read.synkar.org

mark fisher, the labour of simulation – discourse

discourse theoretical work present critique #performative-lockdown theme urban

mark fisher, the labour of simulation

2025 · 1,180 words

the real is very much around, swimming through objects, lighting up relations, illuminating estrangement.

discourse
<1hour
$0usd
Ttalk
m·h

prompt simulation → labour performance · turn personalization → performative lockdown · residue the humming ghost

fisher →
openthread
toward mark fisher
prompt
simulation → labour performance
turn
personalization → performative lockdown
residue
the humming ghost
scale
source → 1,180 words
↓ the discourse begins below13 blocks · 1,180 words · <1h

it really seems like fisher is building up to something amazing once you get to the second half of his speech, only for it to fall on the last page when you realize it's not leading to a grand conclusion about subjectivity and performance or about superficiality and automation, but rather a poorly-phrased... market recommendation?

near the beginning theres an insertion about baudrillards reading of the copy in its relation with the simulacrum, then the question of its simulation and proximity, then the part about subjectivity which leads him to think of personalization, then into mundaneness of everyday life extending into abstracted automated communicative relations, humorously referencing the way video game characters exist in a certain space where only specific conversational triggers contextualize their existing - which is a great example precisely because you slowly begin to see these types of dialogues trees emerging in real life too, where the space for correct conversational moves draws thinner the more niche, specialized and contextually fatigued everyone becomes.

you hope he'll tie them all together to end it off and have some final great remark to add but instead of that he ends with an impromptu suggestion on how to improve the hyperreal? the hyperreal doesnt need you to improve it from the front, or making it "more realistic" only from the back, its about allowing these store workers and call centers to enter even more uncanny forms of communication, to be even more locked into their tight performances whilst somehow appearing more and more perfect in the robotic sense, whilst still allowing the mitigation and removal of moments of political rupture.

almost as if fisher wants to polish their annihilation rather than their attunement, but hes phrasing it from the other end as if the goal is flipped. the point should have ended with not the way subjectivity reflects personalized entries on automated entities but the way non automated entities try to factor out subjectivity whilst retaining personalization through the play of analogies surrounding copies and fugues/expanded trigger points. or how theres a convergence where to eliminate conversational radicals (the way its increasingly happening in urbanized spaces) is a control method, you vaporize both the overly normalizable and the overly radical, maintaining this uncanny space, where the goal is to juggle the way in which the dialogue tree both expands the contextually limited and alienated circumstance, whilst drowning out the entrance points of the external world, to the point nothing is expected but everything is still novel.

all of fisher's examples are fascinating, from the simulation of illness to the simulation of war being safer than the war of travelling to your job at your very localized domestic territory, from the way this technically leads to an emerging parallel between isolated and dangerous travelling journeys to conversations requiring strictly locked points of emergence and social gain, the way conversation and travel becomes weaponized also of course suits this trajectory perfectly.

i'd even argue its not even worth it to speak to anyone in localized urban contexts whatsoever, it only serves to drown you and the realness of the situation further the more you try to signal that theres something that doesnt fit the criteria of performative lockdown being employed by the automated simulation emerging under the fully abstracted realm of wage labour. this itself only serves to obfuscate the spirit of the real is already floating around, animating everything around us.

the real is very much around, swimming through objects, lighting up relations, illuminating estrangement. its so active, so powerful, so fed, that even dialogical insertions, attempts at dialectical tension, attempts at possessing a character all fall flat to it. when accelerationalists point to a hum, a type of static low level noise in the city of capital, they dont realize that this humming ghost is exactly what's producing that sound. it helps hold things together in the city (and by things i mean poisoned cats, poisoned trashcans, ugly birds, halfmad drunk zombie walkers, the unique products of the urban city that you wouldnt find anywhere else). when fake horrible alienated non-conversations and expansive but suffocated dialogue "options"

the last thing this should've focused on is empathy, there's hardly a question of empathy in representational dilemmas. this is the one situation where i was fisher was more hegelian, he was neither done exposing the contradictions nor explaining how they bounce into something more refined, or in capitalism, refuse to bounce off each other to produce something better but just keep drifting in the grey zone endlessly and ever-more efficiently.

however, i have to do one more thing, and that's climb above this territory in any way i can, because i'm still technically speaking from fisher's own achievements that don't fully emerge in this speech but do throughout his work. and i'll do that in the form of a suggestion: there are three throughlines that the call center allows: in disco elysium, you get the haunting radio siren slowly mutating - even though its automated and dead, it constantly transforms from the past, it remains in the past, however, echoing dead philosophies but doing so in ever-present ways.

this however, doesn't stop them from continuing to feel dead and impotent of the present moment, which is why the sustained contradiction allows for capitalism to subsume it into its codex, this is the dead flag blues moment of godspeed you black emperor as well, the call of the dystopia is harkened back, its like that contained beast that wants to spark back up.

the second line is that the frustrations of the call-center agent constantly appears in deleuzian micro-lines as they speak and behave. even if the rupturing moments are valorized and held together tightly, romance still fails if you dont know what the other side is thinking, and you never do. the third line is the abstraction of war itself which fisher notes through baudrillard. where is the war? its a moving object. the war is paranoia, it surpasses capital itself.

you want to see past capital? try staring really hard into one of its constructions, you will never find it in the impasse, you need to ever more clearly try to enter the zones it thinks it wants you to go into. the conspiracist is the messenger, the prophet of capital, they are the furthest from the vector point of rebellion. i think i've said enough for now to not appear like someone merely walking behind fisher trying to find where the road ends whilst trying not to find myself stuck in his head halfway through that experience instead

one last thing i will say is that fisher does kind of hint at an early speculative understanding of the future problems of an at the time yet undeveloped schema of what are now the current developments in artificial intelligence in the last five years, about seven years earlier than they took the form which fisher actually discovers somewhat here. i will leave that up for the reader to think about or even find, though, given it isnt a very large or meaningful coincidence.

colophon
registerdiscourse
sourcemark fisher, the labour of simulation
addressmark fisher
typetheoretical work
horizonpresent critique
themeurban
source formtalk / transcript
promptsimulation → labour performance
turnpersonalization → performative lockdown
residuethe humming ghost
labour<1h · same-day
paid$0