Shield's Equation that Explains Fake News... ;)

(Melville + Nietzsche)/ (Allen X sq root of Bloom) X Zizek^2 = Bannon  

Once again, Shield's book is called "How We Got Here" and as a publisher, I interpret the designation of "here" to be "this moment when our radical subjectivity is under siege. Not accidentally as a product of the culture, but explicitly, and publicly, as a known policy of the State." Worse, it is a moment wherein our sense of subjectivity, and our recourse to public reason is slipping further and further away. To describe "this moment" as if it was a Black Mirror episode. It is a Time wherein the mechanisms of control are not only something we sign up for, and are entertained by, but further. Where our sense of self has come to rely on these instruments of control without any recourse to truth or public understanding. Without the freedom necessary to think for ourselves individually. And together, we are left with a problem of how to become the main character in our own lives. Self-authorship is the aim, rather than self-discovery, or discovery of the world.

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The Alienated Worker

In The Season's first episode, Joan has an impressive looking job and a fiance, but early in the episode she tells her therapist, "I feel like I'm not the main character in my own life story." In the last couple years Tik Tok blew up with people claiming they had "main character syndrome". But here Joan is claiming the reverse. She doesn't feel she has agency. She speaks of, a sense of passivity, "I just feel like I never actively chose this, like I feel like I'm just on autopilot." Her points are likely relatable to Millennials entering middle age, yet still not feeling totally convinced they're "adulting" the right way, or making choices that are leading to the most authentic expressions of themselves. Ironically though, Joan is the main character, both of this episode, and of a show she discovers that night on Streamberry. Unfortunately for her, she's a main character being portrayed as an "anti-hero" or even a villain protagonist.

So interestingly, there's a suggestion that if we tell ourselves that we're passively pushed along with no "main character energy," we may end up unintentionally acting with villainy. Because when you're not taking responsibility for your behaviors, and when you're not actively caring about whether your choices reflect the authentic you, how likely is it that you'd be proud of what you see on a televised rehash of your day's events?

It's documented that negativity and controversy do work to drive views in media and social media. But this bland, regular negativity Joan feels in her life, which is what we're receiving from so much of today's media, is not serving her well. It's making her dissociated, and thereby contributing to why she acts awful. Interestingly, once the show confronts her with this and makes her lose everything, and she leans into awfulness going full anti-heroine, she's liberated and starts to become a real person again. Not having anything to lose galvanizes her to channel some "main character energy" to take control of the narrative she's writing.