The most successful oppressive regimes have always hidden behind a colourful theme park of consumerism. Western necrocapitalism / neoliberalism conceals its agenda of genocide and natural destruction behind an endless wall of products, a mesmerizing digital shopfront served to us every day, all day. It is ironic that an existential polycrisis this big can be hidden behind something as trivial as AI slop and fashion apparel, but our senses have little defence against this consumatronic dystopia: they immediately succumb to the lights, the smells, and promises. It only shows the level of desperation humanity has reached in its search for the next most potent lie it can smoke.
Entertainment is no longer a distraction: it is the painkiller that instantly numbs the horror of living in the salary concentration camp: the rent we struggle to pay, the food we can’t afford, the life lost sitting in traffic, the psychopathic boss who had a go at us half an hour ago. The more brutal the system becomes, the stronger the distraction needs to be, and the psychonomy has no choice but to reach new levels of gaslighting. It calls an emergency meeting with The Unhappiness Machine: “we need stronger drugs for the farm animals. Let’s make this whole thing totally algorithmic. They won’t know what hit them, from where”.
The necrosystem’s consumatronic park feels vividly real to most of us, because anyone would be desperate to believe something that was modelled after their “likes”, hopes, and fantasies. A system that greenwashes environmental destruction and whitewashes genocides is exactly what the customer ordered, after all. You asked for this, we all did. But beware, because the colourful land of Consumatronia can suddenly vanish at 12 midnight, much like the spell of Cinderella. To avoid this, you must stay dumb and avoid asking clever questions: who is behind it, where did all these products come from, and who is collecting the profits.
Our masters have managed to make our puppet strings completely invisible to us. As far as we’re concerned, we are all “free-range” humans: we ingest the farm’s consumatronic drugs not because we are addicted, but because we choose to. We can stop anytime we want, right?
Work, coffee, shopping, ice cream, a walk in the park, a dinner in the city, a doctor’s appointment. Everything is working like clockwork, down to the last detail. We feel safe, secure, and even energized by the tasks assigned to us so that we can survive this brutal system. Not knowing better, we accept a normalised Civilisational Lie that was carefully brainstormed, drawn out and coloured-in by our favourite brands while we were asleep: this overshoot party must go on, because the brands need to sell their products. The environment must be destroyed because fossil fuel shareholders are watching; the genocide must continue because we need to sell guns, and Ed Sheeran must keep singing because otherwise, the audience may hear the children’s cries instead.
Consumatronia has become our spiritual home. We believe all of it, every single bit of it, because we are desperate for reassurance. Our worst fear is that the consumatronic farm will kick us out, and banish us like Adam and Eve. Outside of the safety of the theme park there are wolves and “communists”, although no one has ever seen or described one. That is, because no one ever dared to escape.
But what if, one bright morning, we decided to skip the drugs? What if we woke up and realised that Consumatronia is a made-up world – that it is in fact a manufactured theme park built on top of a cemetery populated with the graves of everything and everyone who died during its construction?
Surely, none of “this” can ever collapse? The deception must go on. Every time this civilisation crashes, its wreckage is unearthed, painted over and put back on display to be presented as a brand-new car. We never see the busted-up engine under the hood or the nasty fuel this economic locomotive runs on. We jump on, driving full speed to Consumatronia, becoming passengers to our own extinction.
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