This kind of essay is more a free-flowing ‘jazz’ type – not necessarily planned over weeks or months, and certainly not the product of deep thought or singleness of mind. On the other hand, neither is its content completely spontaneous and is usually the product of an idea or observation I have been repeatedly having (from time to time as something bothers me) – but have not been able to sustain (as real life gets in the way). As someone who seeks-out good quality research material shared freely upon the internet, I have been prone to visiting YouTube even though I despise the obvious ‘Americanism’ of it and understand how the US penetrates our homes (and the minds of our children) without having to bother setting down a single ‘invading’ soldier upon the ground of our UK soil! Of course, if the US ever tried a military invasion of the UK – I can tell you for nothing that we – the ‘British’ people – would prevail because our working-class mettle is far stronger than anything produced in the powder-puff world of YouTube!
The internet was initially developed as a tool to spy on everyone – with the hope that it would spread to the USSR whilst still being under the control of the US. The idea was that US Intelligence Officers would sit ‘listening’ to the goings-on in the homes of people all over the globe – picking up sound and images through the specially designed technology. This is something North Korea and China already understand, and as a consequence they have ‘banned’ and ‘blocked’ the US internet from penetrating their geographical boundaries, and they have achieved this through the development of their own internet – controlled by their own people. Vietnam – a ‘Socialist’ country whose Communist Party betrayed the Revolution of Ho Chi Minh post-1975 by cosying up to the USSR (China’s ideological enemy by this point) and unbelievably to the ‘US’ (a country that had just murdered around three million Vietnamese men, women and children) – knowingly ‘embraces’ the US internet – allowing the US free movement around its country and free access to its people – as if the US had ‘won’ – rather than ‘lost’ the Vietnam War in 1975!
YouTube allows the sheer idiocy of US anti-intellectualism to run wild with no limits. As there are obscene amounts of money to be made by uploading a ‘hit’ video – creating content has become the ‘new’ lucrative ‘hobby’ that contributes NOTHING tangible to material society – but it does assist the expansion of the stupidity of US culture around the globe with very little effort required from the US government! Given that the Bourgeoisie is the class which controls ALL Western (capitalist) societies, it is not surprising that it is the values of this class which US social media encourages through the default mechanism of the controlling ‘Rules’ and ‘Regulations’. No content is to be made, shared or otherwise encouraged that propagates working-class values and/or Revolutionary ideas. All allowable content must feed back into the dominance of the Bourgeoisie and never be allowed to contradict its primacy. In the meantime, the producers of this content (which exists only in their head) can gain ridiculous amounts of money – such as a dollar a click or much more – and become immensely wealthy very quickly without having to get a real job in the material world, turn up for that real job every day and be ‘productive’ for the physical society within which they live!
‘YouTubing’ is the habitation of a fantasy world made real in images upon a screen. This is exactly the ‘inverted’ world of religion writ large as described by Feuerbach, Marx, Engels and Lenin, etc! In theory, any image, regardless of its positive, negative or neutral construction value, can be made to seem ‘as if it exists’ upon the screen and stimulate the imaginations of all and sundry that happen to allow these images to pass in front of the eye and ear – thus ‘traversing’ the surface of the mind! Whereas the film industry is a tangible profession involving ‘real’ training, qualifications and jobs that guarantee genuine ‘labour’ in the material world – ‘YouTubing’ places this ‘dream-making’ process firmly into the hands of the uneducated and immature masses – telling them that this is ‘reality’ and that no other interpretation exists! The way the entertainment world used to exist (pre-internet) – ensured that ordinary human-beings all inhabited the drab and mundane ‘material’ world and tried our best to traverse its realities and injustices – BEFORE they were able (or allowed) to subject themselves to the ‘inverted’ world of ‘escapism’ and the 90 minutes £5 allotted to get away (just for a moment) from the reality of capitalist existence! All a child has to do now is wake-up and switch-on which ever device happens to be within reach and the ‘inverted’ world of YouTube beckons!
THE SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 