*Slavoj Zizek sniffs loudly touching his nose* Ah yes, yes, Cluely, what do we have here, this Roy Lee. This is not, you see, this is not technology, no, certainly not. *Sniff* What we have here, my friends, is pure ideological pornography. *Sniff*
He does not sell us, you see, a useful tool. No. He sells us fantasy. Fantasy of easy money, fantasy of success, you know, the big house, the big life, and what have you. *Sniff* Yes, we cheat. We cheat on interviews, we cheat on ethics. It does not matter, you see, it does not matter because this is a world of pure surface, pure appearance, yes? *Sniff*
We must understand, what Roy Lee stages here, this "founder," yes, camping outside Y Combinator, half-naked, what is this but the obscene enjoyment of failure, of rejection? You see, he is both inside and outside at once. *Sniff* Accepted, yet rejected. Elite, yet excluded. Yes, he wants us to know he is independent success. Independent how? Independent only from reality. *Sniff*
He tells us stories, yes, but what stories, I ask you? His story is not authentic biography, no. This is narrative masturbation, you see, his own self-enjoyment. The film of himself *Sniff* playing himself, in which he stars as his own fantasy, you know, the Zuckerberg from The Social Network, name-dropping Columbia, and so on and so forth.
He positions himself, you see, in the narrative, between elite acceptance and outsider rebellion, yes? Between insider success and outsider rejection, he makes us identify with this obscene middle ground. *Sniff* And what is this afterparty, what is this bus? Independent success, you see, no Y Combinator needed, but still camping at their door, desperately begging for symbolic approval from the father figure, yes, from YC itself. *Sniff*
And so, Roy Lee does not sell us technology, nor does he sell us any honest struggle. *Sniff* He sells us ideology in its purest form—an obscene dream, a pornographic fantasy of shortcuts, of quick money, of cheating. *Sniff* A life without guilt or consequences. This is capitalism’s ultimate ideological fantasy, yes? To cheat openly, shamelessly. He gives us the cheat code to ideology itself, you see. *Sniff* Cheat on the interview, cheat on the system, cheat on morality itself, and enjoy, my friends, enjoy.
And the great irony, of course, is that by selling us the fantasy of rebellion, he perpetuates precisely the capitalist machine he pretends to undermine. *Sniff* Thank you Roy, yes, for this enlightening afterparty of late capitalism. *Sniff* 4 replies
1 recast
14 reactions
0 reply
0 recast
2 reactions