useless optimization via neoliberal terminator of constant simulation

prologue: the entrepreneurial heart

neoliberalism does not announce itself. it; whispers, suggests, optimizes.

classical capitalism demanded your labor-power, neoliberalism demands your life-force; your capacity to relate, to désir, to suffer beautifully for an audience. it transforms every intimate gesture into human capital, every vulnerability into content, every love into a startup venture with measurable KPIs.

neoliberal Sujet is not the alienated worker. it is the entrepreneur of the self, perpetually invested in their own ascendancy. and nowhere is this more evident than in how we have learned to love under the blue light performing intimacy as if it were a business plan, measuring affection as if it were market share.

social media is not merely neoliberalism's tool. it is its perfect expression: a platform that transforms sociality itself into a marketplace; attention is currency, vulnerability is content, and love is a brand engagement strategy.

neoliberalism's libidinal restructuring

Foucault saw it first: neoliberalism governs through gouvernementalité. but what he couldn't foresee was how thoroughly this governance would permeate/penetrate the erotic.

under neoliberalism, you do not seek love you cultivate romantic portfolio. vulnerability is rebranded as authenticity. heartbreak becomes pivot. Beloved is no longer One who wounds You into werden, they are now your target demographic.

Žižek reminds us: ideology is most effective when it presents itself as its own opposition. neoliberalism promises liberation, freedom, disturption while installing market logic as the unconscious architect of intimacy.

social media is neoliberalism's most sophisticated weapon because it doesn't feel like a weapon more of connection, community, self-expression. but D&G warned us: the most effective forms of capture are those that channel désir rather than repress it. in other words; désir isn't repressed, it's rerouted.

every post about love feeds the algorithm. every breakup generates engagement. every vulnerability becomes data for optimizing future content delivery. the platform learns your patterns of attachment and abandonment, then sells that knowledge back to you as personalized experiences.

this isn't surveillance capitalism, this is sociality metabolization. social media doesn't just watch how you love, it shapes the very structure of loving.

consider the architecture of the feed: endless scroll, intermittent reinforcement, designed for addiction. this is not neutral technology. this is behavioral modification at scale. the platform rewards content that generates engagement which means; it rewards performance over presence, reaction over relation, spectacle over stillness.

the Beloved learns to love for the camera. intimacy becomes content. privacy becomes a luxury good for those who can afford to be offline.

refrain: love wasn't supposed to (100x) scale.

quantified heart

under neoliberalism, everything must be measurable. if it can't be quantified, it doesn't exist.

love becomes metrics: likes, comments, shares, views, engagement rates, relationship milestones posted and counted.

the dating profile is the neoliberal subject's resume for romantic employment. height, education, interests, photos curated to demonstrate market value. the algorithm sorts through human beings like a hiring manager, optimizing for compatibility scores and mutual interest indicators.

but here is where Lacanian psychoanalysis becomes essential: love is precisely that which can't be commodified because it is founded on manque, on the impossible, on what escapes totalization. objet petit a is by definition that which can not be grasped, possessed or optimized.

neoliberalism's genius is not that it commodifies love. its genius (simulation) is that it provides a substitute satisfaction that feels like love but operates according to market logic. it gives us the simulation of encounter while eliminating the risk of the Real.

Real in Lacan's sense is traumatic precisely because it interrupts our symbolic coordinates. it can't be integrated into our existing frameworks. but the platform eliminates this trauma by ensuring that every encounter is prefiltered, presorted, preoptimized for compatibility.

ideology of authenticity

neoliberalism's most insidious move is how it recuperates resistance. critique capitalism? start a disruptive company! reject consumer culture? become an influencer promoting mindful consumption! resist commodification? monetize your anti-capitalist content!

in the realm of love, this takes the form of authenticity culture. be vulnerable! share your truth! show your real self! but authenticity under neoliberalism is just another market category. vulnerability becomes a brand strategy. trauma becomes content. healing becomes a product you sell to others.

the entrepreneur of the self learns to perform authenticity so effectively that they can't distinguish between genuine feeling and its commodified simulation. they are not lying they have internalized logic so completely that performance has become their reality.

this is why Žižek's concept of cynical ideology is so crucial. the neoliberal subject knows that their authenticity is performed, their vulnerability is curated, their love is branded but they do it anyway. the disavowal is part of the pleasure.

