Digital club-pop euphoria masks rather than relieves depression

Evidence

In the twenty-first century, there’s an increasingly sad and desperate quality to pop culture hedonism. Oddly, this is perhaps most evident in the way that R&B has given way to club music. When former R&B producers and performers embraced dance music, you might have expected an increase in euphoria, an influx of ecstasy. Yet the digitally-enhanced uplift in the records by producers such as Flo-Rida, Pitbull and will.i.am has a strangely unconvincing quality, like a poorly photoshopped image or a drug that we’ve hammered so much we’ve become immune to its effects. It’s hard not to hear these records’ demands that we enjoy ourselves as thin attempts to distract from a depression that they can only mask, never dissipate. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1305

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The ‘demands that we enjoy ourselves’ masking depression parallels the essay on immodesty moral panics’ performance logic and the reality-TV forced-smile critique in ch49 and ch60.
• XREF: connects to: Objectless melancholia distinguishes depression from sadness in pop music — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 137; Ad-driven desires are false needs producing euphoria in unhappiness — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 114; Treatment response, not diagnosis, confirmed masked depression cases — Alain Ehrenberg, The Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing…, 642 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Ad-driven desires are false needs producing euphoria in unhappiness #exemplifies (0.85) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 114
• Treatment response, not diagnosis, confirmed masked depression cases #corroborates (0.75) — Alain Ehrenberg, The Weariness of the Self, 642