The meme-ification of facial expressions proceeds out of the camera’s discovery of the “optical unconscious” (Benjamin). Photographs capture a substrate of reality beyond conscious meaning. Images of fleeting “lost” moments expose this layer, like slips and dreams for Freud./1 https://twitter.com/loneamorphous/status/1314012249250553857

In the face of a mediatized hall of mirrors that is patently artificial and stage-managed, we seek out this deeper layer for the more vital “truth” beneath it, thus falling for a vulgar-Freudian conflation of the manifestations of the unconscious with unfiltered truth./2

The result is a response as superficial as that of the (apocryphal) naïve consumer of media taken in by the surface illusions. The spectacle itself now works on the level of the optical unconscious, with other functions subordinate to the generation of memeable still frames./3

The real form of the “debate” and other pseudo-events of the sort now is a Chris Marker-esque montage (in this case the fly on the hair, the pursed lips, etc), the full version only a sort of unedited pre-production that enables the creation of the real objects of consumption./4