A Product of the Future

The following message recently fell through a rip in the fabric of time:

It is the year is 2057. What was once seen as the harmless but economically useful fun of advertising and market research-led demographic analysis has reached its terrifying apex. Through product-purchase-and-preference – or the ‘Triple P’ rating, as it has fearfully come to be known – the individual has become categorised, sub-categorised, sub-sub-categorised and so on ad infinitum until we are all now no more than pigeon-holed statistical potentialities on the Great Google Grid, our every move, consumer-oriented or otherwise, monitored by the flying, mechanical EyePods of the Face; recorded for all time in the Book. All hail the Face and the Book. Together they see all and know all.

In the educational institutions of this, our Brand New World – the corporate-sponsored AcadeMalls - our children are taught that identity is expressed through consumer choice; thus modern humanity’s motto… compritem ergo sum – I buy things therefore I am.

Long gone are the culture wars of my youth; when the Mods would go head-to-head with the Rockers over vital stylistic musical differences; when the New Romantics would use rusty blades to slash the faces of Gospel choir singers over the right to look more foolish; when the Left wing did battle with the Right wing to capture the political soul of the electorate; and gender groups fucked each other over for the right to fuck each other in more defined ways.

Long gone are the days when the human race would shed blood over philosophy, over ideology. There is no more ideology, no philosophy; there is no political left or right; there is nothing now but the Brands, the new tribal groupings to which we must all subscribe to have even the slimmest chance of survival. Be Branded or perish we are instructed. The value of possession, we are told, is bi-directional; the product belongs to us, we belong to the product. It is an essentially dualist perspective, preach the High MerChanters from their gleaming Golden Shopping Towers; sum ergo compritem – I am therefore I buy things – the other side of the equation… or the ‘significance exchange rate’ as it is properly termed today.

Do not be fooled, however, into thinking that this is a world now of peace. Yes, wars still rage. That aspect of history at least remains unchanged as the Great Names fight tooth and nail over contested market territories. The foot-soldiers of the Nike nations, their terrible battle-cry of “Just Shoot It” screamed into the sky, still kick and lash out at the Adidassins, themselves brutal killers, marked out by the three livid red scars carved into their foreheads.

In what was once the United States of America – now the CarboNations – the Coca-Cola/Pepsi Wars have decimated the population. In what was once the United Kingdom, the bitterly fought Snack Wars, once fought between those who favoured crisps and those who favoured chocolate, have now further fractured into myriad internal struggles, with Salt’n’Vinegar factions forcing broken glass down the throats of the Cheese’n’Onion brigade; and where the horrific, bloody terrors of the Cadbury/Nestle Conflict increase day by blighted day.

I worry for my son, presently stationed on the outskirts of the greatly expanded Silicon City, a proud member of the Apple Core, as he prepares to lead a raid against the extremist armies of the Mircohardliners in order to liberate precious lithium supplies. Weren’t we supposed to be beyond all this by now? I ask myself… did they know? Way back then, the politicians, their friends the financiers and the plutocrats, did they know this was going to happen? Did they plan all this? Is this what they wanted all along?

Perhaps the legends are false, a mere myth to keep hope alive, and this message lies deep and decaying below a certain crack in the Earth; but if, somehow, the stories are true, and these words have miraculously dropped through a point of chrono-flux to a time where they may prove to be of real value on the significance exchange rate, then please, I beseech you, I implore you, do not dismiss them as the ravings of a madman.

If you can see the beginnings of the Age of Branding around you, if you see the start of the corporate subjugation of the individual; if you can see the beginnings of the division of man through manufactured market icons; if people are no longer actually buying real, physical items but rather ‘lifestyle choices’, then you know what I tell you must be true. So take heed, for the future, your future, may very well depend upon it.

Stephen Reebok Sony-Kellogs II - October 5, 2057

Relevant Magazine 2009