“Capitalism has survived communism. Now, it eats away at itself.” Charles Bukowski
Humanity has been forced to live in a society of waste and consumerism, but no one has the courage to admit it, because the immediate gratification of every habit and vice makes the human being apathetic and alienated only in producing and consuming, but what makes the commodification of being and existence even more perverse is the obsession with money, whereby money becomes the main and final purpose for which the activities of the productive apparatus can be carried out if and only if they are useful and functional if and only if they produce profit. So when money becomes the ultimate scope, the apparatus ponders whether to satisfy the needs and requirements of the population, to the extent that they are useful and produce profit. The disquieting thing is that we are completely addicted and apathetic in the face of this type of consumerism and obsession with money, that humanity has been forced into a single thought which is to do economic accounts and evaluate what is useful for the ego. So the worst and most concerning fact, it’s that we are not capable of thinking and producing another type of thought for humanity that can give meaning to existence.
From the book €13,99 , Frederic Beigbeder
“My name is Octave and I wear APC clothing. I am a publicist: that is, I pollute the universe. I’m the guy who sells you shit. That makes you dream of those things that you will never have. Darling
eternally blue, aunts who are never ugly, perfect happiness, retouched with PhotoShop. Slick images, catchy music. When, by dint of saving, you manage to buy
the car of your dreams, the one I launched in my last campaign, I will have already made it out of fashion. I’m three seasons ahead of you, and I always manage
so that you feel frustrated. Glamor is the country you can never reach. I drug you with novelty, and the advantage of what is new is that it is never new for long.
There is always a new novelty to make the previous one age. Making you drool, that’s my priesthood. In my profession, no one wants your happiness, because happy people don’t consume.
Your suffering stimulates commerce. In our jargon, we have called it “the post-purchase depression.” You urgently need a product but, immediately after
If you have acquired it, you need another one. Hedonism is not a form of humanism: it is simple cash flow. Your motto? “I spend, therefore I am.” To create needs, without
However, it is essential to encourage envy, pain, insatiability: these are our weapons. And you are my target.
I spend my life telling you lies and they repay me handsomely. I earn 13,000 euros (not counting per diems, company car, stock options and contractual protection). He
euro has been invented to make the salaries of the rich seem sixteen times less indecent. Do you know many people who, at my age, earn 13000 euros? I manipulate you and
They give me the new Mercedes SLK (with its automatic top) the BMW Z3 or the Porsche Boxter or the Mazda MX5. (Personally, I have a soft spot for the sporty BMW Z3, which
It combines the aerodynamic aesthetics of the body and the power thanks to its 6-cylinder in-line engine that develops 321 horsepower, allowing it to go from 0 to 100 km/h in 5.4
seconds. As if that weren’t enough, that car looks like a giant suppository, which is very practical for fucking the Earth in the ass.)
I interrupt the movies you are watching on television to impose my brands on you and they pay me for a vacation in Saint Barth’ or in Lamu or in Phuket or in Lascabanes
(Quercy). I hammer you with my slogans in your favorite magazines and you offer me a mansion in Provence, a castle in Périgord or a mansion in Corsica or a farm in
Ardéche, a Moroccan palace or an Antillean catamaran or a tropical yacht. I’m everywhere. You will not get rid of me. Wherever you look my advertising reigns. I forbid you
you get bored I prevent you from thinking. The terrorism of novelty helps me sell emptiness. Ask any surfer: to stay on your feet it is essential to have a space
empty underneath. Surfing consists of sliding over a huge hole (Internet addicts know this as well as Lacanau’s surfing champions). I decree what is
Authentic, what is Beautiful, what is Good. I choose the models who, in six months, will give you a hard time. By dint of seeing them portrayed, you baptize them as top models; my
young girls will traumatize any woman over fourteen years old. You idolize what I choose. This winter she will take her breasts higher than her shoulders and her pussy
shaved The more I play with your subconscious, the more you obey me. If I sing about the excellence of a yoghurt on the walls of your city, I guarantee you that you will end up
buying it. You think you have free will, but one day you will recognize my product in the supermarket section; and you will buy it, like this, just to try it,
Believe me, I know my job.
Mmm, penetrating your brain is very pleasant. I cum in your right hemisphere. Your desire no longer belongs to you: I impose mine on you. I forbid you
you want at random. Your wish is the result of an investment whose amount is estimated in billions of euros. It is I who decides today what you will like tomorrow.
All this means that you probably don’t find him too likeable. As a general rule, when you start writing a book, you should try to seem interesting and
fishing, but I do not wish to mask reality: I am not a friendly narrator. Actually, I’m more of the bastard type who rots everything he touches. The ideal would be that
You would start hating me, before also hating the era that created me.
Isn’t it shocking to see how normal everyone seems to consider this situation? You disgust me, insignificant slaves subjected to my smallest
whims.
Why have you allowed me to become the King of the World? I would like to solve this mystery: to find out how, at the height of a cynical era, advertising was crowned Empress. In two thousand years, never had an irresponsible cretin like me managed to be so powerful.
I would like to leave everything, get out of here with my savings, taking drugs and some whores to a shitty desert island. (I would spend the day watching Soraya and Tamara
masturbating while they work my turnip.) But I don’t have the balls to say goodbye. That’s why I write this book. My dismissal will allow me to escape this golden cage. Am
dangerous, stop me before it’s too late, have mercy! Give me a hundred kilos and I’ll open up, I promise. What am I going to do if humanity has decided to replace God for consumer products?
I smile because it could be the case that as soon as this book came out, instead of firing me, they would increase my salary. In the world that I am about to describe to you,
criticism is digested, insolence is encouraged, denunciation is remunerated and diatribes are planned. The Nobel Prize for Provocation will soon be awarded and I will become one of the most serious contenders to win it. Rebellion is part of the game. The dictatorships of yesteryear feared freedom of expression, censored protests, imprisoned writers,
They burned controversial books. The old days of autos de fe made it possible to distinguish the good from the bad. When it comes to washing your hands, advertising totalitarianism
It is much more subtle. This type of fascism learned the lesson from previous errors (Berlin, 1945, and Berlin, 1989 – by the way, why did all barbarities end up dying
in the same city?).
To subject humanity to slavery, advertising has chosen discretion, agility, and persuasion. We live in the first system of dominion of man by man against which even freedom is powerless. On the contrary, its greatest achievement consists precisely in betting heavily on freedom. Any criticism gives him prominence, any pamphlet reinforces the illusion of their sweet tolerance. But he ends up subduing you anyway. Everything is allowed, no one will scold you if you stir things up. The system has achieved its goal: even disobedience has become a form of obedience.
Our frustrated destinies are happily laid out. You yourself, who are reading this book, are surely thinking: “How touching this is publicist that bites the hand that feeds it, come on, return to the flock, you are as trapped as the rest, you will pay your taxes, like everyone else.» Does not exist any way to escape. All the locks are locked, among the widest of smiles. They have you trapped with credits that must be paid back, monthly instalments, rents to pay. Do you feel an impulse to protest? Millions of unemployed people are waiting to take your place. Protest as much as you want, Churchill already found the answer: he said
“It is the worst system except for all the others.” He who warns is not a traitor. He didn’t say the best system; said the worst. “
