Reading: Nation of Rebels (a.k.a. The Rebel Sell) by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter

Counterculture claims to be revolutionary by its very nature. In fact, it claims to be revolution, especially after the collapse of Communism, which is supposed to have killed Karl Marx dead. However, Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter claim in Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture (original title: The Rebel Sell: Why The Culture Can't Be Jammed), not only has counterculture not brought down the system, it has only strengthened it. Even the most furious efforts by the "culture jammers" led by Kalle Lasn and Adbusters magazine can't make a dent against the corporate system, precisely because countercultural "revolutionary" deviance is so profitable. What's the single strongest force driving the explosion of consumer capitalism since that fateful decade, the 1960s? Nothing else but counterculture. As culture jamming is a purely countercultural strategy, it therefore cannot work.

There's a fatal flaw undermining counterculture's effectiveness: it conflates deviance with dissent. The problem is that deviance and dissent are two completely different things. Most deviants, in fact, don't dissent; they're too busy being deviant, and political things bore them. Dissent threatens authoritarian systems, which is why dictators suppress it so ruthlessly (as in the case of the election-stealing theocrats of Iran). Deviance only threatens the accepted morality, or threatens the system only as mere criminality; but if there's little morality left to be accepted, as in the postmodern West, deviance loses its power to shake the system or even shock. And that's why counterculture fails whenever it tries to be revolutionary. Instead, it has become the ultimate consumerist cash cow. Deviance may not be able to bring down oppressive systems, but it sure is interesting enough to sell lots of units. The book's original title is The Rebel Sell for a reason.

Hoax Week On Twitter!

One thing I like about Twitter is that it allows me to get the news in real time. Well, the other day, the news was of a balloon that escaped apparently with a child on board. The boy, who became known as "Balloon Boy", turned out to be hiding in a box in the attic. Then it all turned out to be a hoax. The hoaxer was the father, a narcissistic attention whore obsessed with reality television, a misogynist who became a star of the reality TV series Wife Swap, who wanted to become famous before the world ends in 2012. Now "RIP Kanye West" is trending, and it turns out to be another fake celebrity death prank courtesy those pranksters at 4chan.

This is starting to get annoying.

Face it. Twitter's trends can be gamed. 4chan proved it when they put the hashtag #gorillapenis among the top trending topics. The Kanye West death hoax is far from the first to deceive people this year; this last summer, Rick Astley and Jeff Goldblum were allegedly dead. This time, 4chan merely pranked the Internet, specifically Twitter and Google. But Richard Heene pulled his hoax on the cops, the National Guard, the news media (especially the cable news networks), the Internet — indeed, the whole world — just because he wanted to fulfill his mad desire to become famous before the world ends.

Those 4chan guys pull their pranks for the "lulz". But the "Balloon Boy Incident" is what happens when the desire for fame becomes all-consuming and destroys one's sanity. Richard Heene is so obsessed with becoming a celebrity that he's willing to risk his family's lives, and in fact he even has a history of violence. In fact, I nominate him as worst celebrity parent in the world.

As for the 4chan guys: Some guy obsessed with becoming a reality TV celebrity outpranked them. And he didn't do it for mere "lulz"; he did it because he was driven by a monster ego. How can they possibly outdo him? Of course, they couldn't resist inserting themselves into the Balloon Boy hoax and pranking Heene himself; they even delivered pizza! Already I can see a bunch of pranksters, their own egos offended by being outdone by some celebrity wannabe, plotting their biggest prank ever in the chatrooms of /b/...

Heene won't be the last celebrity-mad egomaniac who will pull a fast one on the authorities and the media for the sake of fame. In fact, this might only be the beginning of a trend. Celebrity death hoaxes are starting to look mundane in comparison, though you and I know people will do them as long as there's celebrities.

Of course I'm waiting for the next hoax to trend #1 on Twitter. Stay tuned...