I’m a Yankee and to me, Apple is one of the most overrated brands in existence (largely driven by marketing and it being one of the few major options, which is a way capitalists force a perception of “popularity”); never cared for sports and even some sports fans I know will watch the March Madness basketball stuff but not the NBA; and with all the various celebrity names in my head that I never asked to know, I don’t even know who Sydney Sweeney is and I’m probably better off that way.
That said, yeah, I’m sure these things have a certain amount of broad-reaching popularity. But the harsh truth of it is, it’s largely an extension of imperialism and global capitalism. As US imperial power declines, so too will the faux popularity of its soulless products that take the place of having a culture or heritage.
While China can point to cultural meaning, the US points at nostalgia for Spongebob. It’s kind of staggering to me the extent to which US culture, and perhaps the imperial core west more generally, appears to pour nostalgia into the cultural void left by empire. I mean, case in point, look at the whole Trumpian movement. “Make America Great Again” - nostalgia for the past. The US can’t even fucking imagine a future without envisioning either a rose-colored-glasses version of the past or imagining the future as a broken down dystopian hellscape. Brings me back to the term Capitalist Realism: “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” This grips the west and it shows in the denial of a person like this. The part people this haven’t accepted yet is that China, even if we want to say it’s not fully realized socialism, is also not capitalism (at least not in the meaning of it that the west understands) and it’s already living in the future.
We don’t have to imagine out of LSD and craft a future out of impossible uncertainty. China is already living it. It’s mainly a matter of having the political power to translate what they do to the conditions of other places.
The future is, more broadly speaking, socialist and communist, and Apple is just a passing phase of amalgamated capital. It cannot stand against the winds of history.
I’m a Yankee and to me, Apple is one of the most overrated brands in existence (largely driven by marketing and it being one of the few major options, which is a way capitalists force a perception of “popularity”); never cared for sports and even some sports fans I know will watch the March Madness basketball stuff but not the NBA; and with all the various celebrity names in my head that I never asked to know, I don’t even know who Sydney Sweeney is and I’m probably better off that way.
That said, yeah, I’m sure these things have a certain amount of broad-reaching popularity. But the harsh truth of it is, it’s largely an extension of imperialism and global capitalism. As US imperial power declines, so too will the faux popularity of its soulless products that take the place of having a culture or heritage.
While China can point to cultural meaning, the US points at nostalgia for Spongebob. It’s kind of staggering to me the extent to which US culture, and perhaps the imperial core west more generally, appears to pour nostalgia into the cultural void left by empire. I mean, case in point, look at the whole Trumpian movement. “Make America Great Again” - nostalgia for the past. The US can’t even fucking imagine a future without envisioning either a rose-colored-glasses version of the past or imagining the future as a broken down dystopian hellscape. Brings me back to the term Capitalist Realism: “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” This grips the west and it shows in the denial of a person like this. The part people this haven’t accepted yet is that China, even if we want to say it’s not fully realized socialism, is also not capitalism (at least not in the meaning of it that the west understands) and it’s already living in the future.
We don’t have to imagine out of LSD and craft a future out of impossible uncertainty. China is already living it. It’s mainly a matter of having the political power to translate what they do to the conditions of other places.
The future is, more broadly speaking, socialist and communist, and Apple is just a passing phase of amalgamated capital. It cannot stand against the winds of history.