Self-loathing compradors replace collective identity with individual persona to express self-hatred

Evidence

A narcissist’s auto-affection circumscribes the other, in a diminishment intimately connected to sadism (an instinct to master, a gratification in harm). The sadist flattens the other, engineering infliction to proscribe response. Barthes helps articulate the overpresence and overexposure in self-branding with sadism: in “the Sadean world,” he writes, “the function of discourse … is to conceive the inconceivable, that is, to leave nothing outside words and to allow the world no ineffables.” Everything is enjoined to presence; nothing evades. Immediacy’s auto-emanations and perpetual fluidity paradoxically calcify in this way in the stone of sadism, in its inexorable control and invocatory cruelty. — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 96 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Self-hatred toward one’s own group is displaced self-loathing made safe; Self-loathing intellectuals project their hatred onto a generalized other group — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 449; Social media reframed self-identity as a personal brand selling attention — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1031 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Self-branding’s demand for total presence becomes sadistic control #complicates (0.70) — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 96