The Age of Gesture
13th November 2018
ZMan spots a trend.
It’s always fun to label historical ages, which is why our history books are full of things like “the age of sail” or the “feudal period” as convenient shorthand. The label provides a quick way to think of what was important in a certain time. Lots of people call the age in which we currently live “the technological age” because of the microchip. That seems right, as the microprocessor has fundamentally altered human society and continues to alter our world. That said, a better label would be “the age of the public gesture.”
What technology has allowed is for everyone, to one degree or another, to be a public performer. The door to the stage is in every pocket, as the mobile phone is now mostly used for getting on social media and performing, either as yourself or the character you have created on-line. The platforms themselves are just carnivals of virtue signalling, in which nothing practical is communicated. Instead, they are ad hoc morality plays in which millions perform to either signal their virtue or condemn the lack of virtue in others.
I love the term ‘Talcum X’. I may use that myself.