The Zombie Consumer, Uncomfortable Chuckles and Don’t-Go-There Memes
May 27th, 2007I’ve been writing about the zombie consumer death urge on Cryptogon recently. I don’t know how I came up with that. I was just trying to think about a simple way of summing up the general mentality out there. It’s not a very profound or original concept. The more interesting question for me is: Why now? Why did that meme suddenly stick in my consciousness?
Now, look at this: Brain-Eating Zombies Invade SF Apple Store:
A horde of decaying zombies invaded San Francisco’s downtown Apple store on Friday evening, hunting for brains, terrifying the customers, and gnawing on iMacs.
Zombie gnaws on iMac but prefers human brains (Photo: Declan McCullagh)I’ve placed some photos here. I’m pleased to report that the zombies ultimately decided human brains were tastier than plastic iMacs, although it wasn’t for lack of effort in trying to vary what must be a monotonous diet.
It was difficult to judge the exact number of zombies that shuffled through the city’s shopping district, losing limbs, blood, and unmentionable body parts along the way, but probably at least 150 converged on Union Square. Then they decided to visit nearby businesses, including the Apple store, Nordstrom, the Disney store, and the Westfield Mall.
The event was titled “SF Zombie Mob 2007,” and it was organized by the gruesome-minded folks at eatbrains.com. It’s akin to a flash mob, though because the participants trek around the city after gathering, the Zombie Mob was closer in concept to the Critical Mass bicycle ride, which coincidentally was happening at the same time along the same street. In truth, it was a pretty polite affair: only passers-by who volunteered to become zombie-fied were, and no arrests took place.
I understand that it’s all just a practical joke, and, yes, San Francisco is big bowl of fruit and nuts, etc.
Fine. (Forget, for a moment, about the weirdness surrounding the flashmob mentality, and the pathological urban loneliness/meaninglessness that is making this nonsense increasingly popular. That’s an entirely different can of worms.)
I guess, what I’m wondering is: Did I chose that meme, or did that meme chose me?
No tinfoil or anything, and excuse me if this sounds lame to you, but I find it somehow disturbing that I’ve written about zombie consumers recently, and revealed the mantra I use to avoid zombie doctrine… All, you know, with a bit of hyperbole…
But then I sit down to check the news and I see a girl in a bloody zombie costume, about to take a bite out of an iMac in an Apple store.
I chuckled. Uncomfortably. The way I do when I force myself to listen to actual audio of George Bush trying to speak, or when I read about fundamentalist Christians at science fairs, or the whole Hillary 2008 thing.
I looked at the pictures of this zombie stunt, and, given my position on the zombie mentality, I actually had to wonder how I would have reacted if I had been in San Francisco and seen this thing for myself. Would I have panicked? Would I have been able to force an uncomfortable chuckle after a few seconds?
There are several topics that I acknowledge as having a strong diabolical nature about them. I am, in fact, not willing to subject my consciousness to a deeper understanding of them, or more importantly, who or what is actually behind them. I already wish I could forget about what I know about mind control, elite deviance and research into autonomous robotic weapon systems. I’ve started to research things like alternate reality games (World of Warcraft and Second Life, in particular) and intelligence connections to “adult entertainment.” After cursory glances, I simply looked away. That shit falls into the I don’t want to know anymore category.
The zombie consumer thing is another one of these topics. It’s like an ominous, pulsing blackness. What damage can result simply from trying to look at it? Mythology teaches us about the dangers of even gazing upon certain things. I don’t know why, but this feels like one of those things.
I can calmly look at state narcotics trafficking, big brother, false flag terror, mass kill off/population reduction policies, etc… All of that stuff makes logical sense in the study of fascism. However, looking at a mainstream news site and seeing my absurd, allegorical nightmare scenario being acted out in flesh and, uh, fake blood…
I want to believe in coincidences.
Hi Kevin,
I have been reading your blog for awhile now and I would say the majority of your stuff is good, I still remember the las vegas ufo deal..quite fun to watch anyway I personally have been calling the materialism of our mainstream(US) culture and all the support structures such as commerical’s all part of the lizard or zombie reaction to stimulie(bad spell). I would say that in this time you can breath easy and believe for once…I know its hard.
