Emotions can be consumed endlessly whereas things cannot, enabling unbounded consumption
Evidence
Draper’s genius, meanwhile, is to grasp, and to confront, the paradox of commodification. Yes, capitalism must commodify everything it touches. But at the same time, high exchange value, and thus serious profits, depends on failing to do so fully. If it is to avoid the fate of a school of predators that devours its prey so efficiently that it starves to death, capitalism relies on there being an endless supply of experiential values for its exchange values to trounce and cannibalise. It must always be discovering and commodifying what has so far escaped it. … Smart advertisers do exactly that: they tap into emotions that have previously escaped commodification in order to capture our attention. And then they sell our attention to an entity whose business is to commodify whatever experiential value was hiding in our soul, fleeing commodification. … Thus a Hershey bar becomes the simulacrum of a dead father’s caress. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 129 (
#expands, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Emotional capitalism exploits emotions’ fleeting performativity, which feelings lack — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New…, 98; Profitable capitalism must forever discover new uncommodified emotions to exploit — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 129; Emotions enable limitless consumption because they are inexhaustible — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New…, 106
Related
- Emotions enable limitless consumption because they are inexhaustible (similarity 0.92)
- Profitable capitalism must forever discover new uncommodified emotions to exploit (similarity 0.89)
- Capitalism must keep finding uncommodified experience to profit from (similarity 0.81)
- Emotional capitalism exploits emotions’ fleeting performativity, which feelings lack (similarity 0.81)
Broader Connections
- Profitable capitalism must forever discover new uncommodified emotions to exploit
#expands(0.95) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 129