,

and all the other countries,

and bid them, in a spirit of international cooperation

to funnel their congealed labor to us

and to become banded to a global economy.

Tha--that probably won't work.

- Yeah... n-no.

Mr. Xioping and the Communist Party of China,

are very committed to the ethos of the Treaty of Nanjing.

Hhh! They feel they must uphold uncompromising free trade.

- And, Mr. Moody, we've been trying to get in touch with him all day,

but his phone is always in airplane mode.

Then how are we supposed to strengthen our economy?

- Discipline and social hierarchies.

We can make our consumers buy our goods,

if we return to the production paradigm of the 1950s.

White men get paychecks,

granting a certain standard of living to their families.

In return for not only work,

but society itself being factory-like,

no unruly behavior, so women... back in the semiautomated kitchen.

Please!

- Oh, this isn't working!

They're protesting against assembly line production norms

and not working hard at all!

Ahh! They've become used

to the flexibility and autonomy they have...

...limited as they are.

Oh, damn it all!

I'm just going to tax the rich, they'll cough it up!

Here, let me text them.

Bad news, Mr. President.

Well, we've got the money to solve the problem now.

- Maybe not, see!

Industrialists, venture capitalists, tech C.E.O.s, and bankers

have all moved more capital to places with lower taxes than what you're proposing.

Hhh! They've invested more money in artificial intelligence

so they don't have to pay living wages!

- Anyway, people were spending their increased wages on cheap foreign goods.

And, and, and, and, an...

with our domestic companies over capacity,

investors are speculating in risky tech...

...and finance,

then they can move even more as--

more assets away from us.

How could they?!

They can do whatever they want.

They... they...

They still own the means of production!

The following song is a parody of the Horst-Wessel-Lied,

The anthem of the German Nazi Party,

from 1930 to 1945.

it was sung at every fuckin' occassion,

but, during the Third Reich, the song was parodied in underground versions,

poking fun at the corruption of the Nazi elite.

Well, there are similarities between different texts,

as underground authors developed them with variations...

but here is my favorite!:

At long last, we've arrived at the left.

I'm so happy!

Thanks for pushing me to come.

Professor!

What is a member of the burghertudinus bourgeoisie doing here on the left

of that peak?

Peculiar!

He seems Swedish.

We should kick him in the iron balls.

Okay.

First, I will kindly asks him to leave.

Hello good sir!

This is the fabled 'Realm of Left.'

The side of labor.

You are our enemy.

Well, how're you doin' there?

I'm Sven Shitpornson.

- I knew it! I knew it! He's Swedish!

- Oh, no, I'm from Windsor.

- When the revolution comes,

you will be the first against the wall.

- Oh well now, wait a minute there, I don't mean no harm, you know.

No. Okay. Yeah,

I might be a traitor to my kind,

and I know this is the left, but I'm here to help ya.

Help?

Yeah! Yeah, you know, I'm an entrepeneur.

I want to go make stuff.

I want to create and--

Don't let this big bag of money here fool ya now.

I'm not a capitalist.

You know, I'm just excited to make stuff,

but my company, there, it's owned by investors and a managerial board.

And they're owned by banks,

which are also then owned by managerial boards

and by investors, and...

I realize now that today, finally,

It's in the form of that there th, th,

- I am confused!

Eh, follow me.

My name is Lady Unsquaredance.

I like to watch classics, such as The Lawn Mower Man...

and I teach economics.

- Ehhh...

- Due to the competitive stresses created since the 1970s in global capital,

It's almost as if banks and investors are

extracting rent.

Mr. Shitpornson wants access to more capital,

but these landlords won't spare it.

Oh, yeah, yeah, that and that theres, that's hardly the capitalism that I love.

He thought the left could free him,

but it's protesting statues and other symbols

and how few women sit in boardrooms,

not about what people in boardrooms do.

But I've set-up a meeting with a bright, young idea man.

And that's me!

Hello, I'm Billy Bob Turingengine and who are these two?

Let's just say

we're true working class revolutionaries.

And when is this glorious revolution taking place?

Once we build the power of the people.

This nostalgia for schemes and slogans,

withered on a century-old deathbed.

- Bah! Cynics like you are why we will never have communism.

-Mmmh.

That sounds wonderful!

But material conditions indicate

capitalism, socialism and communism

need to be reevaluated,

and maybe all discarded.

- All what?

- Follow me, and I will explain.

I'm an engineer.

but like an artist, or data analyst,

If you have a concrete object,

like a hammer,

I can't have and use it while you do.

But if you have anything that can be copyrighted,

I can have and use it while you do too.

Making traditional leftism irrelevent?

Information makes the world go 'round now.

Physical production still exists, of course, but

Companies like Uber® or Amazon® succeed because

Oh, so platforms are institutions as important today as markets and states.

Correct.

- Oh, well, okay,

but, ah, then how does that there hold the system together?

and they sell that to advertisers.

So many bright people I went to college with,

spent dozens of hours a week figuring out how to make people

A lucky few

do something more obvious.

Yes, capitalism is so weak today

that it needs the stuff to stay afloat.

Okay, so then most

So, what's going on today is

- Yes! A lot of profit still derives

from extraction of surplus value from labor.

Because the private information industry's products can be

- So, what's the task today?!

and use them for useful production?

You've got it.

- But I repair portable toilets.

Yet you work with information.

The most strategic place to focus is on

So, what do we do with the left?

- To hell with them! Arrgh!

Time is critical! My ship's docked. We need to think of

Arrgh!

- Is that mutiny?

- Nah!

We have to be the ship, not mutineers!

- Well, what are we waiting for?

Let's go!

- Yes!

- And, as you're Austrian landlubber,

anchors aweigh!

- He's Austrian?

How awful!

The ultimate broken dream,

is the left itself.

Ehh! We have to do this again.

It's ah... it needs more pathos.

It needs more... more drive, like, like the ultimate broken dream

is the left itself!! Okay?

So, do it again, okay?

- Hey! Hey! Hey!

- What? - He's-he's on the phone,

it's-it's urgent!

Oh, can we finish this here?

I-I'll call him back.

But he says you need to stop.

What?

What?

Ah,

Hel-hello!

Hi! Good to speak to you! Hey!

Shut up you incompetent schlong!

You're done!

What, what? - It's over.

N-no! Ah...

We-we were just recording this here and...

Ishan had this great idea for-for the end scene.

I don't care, you're way over budget!

My budget, and more important, my investors' budget.

Hasta luego.

Well, I-I-I'm recording my, my, my conclusion here, and...

and we need money for-for the licensing fee

for-for the end credit song.

End credit my ass!

What? What? Hey! No, no! Hey! What, no!

No! No! Hey!

Fuck!! Aah!!!

Ahh!

Ah! Ah.

Hello Juan. Ah, you found me, great!

How much money did you want?

Twenty euros?

Come on.

You did what?

You ate him?!