Defined my target audience for my writings: my own demo. Upper Middle class, intelligent, slightly-to-severely depressed young people who want to make a difference in the world.
Adapted from TLP (Chris Ballas) and Pete Dushenski
********
The easy critique to make about pop culture is that it is trying to trick us, this is wrong, we are using pop culture to trick ourselves. We want this distance. We want heroes, celebrities, people with power – we want an upper class – and we want them inaccessible. We want someone to rule us.
So yeah, you’re rich enough to go to La Salle and live in your own condo and own the latest Samsung. But can you influence the next municipal election? Can you hop in a car tomorrow and go wherever you want for as long as you want? Can you even wake up in the morning at the time you would like instead of setting an alarm?
Why would our “rich and powerful” demo want to be ruled? Because we aren’t powerful, only rich, all that time getting rich did not translate to any power, only the trappings of power.
This is what happens when a whole generation’s narcissism is threatened with injury – since everything is possible, why aren’t you enjoying everything? – the personality structure becomes overwhelmingly defensive. “If I were an Ayala, then I would be able to do X!” is NOT envy, flip it over and read the redacted obverse: “Only Ayalas can do X — therefore it’s not my fault that I can’t!”
So we’ve postulated a fantasy power structure that explains why we can’t enjoy our lives as we think we should– to absolve ourselves of the guilt we feel for having money/intellect/opportunities and not being able to do anything with it except spend it on the system-wide approved gimmicks: cars, gadgets, college educations, Laboracay, trophy girlfriends and boyfriends.
[Our] mistake is in thinking others have the power. No one has it, the system doesn’t allow it. The system doesn’t allow either the poor or the rich to have much in the way of real power.
Even [our mighty demo] feels impotent. Are we all delusional? This is the true critique of the system, not simply that one group reliably oppresses another; but that the entire system is based on creating a lack. This lack is not a bottomless hole that nothing could ever fill, but a tiny, strangely shaped divot in your soul into which nothing could ever fit: not money, not sex, not stuff, not relationships. Nothing “takes.” Nothing counts. Nothing is ever right. Only novelty works, until it wears off.
My Name Is Trinity 