I would like to see them try a stunt like that here in Detroit…
Headline would read “150 dressed like zombies shot dead, Didn’t rise.”
As you have fled America, I doubt you know how on edge people are here these days. Here in the Detroit area with the economy in full collapse things arent so great. Housing collapsing, auto industry in freefall. In the actual city…out numbered out gunned police try to stop the flood of drugs(mostly heroin these days. wonder where that came from?). People are sad and scared and angry.
You can’t watch the (often lethal) mobs at Walmart sales or that famous Apple laptop auction by a school district a few years ago without feeling that these people are not in control of themselves.
I worked at a fairly mundane retail store opening and I still felt very strange smiling and nodding at the lines of people filing in. What were they going to find? We didn’t sell anything that anyone _needed_.
In fact I still have trouble separating wants and needs in my own mind on a day to day basis, even though I am perfectly aware of the issue. It’s almost as if a concerted effort is made on a large scale to blur the distinction. I agree with Kevin’s comments about not wanting to know too much about the underlying techniques.
Robert Jensen studies the same issue but more from the pornography side.
I think that the recent inexplicable popularity of zombie fantasy is in part due to subconscious recognition of this mechanism. Max Brooks’ World War Z is not popular because it is about zombies, it is popular because it is a hopeful story about survival and self sufficiency in a world gone mad.
perhaps the zombie story is really one of surrender, and surrender of the human race scares you. zomiefication involves a mindless creature rendered empty and holllow but for it’s base urges and perhaps some very limited control through those appetites. it then infects those around it.
welcome to 2007.
Maybe its just a case of sad people looking for attention and knowingly or unknowingly making a point. Bright lights, big city. The pursuit of “things” or “activities” in order to fill a yawning chasm and feed some never ending “hunger”?
As a former longtime Bay Area resident, I have a different take on this brilliantly crafted demonstration. This is classic street theatre with a political subtext. These folks are not lonely strangers, they are well networked friends in a rising generation Y urban subculture. They know the crash is coming. Unlike the old boomers that Matt Savinar calls the “million dollar hippies” or the generation X tech boom IT workers that were able to save enough to flee to Willits, CA or their own farmlet, these kids are out of time and know it. Their fate lies in the cities (or the Halliburton camps).
Here is the translation for boomers: Remember when stealing stuff from “the man” was called “liberating” stuff, and considered a noble revolutionary act?
Translation for generation X: Remember “Die yuppie scum” and Eat the rich”?
This is pre-revolutionary activity. The joke is that the demonstrators are wide awake, it is the businesses and brainwashed shoppers that are the zombies. The whole act is a thinly veiled threat. When TSHTF, they will rise and wreak vengance for their stolen futures. Look upon us you smug boomers and gen Xers and despair – your million dollar Pacific Heights condos won’t save you.
Man oh man, it’s going to get weird. I mean, weirder.
Kevin, I feel exactly the same as you do about subjects like mind control. I’ve read enough about it to last me a lifetime. It IS disturbing and I DON’T want to delve into it any more. It’s enough for me now to be highly alert to the fact that there is a highly organised and unspeakable evil pulling the strings behind the scenes, which means there is no atrocity too outrageous, nor no conspiracy too preposterous, for those who rule over us to commit.
there is no there there. this is a pretty simple piece of street theatre, along the lines of Reverend Billy`s Church of Stop Shopping. whatever happens soon, people will be living and coping with things, and some form of history and culture will live on, however unrecognizable it will be to us.
Mr. Hidell’s take is spot on. This isn’t about boredom or disaffection with the mega machine. This is a mirror for a sold out populace. Death privatized.
Alex,
First paragraph is well said! This is why people my age and younger (28) don’t want to talk about this stuff. They know they’re screwed.
I have a bit of hope as LATOC has quite a few well-heele readers who I’m hoping will finance my escape. But if I didn’t have that I’d take a look around and just subliminate my fears activities. I’d probably opt for learning MMA fighting or something a bit more pragamatic than staging “zombie invasions” but for these kids that’s what works.