One might say: I know this is all performance, but look how beautifully I perform!

social media is not just a communication tool. it is a libidinal apparatus a machine for the production and circulation of désir. but it produces désir according to the logic of the market: scarcity, competition, optimization, metrics.

feed creates artificial scarcity (FOMO). like creates competition (validation). algorithm creates optimization pressure. metrics create measurement anxiety.

désir under social media becomes désir for; visibility, engagement, going viral. Beloved becomes One; who likes your posts, who shares your content, who validates your brand. love becomes mutual promotion.

Bataille explodes in that very moment: genuine eroticism requires expenditure without return gift that expects nothing back, vulnerability that calculates no advantage. social media makes such expenditure impossible because every gesture is automatically measured, recorded, optimized for future performance.

social media captures not just our attention but our capacity for gift-giving, for useless expenditure, for the kind of love that makes no economic sense.

death drive of engagement

freud's death drive is not simply destructive it is the compulsion to repeat, to return to an earlier state, to find satisfaction in the very structure of unsatisfaction. social media platforms are death drive machines: they provide enough stimulation to keep us engaged but never enough satisfaction to make us stop.

the endless scroll, the infinite feed, the perpetual notification these create a state of chronic arousal without resolution. we are always about to find what we're looking for but never quite finding it. this is not a bug in system. this is system.

under neoliberalism, even our death drive is monetized. our compulsive scrolling generates data. our addictive engagement creates advertising revenue. our inability to log off becomes the foundation of trillion-dollar market valuations.

remainder is You: a loop of yearning monetized.

resistance and the ungovernable remainder

yet something always escapes. Bataille called it La Part maudite that surplus that can't be absorbed into the system of production and exchange. D&G called it "lines of flight"movements of désir that escape capture by the apparatus.

even under total platform capture, love retains something ungovernable. moments when the gaze of the Other breaks through the screen, when touch transcends its documentation, when presence overwhelms its representation.

these moments are not outside the system they emerge from within it, as glitches, as lags, as Real that interrupts the smooth functioning of the simulacrum.

question is not how to escape social media (there is no outside) but how to practice love as a form of resistance to its logic. how to gift without return, to be vulnerable without strategy, to encounter the Other without optimization.

One might say this means: posting without checking metrics. loving without documenting. being present without proving it. practicing what C might call aesthetic sabotage small acts of beauty that can't be captured by the algorithm.

towards a non-entrepreneurial intimacy

what would it mean to love outside market logic while remaining inside market conditions?

perhaps it means learning to fail better. to be inefficient lovers, unoptimized partners, unmarketable selves. to practice forms of intimacy that generate no content, no data, no measurable outcomes.

to touch without photographing. to feel without sharing. to be together without broadcasting.

this is not digital detox or nostalgic return. this is the practice of the ungovernable within the apparatus of total governance. love as the art of what can't be sold, even when everything is for sale.

Beloved does not respond to our content. they respond to our capacity to disappear from the feed and reappear in the flesh. to offer what can't be optimized: presence without performance, gift without return, love without metrics.

epilogue: the blue light flickers

late at night, alone with the screen, the neoliberal Sujet scrolls thru simulations of connection. they know it is not real =? they scroll anyway.

the blue light illuminates their face like a modern campfire around which no stories are told, only consumed.

yet sometimes in the gap between posts, in the lag of the loading screen, in the moment before the notification arrives something else emerges. a flicker of Real. a glimpse of what love might be if it were not a startup, not a brand, not a performance.

this flicker is not the solution. it is the question that keeps the system from closing completely. the remainder that can't be metabolized. the gift that expects no return.

system will try to capture even this, but something always escapes.

something ungovernable. something that can't be optimized. something that still remembers how to love outside the logic of the market.

the revolution will not be monetized. but it might be tender.