Seriality makes people model behavior on an imagined other that never actually exists.

Evidence

The mode of human interaction which corresponds to the domination of the practico-inert is that of seriality, another one of the new ideas developed in the Critique. In serially (that is, when individuals are arranged together in a “series” instead of being united in a “group”), my basic relationship to other people is something that might be described as statistical anonymity, with all that those words imply of isolation and at the same time profound uniformity with everyone else. Thus, when performing most of the acts characteristic of industrial civilization—waiting for a bus, reading a newspaper, pausing at a traffic light—I seem alone, but am in reality simply doing exactly what everyone else does in the same situation; and this is not an external, but an internal identity. For I make myself an other or the Other, and deliberately pattern my behavior on what I imagine the other’s to be. The ontological irony of this mode of being is, of course, that all the while I am modeling myself and my behavior on the being of other people outside me, all the rest of them are doing exactly the same thing; in fact, there is no Other, only an infinite regression, an infinite flight in all directions. … But public opinion does not exist, and it is rather the belief in it and the effects of such belief which “unite” individuals in the series. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 498

Categorization

• XREF: This is Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason concept, which Jameson is importing into his Marxist critical apparatus — connects to Jameson’s later treatment of the ‘other’ and to his poststructuralist interventions in Postmodernism. — connects to: People adopt modeled behaviors only when they see similar others rewarded for them.; Social modeling via serial dramas can drive large-scale behavior change; Observed consequences of modeled behavior drive viewers to adopt it — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2830
• SEED: Seriality as a framework for analyzing modern digital conformity — social media users each modeling themselves on an imaginary ‘they,’ producing statistical anonymity in algorithmic space.

Broader Connections

• People adopt modeled behaviors only when they see similar others rewarded for them. #contradicts (0.82)
• Observed consequences of modeled behavior drive viewers to adopt it #contradicts (0.82) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2830
• Social modeling via serial dramas can drive large-scale behavior change #expands (0.80)