Kev,
put another way: I think you’ve misinterpreted this behavior. Not everybody can engineer an esacpe the way you have.
Imagine if instead of being 35 currently you are as you were at 25 or 22 years old with no money and a much less sophisticated understanding of these matters. You’d be stuck here too and you might be just beginning to realize how f–ked you are and that you’re not out of time.
These folks are practicing for the crash, even if they don’t *conscously* know that they are. There is not much difference between organziing a flash mob where you do something silly like dress up as a zombie and organizing a flash mob where you something life-sustaining like go raiding for food and suppies.
My urge to take up MMA fighting comes from the same sense. If I can’t get to a relatively safe farmlet in a foreign country like you have or flee to Willits with the million dollar hippies then I’m stuck here.
I posit that if you were 10 years younger, stuck in Orange County with no money and no wife with NZ citizenship, you might be engaging in similar behavior although I suspect yours might take a slightly different form.
“you’re not out of time” should have read “you are out of time”
Actually, Matt, you couldn’t be more wrong.
I’ve never gone for mob scenes, zombie or otherwise. Crowds debilitate me. Always have. I just don’t have the right personality for mob/riot/zombie scenes. When I’ve had to live in cities, I did what I had to do (work/school) and I kept to myself for most of the rest of the time, plotting how I’d get out of the screwed up scene.
As for some imaginary if-I-was-10-years-younger-now situation… That’s just silly. Why not speculate about how 20-year-olds from the 16th century would behave in the year 3000?
If I hadn’t met Becky, I’d have been in Oregon. Outlaw building on some inexpensive land with no services. (Hint: Don’t try to get electricity turned on with an unpermitted structure.) That was the plan I was in the process of executing when I met her. Oregon had two problems: 1) Oregon is still inside the U.S. 2) Becky doesn’t like that climate. We came up with a different plan.
So, your theory about me getting in touch with my inner zombie in some urban shithole is ridiculous in the extreme.
The last thing I would do is be in a city. Becky, no Becky or otherwise. Oh hell no. I’ve had enough to do with cities. I’ve had to defend myself with a firearm before (attempted break-in/robbery when I was at home) and the goal for me became avoiding that type of situation to begin with.
As for MMA fighting, that’s great. I hope the guy or guys you have to use that on aren’t armed with assault rifles.
With all of your readers, surely someone has a corner of a large piece of land that they’d let you fire up a shack and a garden on for some token lease payment.
Or, why not use your law degree to do that shit for a couple of years to save money? Boiler plate probate nonsense, or something??? Then buy your own land somewhere.
Kevin,
About the coincidence thing. I’ve got the same willies. Hadem for years. I don’t know if people in the media industry just think the same things as me and my friends or if we’re subjected to a very very subtle and sophisticated form of advertising. It’d border on mind control for its invisibility and subconcious operation.
I’ve also been thinking alot about Zombies lately. I’ve come to the conclusion that part of it is Americans freaking out about the Latino Immigrantion/Cultural Racial Purity. (at least that’s what I think my zombie dreams are really about as much as I hate to admit it)
But back to the original subject, I don’t know if it’s some complicated scheme, or just being tuned in right to the pop culture system, but I get the creeps about it too.
Kev,
I didn’t mean to imply you would be involved in zombie mob bullshit. I think you missed my point which means I may not have made it clear enough. I’ll try again:
I’m saying if you were 22-25 years old today, like many of the people in the story, and were for all intents and purposes trapped in a city you would be doing *SOMETHING* in response to your unconscious awareness of things falling apart. And that *something* might seem a bit silly to outsiders.
As far as practicing law: unless you’re putting in 100 hour weeks at a big firm, it is nowhere near as profitable as you’re thinking it is.
I’m visiting a possible retreat location next week. If the reality matches my research I will be hitting up my readers for some financing.
I’ve had readers make me offers but they have generally been from people hoping to use my “celebrity” status to shore up their falling apart hippie project or they’re located right smack dab in the middle of high value nuclear targets. (And I do think this is going nuclear.)
But most young people *do not* have a large blog readership they can appeal to for assistance. In the aggregate, they are, for all intents and purposes, trapped in their current location.And when a person is trapped they’re going to get a bit “loopy” like these people have.
