'Look what marketing's done to my body' - On the compulsion of (not so) creative self-marketing
„Marketing has become the center or the ’soul‘ of the corporation.We are taught that companies have a soul, which is the most terrifying news in the world. The operation of markets is now the instrument of social control and forms the impudent breed of our masters.“
- Gilles Deleuze: Postscript on control societies
As much as it gives me pleasure and always feels like meaningful work to design and carry out workshops, there is one activity that I simply hate about it: marketing. Begging people to pretty please realize what a great job one is doing despite the competition and trying to make them join this work — not just because you want to make a living from it, but also because it would be too sad if workshops need to be cancelled due to low numbers of participants.
While I still enjoy writing announcement texts, the horror begins when I realize that I sat for hours before Facebook, like a huntress searching for one Conscious and Sensuality group after the other and putting myself to the test to post the event link with an inviting text wherever interested people could find it — always with the ambiguous hidden thought that some groups have become the limbo of such posts that no one reads anyway, because everyone is too busy spreading their event instead of being interested in other’s. In my worst fantasies only tumbleweeds roll through these groups; the work then feels alienated accordingly.
On top of that, the pressure to be diligent in posting regularly at Instagram. At least here I can enjoy communicating visually and starting small poetry attempts with absurd hashtags. The worst part: Observing Likes how they grow – or don’t. And to notice: the well-thought-out picture-text-construction seems only to be noticed when faces (and naked bodies) are depicted. This is no surprise, but remains irritating, when also identity cards, CVs, election posters and biometric cameras indulge in this facial fetish — for whatever reason the face of applicants should say anything about their abilities — but controlling seems to work quite well with it → so why do we (as BODYworkers who actually know it better) reproduce this problematic alliance then? It seems to be standardized that websites with bodywork offers can’t be content with one nice portrait to kindly introduce oneself, no, the Guru’s face needs to appear oversized and repeatedly and from different angles: „Cuckoo! Here I am! And here too! And that’s how I look! But also like this“ Why!????!
I wonder how other facilitators feel about it. I fell into a deep hole before the last workshop I offered, a hole where something like anger prevailed, because it all really pissed me off — especially and most importantly because this whole game contradicts the contents of the workshops. On the one hand you preach how important and nourishing deep and playful encounters or being in the body are, but formally you have to do exactly the opposite. Facebook and Instagram are the opposite of creativity, of sensuality, awareness and also the opposite of leaving one’s comfort zone — completely paradoxical to find this stupid drawing again and again on Facebook; similar to throwing yourself into a vulnerable pose and letting it be exploited on Facebook — because it seems you were not too touched and overwhelmed to not be able to post it strategically. And apperently everybody falls for this trick with their „I feel you!“-comments. „But the power of seduction is also, and precisely, where seduction is to be excluded, banished, exorcised. (J. Baudrillard).
I watched myself feeling driven coming across other people’s advertising strategies and posts. A common practice are testimonial quotes that I understand should inspire confidence in visitors and are simply nice gifts from participants that don’t have to remain hidden (and I also would like to share some touching feedback on our site myself), but I can’t help but think of TripAdvisor or Yelp. Also bulletpoints in workshop descriptions that make everything easily consumable seem to come directly from the last business training seminar.
Then the question automatically arises whether one has to do everything the same way now — according to Likes and comments certain communication strategies seem to go down well — although you don’t have to listen to the new Deichkind album to know: „Wer sagt denn das, dass viele Klicks Qualität bedeuten? Und wir mit Optimieren nicht nur unsere Zeit vergeuden?“ („Who says that many clicks mean quality? And we don’t just waste our time with optimizing?“) Nevertheless, I started to ponder what compromises we might have to make: „So do I now also have to post my face all the time — preferably without make-up – to prove my vulnerability and authenticity? Do I even have to use this anti-word (actually swearword) ‚authenticity‘ now, too? And all the other great-sounding, empty amazing-phrases?“
There is also anger over all this unpleasantly intruding and trespassing feeeeeeeliness and self-disclosure that’s all over the place (keyword: Personal Branding), which — as a part of this marketing framework — blatantly reveals itself as a farce, especially if the tyrannical emotionality is coupled with formulations like „Now: 20% Discount!“ or stress is put on to be „quick quick quick“ to secure one’s special price before someone else does — by using this rhetoric you are allies with the evil (but so that this doesn’t sound too harsh, it’s best speckled with a seductive formulation like 'yummy– „as if everything were a cupcake“ a friend once said). Or you can find phrases like „Are you ready for liberation?“ – like directly from a Nike advertisement … Last but not least, this frequent and exaggerated emphasis on the sensational or the fragile can always be read as a warning sign for narcissism, which can manifest itself in „grandiosity exhibitonism“ or „vulnerability sensitivity“.
Filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder uses the phrasing „black market of emotions“ as the name of the game, and the sociologist Richard Sennett describes it all back in 1973 in his book ‚Fall of the Public Man‚. He describes the ‚market of self-revelation‘ as an ‘intimate society’ where the cult of authenticity proves to become problematic, because it usually consists of narcissistic uncooperative selves: „Intimate society has entirely reversed [Henry] Fielding’s dictum that praise or censure should apply to actions rather than actors; now what matters is not what you have done but how you feel about it.“ When political categories are transmuted into psychological categories, we become less and less political subjects because everything is under the ideology of intimacy/authenticity; we act less and less because we are too busy posting on Facebook how much gratitude we feel about the sold out last workshop — or feel triggered because we are busy reading such posts from others. But all this is explained more amusingly in basically every play by theater maker René Pollesch, who instead for self-realization calls for stranger-realization.Because authenticity and sensibility are so anchored in the service society and are also economically exploited by the big global players, methods of the theatrical and the staged (i.e. not authentic – although by this I don’t mean ‚integer‘ or ‚loyal‘) can be more subversive and simply more fun, because one can free oneself from the pressure to constantly perform the self. Vacation from the overrated inner self — the ‚me-company‘. Wonderful!
An open question is: Can’t there be any other way? What forms of presentation can we think of that correspond more to the potential of good workshops — the potential to enable alternative encounters, to not be oriented towards efficiency, to grow, to question, to keep special moments like little treasures with us and to honour them without exploiting them immediately? In a way this is also an ethical question, because you keep your fans and crowd hooked to social networks which are still advertising platforms per se and basically waste their time if they have to read you basically irrelevant feely posts (and facebook works with patterns of addiction). There are more important things to do! When I talk to colleagues, I notice that we are all frustrated by this — and still make these sales strategies as if the whole dynamic had a monstrous life of its own, from which one could not escape. As if there were no alternatives. Yes ok, I know, we are all in precarious creativity-jobs with their neoliberal slogans of self-responsibility, competitiveness and tireless delivery of success cards, in which creation and depression so stupidly like to go hand in hand, even if we just want to save our asses and do what we love best.
In spite of this, I have already thought about simply advertising our workshops in the good old teletext (on page 666!) or making potato-stamp-leaflets. Well, such a return to retro is also old coffee and strategy of every smoothie. A friend of mine pointed out to me how clever it was at the Schwelle 7 to offer playparties at full or new moon, because you just had to look up into the sky and knew if something was going on tonight and saved yourself the stressed FOMO look into your smartphone’s calendar.
So, here’s where my steam draining simply breaks off (albeit without perspective). Already better.
P.S. Adorno (who else!) : „Innumerable people make their profession out of a state which follows from the liquidation of the profession. These are the nice people, the popular, the everybody’s darlings, the just, who humanely excuse every vulgarity and unerringly dismiss every non-standardized emotion as sentimental. They are indispensable through knowledge of all channels and vents of power, guessing their most secret judgments and living from their nimble communication. They can be found in all political camps, even where rejection of the system is taken for granted and has thus formed a lax and cunning conformism of its own kind. They often captivate through a certain good-naturedness, through compassionate participation in the lives of others: selflessness based on speculation. They are clever, witty, sensitive and reactive: they have polished up the old merchant spirit with the achievements of yesterday’s psychology. They are capable of everything, even love, but always disloyal. They do not cheat out of instinct, but out of principle: even themselves they value as profit, which they do not allow anyone else. To the spirit they bind elective affinity and hate: they are a temptation for the thoughtful, but also their worst enemies. For it is they who still subtly seize and disfigure the last hiding places of resistance, the hours that remain free from the demands of the machinery. Their belated individualism poisons what is left of the individual.“ (from: Minima Moralia, translated by BA with the help of DeepL…)
P.P.S. Mark Fisher’s mix "Look what fear's done to my body"inspired the title
P.P.P.S. What also helps is this:
