image

The growing proletarianization of modern man and the increasing formation of masses are two aspects of the same process. Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves. The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property. The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life.

Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

With the release of more photos and files has come a flood of meme responses. 
There has been an absolute screen damaged transformation masses of people of have gone through that is the embodiment of anti-human, soulless nihilism. 
For years and years, compulsively and callously memeifying every event, piece of “content”, or news incident, has left people barely cognitively functional as well as largely historically/politically illiterate. 
It also indicates a disturbing degree of spiritual destitution. 
These base reactions to image stimuli illustrates how image acts as surrogate reality and has pushed us further into a disempowered state. 
I’ve found myself linking several aspects of this together, trying to find a cause. 
Although I know there is no singular root, or at least not one I can identify that isn’t nebulous. 

There is a popular and active commitment to desensitize oneself to human suffering. Porn and true crime consumption come to mind as normalized materials that have done tremendous damage to the collective human psyche. 

In regards to porn, one must ignore the reality of vulnerable people who are trafficked and then used for sexual gratification for strangers viewing them from screens all over the world, in order to consume and “enjoy” it. Or perhaps that’s part of the appeal for some.*
It removes sensuality from sex and it is not sex, rather it is a viewing of a contextless act with varying degrees of violence, that primes people to seek out more intense content or outlets.
The desire to indulge true crime content/media comes from a similar compulsion. There is an active craving for vulgar spectacle and pornified horror that is “real” — 
people want to see and hear the worst. 
To know it exists. 
It’s somewhat human and normal to want to know what the worst is, it’s why we are drawn to things that can kill or destroy us, why we like horror, or whatever it may manifest as. 
Where this impulse stems from is natural. What is unnatural is existing in an endless loop of compulsive habit and letting that dictate your ability (or inability) to participate in life or encounter reality, (even if it is not your immediate reality).

John Berger, Ways of Seeing:
The meaning of an image is changed according to what one sees immediately beside it or what comes immediately after it. Such authority as it retains, is distributed over the whole context in which it appears. 

Screen and image as surrogate reality and the subsequent act of memeification, has placed the observer in the position of detached voyeur. 
In this way of viewing images — in shifting contexts and more often, in a contextless sense, we are not placing ourselves anywhere and are thus unable to connect to what the actual reality is. 
It is impossible to situate ourselves in relation to — 
so there is no way to feel compassion.
It is decidedly an anti-human and fascist process.

Compulsive memeification requires desensitization that has already begun the process of taking hold. It is not necessarily an effect, although it can function that way. 
An image removed from its context and the context of the event the camera lens captured, 
is removed from its historical context and then in turn is disregarded the moment a new image-trend crops up, related to a newer event, subjected to the same extraction process. 
Thus, the image is sterilized. It is further used as a punchline to mock or dehumanize, or otherwise express a sense of disdain for humanity. 

Extraction of an image and the process of memeifying and disseminating it instantly, all over the world, is an erosion — 
This is a passive non-action; 
At its worst, it is indicative of an inability and lack of desire to feel or actively live.

In a comparatively large, but less violent phenomenon, 
people watch videos of people playing video games, of people explaining movies or shows, of people vlogging — 
people use videos as substitutes for conversations, in the flesh, or podcasts to fill the silence. 
This is used in lieu of actual conversation — the actual “original”, if we can use this as an analogy of sorts — is pushed aside for a simulated version.
One degree removed from actuality in perpetuity, essentially a real-time simulation of the original action-impulse;
It is antisocial in a similar way I’ve been describing. 
I don’t believe it’s at all as depraved as the former is, but it is illustrative of some kind of mass loss of connection and an unwillingness to be outside of this kind of spectral kaleidoscope. 

This is not necessarily a “new” phenomenon. People encounter images of genocide and then flip it off their brain after they calculated the amount of time it was “right” to show “care”. And move on. 
It’s not new and that’s precisely why it is terrifying and alienating. 

* regardless if some people are “empowered” by their choice to participate, it remains that this is largely what the porn industry is built on and it is cope to cling on to some individuals’ claims of personal liberation as proof otherwise.