Also, if I may ask, how old were you when you finally really “connected the dots.” I’m going to guess around 28, correct? You put up cryptogon around 30, correct?
See that is my point. You’re looking at these people and thinking they’re fools. To a certain degree they are. But you can’t expect everybody at age 21 or 22 to develop the understanding you did not have until you were around 30.
And you can expect a 24 year old to figure out how to escape when you didn’t figure out how to escape until 33 or 34. So have a bit of compassion for these folks. They’re not as zombied-out as you think.
These people have some vague sense that things have gone awry. But they can’t quite put their finger on it so they’re sense gets channelled into silly stuff like dressing up as zombies.
To a degree, your desire to isolate yourself when you lived in cities was the same process at work. You knew “things out there” weren’t right so you engaged in behavior (self-isolation) that when judged from a certain viewpoint is rather peculiar.
Well, if it makes you feel any better, Americans, or modern consumers, as zombies, is a recurring theme in popular culture. Just look at all of those 50’s and 60’s zombie movies, then look at their revival. There are many different takes on the meaning behind them. People interpret the zombies to be social commentary on how zombie-like American consumers are, etc.
The Internet allows this to be fetishized into performance art that anyone can participate in. You are dead on about urban alienation. Where the hell are you supposed to meet people? Your job? Hahahahahahahaha! I know two people who worked for a prominent consulting firm. It stationed them in cities hundreds of miles apart. Somehow, they are still together. What about the bars or restaurants? If you can afford to blow your money at those places, you find that they are not amenable to socialization. And then you have the whole novelty thing. This is a relatively new phenomenon, although if you go to boingboing.net, its regularly given blog time.
There is a lot of Thanato-culture out there, especially in recent years. Remember Kurt Cobain? Remember grunge? Think of how depressing it was. In a way, no, lets no hedge, lets just say, that music aside, the message was far worse than that of the sixties youth culture, which at least had the positive effect of getting people to at least try to expand their consciousness, or even less, letting them know that such things were possible. But what did we get from grunge? “You guys are fucked!” “Take lots of pills and kill yourselves!” “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.” Etc. I remember thinking, the first time I heard NIN, who would want to listen this? It’s music you could kill to.
And that’s probably what it was designed for.
Google Pat Dollard and see what you come up with. Jeff Wells already wrote a piece about him awhile back. I actually took the time to read the Vanity Fair article and found it to be very revealing.
Of course, it’s obvious from reading it, that Dollard is nothing more than a useful idiot, and one who you even feel sorry for; his stated goal – to desensitize the “Abercrombie and Fitch” young Americans to violence to get them to be marines. Fight Club and Jackass were already doing that, by getting males ready for the idea that their physical safety is not worth protecting, Dollard is hoping to be the next step in the trend.
As for D & D, and all of the other games, I caught on to them eons ago. They “teach you to kill when it still seems like a game.” Have you read “Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card, same concept, brought into reality. Ever notice how almost every game puts you in the role of a government killer? The first was Wolfenstein. But it was okay, because you were only killing Nazis. And Doom was about demons. But then you have games like Postal and Grand Theft Auto, where you can go on mass murdering sprees with very little consequences.
That being said, if you look at human history, you realize that stuff happened routinely. I would rather people act out their deviance in the virtual world, but then again, not everyone can easily distinguish between fantasy and reality; in these Fortean times, I can’t hardly blame them.
Here’s an example of a future meme subtly attempting to choose us, at the expense of our self-possessed, self-interested cognition:
1. At some currently unannounced time in 2008, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged will be released via film, with, ironically, Angelina Jolie and, maybe, Brad Pitt, playing the leading roles.
From wikipedia, a synopsis of Atlas Shrugged:
“The main conflict of the book occurs as the “individuals of the mind” go on strike, refusing to contribute their inventions, art, business leadership, scientific research, or new ideas of any kind to the rest of the world. Society, they believe, hampers them by interfering with their work and underpays them by confiscating the profits and dignity they have rightfully earned. The peaceful cohesiveness of the world requires those individuals whose productive work comes from mental effort. But feeling they have no alternative, they eventually start disappearing from the communities of “looters” and “moochers” who bleed them dry. The strikers believe that they are crucial to a society that exploits them, AND THE NEAR-TOTAL COLLAPSE OF CIVILIZATION THEIR STRIKE EVENTUALLY TRIGGERS SHOWS THEM TO BE CORRECT [emphasis added by me].”
What happens when those individuals not even partially unplugged from the Matrix internalize this message, promulgated by the big screen version of Rand’s psycho manipulative literature and given theatrical memetic authority by Jolie and Pitt??
Said unplugged individuals will consciously and subconsciously begin to believe they, in some way, are the reason,
via their THEATRICALLY PURPORTED (but, in reality, virtually non-existent) “looting” and “mooching” attacks on the Velociraptoric Classes (who will have, through clever value manipulations via credit-based financial shenanigans, confiscated the majority of the properties of the unplugged common classes, and thus are justifiably worthy of attack and destruction by the common classes),
for the ongoing collapse–which will be in partial swing at the time this movie is released–of the American and world economic system.
Such internalization by an unawake public will only make control from the top–by Them through Their agents–easier.
It will also make the end result–categorical control of all the world’s resources by Them and Their agents–more probable in the long term.
In my opinion, the real war is not unplugging oneself from Their systems of control; it’s remaining disconnected, as any meme, even one with a libertarian thread, can be spread at a moment just right in its results: increasing the amount of resources owned or controlled by Them, with requisite losses for us, members of common classes.
Memes with such purposes are being spread all the time via every vehicle imaginable, to include seemingly innocuous consumer culture, and infect and drive us, both consciously and subconsciously.
The only questions are:
are we able to eventually take the wheel from any given meme and drive ourselves, or, if we’re not able to take the wheel, can we make the meme take us where we want to go, mentally, economically, financially, etc.?
I’d venture to say many of the readers (as well as the publisher) of this blog are able to do so with little difficulty.
david, it would seem that we are in the minority unfortunately, and in a long term scenario likely to be sublimated under the masses. i really think the zombie meme is entirley appropriate without any other drive not otherwise promulgated by popular culture. the fact that al gore is a talking head on the subject of global warming when data posits a solar issue at work (not to say we haven’t aggravated the condition with our own activity) really suggests a weak society willing to be led by the nose, paycheck or balls. zombies.
cheers.
@ Matt
It’s exactly like I said: I’d be trying to get the hell out. Why didn’t I get the zombie house, the zombie car, the zombie wife like everyone else around me? I saw it for what it was, early on. When I met Becky, I’d given up on meeting anyone who had the same priorities as me. I assumed it wasn’t going to happen.
Iran/Contra got my attention as a kid. I read the “Pentagon Papers” when I was 17. By 18, CIA narcotics trafficking was pretty obvious to me. But it was just “hobby” reading. I tried not to let it get to me, but it did.
I did what a lot of young people do at that point. I drank, got a crap job and eventually finished college. Then proceeded to never use my degree and just do what I was good at: computers.
All along, I realized that the only way out for me would be through the belly of the corporate beast. Blue collar jobs actually weren’t bad, the ones I had just didn’t pay enough.
Plumber would have been the way to go. I had a plumber work on a sewer line in a place I was living once who had a PhD in Psychology from UCLA. That was 1992. That’s when I knew the entire thing was a scam. But just because you realize it’s a scam doesn’t mean you make it your mission in life to get out. (Of course, there is no out.)
The wolves have to be at the door. There’s no way that I could convey to you what it was like for me to go back into IT that last time. I still don’t know how I did it. I’d go on interviews and the idiot interviewing me, in between Blackberry sessions, they’d say things like, “Hmmm. I don’t see any experience with…” — Fill in the blank with some arcane software that nobody would be using three years later.
“Well, no, but…” And I’d be thinking, “Maybe I’ll just kick your ass up and down this office and then hog tie you with this f&!^@%$ tie I’m wearing.” But no. I kept my cool. Showed up. Did my time. etc. Knowing it was finite was what made it manageable.
It’s quite possible that I couldn’t have done it without Becky. I was in bad shape. But I’d done the corporate bullshit thing for so long I just went mostly on instinct. It was like when I mentioned having to defend myself during that attempted breakin. I was shaking, but I loaded the weapon and pointed it. (Luckily, the sound of a 12 gauge shotgun being loaded is a pretty distinctive sound and the idiot ran away.) You may not like having to do what you have to do to survive, but you do it. For the guy trying to break into my place, maybe that was a survival play for him. For me, going back to that office was a life or death decision. I was shaking, but I did what had to be done. Sent most of the money out to NZ every month. Kept my eyes on the finish line. And then it was over.
Re: 100 hours per week… You’d be amazed what you can do if you see the thing as a life or death proposition. I had my full time IT job in a corporate hell hole. Cryptogon. Part time contracting thing after work and on weekends.
We didn’t eat out. We didn’t go out. We ate things like beans and rice and collard greens. We bought almost nothing in terms of consumer “stuff”. We saved just about every spare cent and put it towards our property. Indeed, our lifestyle probably seemed pretty ridiculous to most people.
Also, I don’t expect everyone to have the understanding I do at any age. I wouldn’t wish this on people. I said that I didn’t think that my focus has been a particularly good one over the past twenty years:
https://cryptogon.com/?p=688
Maybe I’m jealous of the zombie children and their care free oblivion???
@ Matt S. – re your comments on MMA fighting. I would regard hand-to-hand combat skills as the lowest priority in any kind of survivalist planning for the simple reason that the really nasty guys one would be likely to encounter in a “Mad Max” situation wouldn’t be playing by Queensbury or any other rules. Armalites, AK-47s, axes, molotov cocktails, baseball bats with nails through them (an old favourite here in Northern Ireland) etc, would be the order of the day. In any case, martial artist types will always be “found out” by savvy street-hardened scrappers unafraid to resort to whatever it takes to come out on top and besides, nobody in the real world is going to take out a mob with their own bare hands. No, if you’re thinking in terms of societal breakdown, you need to be relocating ass and assets from urban society now, prevention being the best cure and all that jazz. I’d actually go further than that and suggest extricating yourself from the USA post haste since the most clear and present danger at this time is not so much peak oil but rather the escalating police state.
Maybe this is a bit too much to ask of you Kevin but how about providing the readers of Cryptogon a plan for leaving the cities. It could include timelines, cost of leaving, how tos etc?
I know I have provided similar info to people wanting to emmigrate from my home country and they seemed to find the little bits of info I gave them useful and time saving.
Just an idea. I know I still don’t know how to approach all this (leaving the city and becoming self sufficient). Especially from a money point of view.
Guess we could all benefit greatly from your experiences and it would add immense value to your readers.
Thanks for the awesome insight your blog provides. Keep it up!
Wouldn’t it all be wonderful to live as Thoreau? But I guess cynicism is as much a man-made disease as any preventing an idyllic life on Walden.
Kevin, that bit about the interviewing session was priceless. It reminded me of a recent tele-conference, something my former employer “loved” (Actually any kind of soul-sucking, results-killing, “team-building” endeavor), where I heard one of the recently hired flunkies openly confess he was working on a Masters degree for something totally unrelated, while he, with his currently unrelated degree was running network cable in our offices in Houston. LOL! On our end, the three of us (all non-degreed but pulling down substantially more money) were staring at each other and said, “WTF!”?
Experience, and capability doesn’t seem to mean a damn thing to corporate HR-droids unless you manage to squeeze into the requisite square holes and parrot the mind numbing crap that labels you “one of them”. The only thing holding me back is that piece of paper I should have nabbed years ago before family arrived. It doesn’t indicate any particular level of intelligence, but that you managed to put in your time, like a convict, into the system. With the Internet even that is within grasp. Still, there’s always plumbing!
Just a reminder that George Romero’s (who almost singlehandedly popularized the zombie genre) zombie cult classic “Dawn of the Dead” is set in an American mall, and is according to Romero himself intended as a jab at mindless American consumerism.
Zombie consumerism.
More here:
http://www.americanpopularculture.com/journal/articles/fall_2002/harper.htm