The Illuminati X-Factor: mind-controlled showbiz celebs(?)

[82_28]

Fuck an A that is one fucked up video. Thanks nomo.

[compared2what?]

I respectfully dissent. That is one fucked-up website. And to me, what the Vigilant Citizen is doing is as clearly insincere, exploitative, and amoral as what Glenn Beck does. There's almost no pretense to the contrary, really. Furthermore, they're both using exactly the same methods to excite exactly the same impulses, as well as to inculcate such substantially similar worldviews, paradigmatically speaking, that the differences between them don't amount to a whole lot more than a few technicalities.

In each case:

VC or GB talks. You listen.

VC or GB defines the terms of your oppression using words that suggest opposition to it. You accept that suggestion as genuine on faith.

VC or GB presents you with what are, as Jon Stewart correctly points out, essentially a random series of images, phrases, and historical, cultural, social and political references, situating them in what's actually a very narrow and totally artificial context, the real existence of which he then proceeds to "prove" to you by pointing at the "evidence" represented by the exact same images, phrases, and historical, cultural, social and political references.

Neither VC nor GB ever shows the slightest sign of actual belief in anything remotely resembling freedom. Or even a modicum of respect for the human individual, and his or her capacity for self-determination on any level or by exercise of any attribute. Such as, for example, will, desire, wisdom borne of experience, taste, perceptual acuity, or even something as basic as a spontaneous emotional-aesthetic response.

It's true that on his home page, VC generously allows as how his site isn't for everyone and reminds those who might have a different take on things that they're free to get their information from Fox News. So he's a little less aggressively doctrinaire than GB in that regard, I suppose. But they're both black/white, swallow-my-Koolaid-or-be-damned, rigidly doctrinaire egocentric flim-flam artists. And they're both working to shrink the boundaries in which you feel that you can safely and freely range, not to expand them. They're also both trying to cultivate your dependence on their ostensible authority and acting like you're more privileged as a result of that rather than less.

I say: Fuck that shit. Boycott that site starting right now, before it makes another penny riding Alex Jones's shit-stained coat-tails into the small-to-medium time. Same goes double for Jones, as I've said before. And wish I had said more forcefully earlier than I did. That stuff is toxic to anyone who's even a little bit vulnerable to it. Much more so than it appears to be.

And I really mean that. It's dangerous and malignant, and I beseech everyone to consider the above as seriously and impartially as they can. After which, needless to say, go with your own judgment, not mine, I also beseech you.

I really do see something perilous there, and really am trying to convey it in a way that makes it perceptible to others, in all good faith. But it's not like I'm infallible, obviously. Plus, you know yourselves better than I do, even more obviously. And anyway, I trust your capacity to determine shit for yourselves, personally.

So just take it as a ludicrously overstated suggestion. Okay? Because I wouldn't even argue that it wasn't, necessarily. It's serious to me, but that doesn't mean it can't also be a big joke to others. C'est la vie, I'm fine with that.

[nomo]

Well, to be honest, I do agree that Vigilant Citizen is full of it, reader beware and caveat emptor and all that, but that video is indeed seriously messed up, shock value for the sake of it. But his mention of "Mind Control techniques" triggered (ahem) my impulse to post it here.

[Simulist]

Vigilant Citizen and associates are peddling shit.

Buyer beware.

[JackRiddler]

Ha, after c2w?'s ringing endorsement, I had to follow the VC link!

What strikes me is how his own occasional use of irony belies his seeming refusal to allow that she might be employing it too. He makes no distinction between artist and performing persona, although he implicitly reserves it for himself as an author and his own performance, that of a spectacular weblog entry.

What makes the symbols in her video hidden, when they are presented so obviously? He's right: the telephone in the song and video appears to be the character's mind, and it's absent, disconnected, programmed by her past to that point; although not necessarily with the extremely specific meaning of "programmed" that he forces on the work. The character's actions run on a deterministic track.

The symbols he purports to reveal and read for us are freely available in the culture for the artist's use: the single watching eye, the electroshock motifs, etc. Their invocation and ingrained meanings are only the beginning of meaning or intent of a work; they don't automatically carry (and endorse) the full version of one reality, as he would have it.

Why is his treatment of these symbols and meanings commentary or explication, while hers is to be viewed as unironic affirmation of brainwashing on behalf of illuminati masters (as he insinuates but smartly avoids saying in so many words)?

Examples: "She also serves poisoned honey to the diner’s customers. What does this signify? Beyoncé and Gaga’s poisonous honey is actually their music and videos, which are served to the general public through mass media. You can figure out the rest." Again, this follows with certainty only if you deny to her the capacity for irony. (I think the music's pretty good, in genres I don't usually pay much attention to myself.)

"The video basically says: America is ready to eat any poisonous crap the elite serves them, and that is accomplished through controlled puppets."

I see about the same, but the artist here is a defiantly conscious "puppet" saying as much through the device of her fictional persona. As no one was actually poisoned in the making of the video, she isn't endorsing "dancing in 'patriotic' outfits surrounded by the lifeless bodies of dead Americans" (I like the use of 'Americans' there - indeed a Beckish touch) but acknowledging that this urge exists. In short, Gaga may be making roughly the same comment on society as VC himself, and in the process taking a much broader, perhaps wittingly sociological view of "mind control" than he does.

Why is it affirming brainwashing when it comes from her, and revelation when it comes from him?

[Project Willow]

I respectfully dissent. That is one fucked-up website. And to me, what the Vigilant Citizen is doing is as clearly insincere, exploitative, and amoral as what Glenn Beck does. There's almost no pretense to the contrary, really. Furthermore, they're both using exactly the same methods to excite exactly the same impulses, as well as to inculcate such substantially similar worldviews, paradigmatically speaking, that the differences between them don't amount to a whole lot more than a few technicalities.

In each case:

VC or GB talks. You listen.

VC or GB defines the terms of your oppression using words that suggest opposition to it. You accept that suggestion as genuine on faith.

VC or GB presents you with what are, as Jon Stewart correctly points out, essentially a random series of images, phrases, and historical, cultural, social and political references, situating them in what's actually a very narrow and totally artificial context, the real existence of which he then proceeds to "prove" to you by pointing at the "evidence" represented by the exact same images, phrases, and historical, cultural, social and political references.

Neither VC nor GB ever shows the slightest sign of actual belief in anything remotely resembling freedom. Or even a modicum of respect for the human individual, and his or her capacity for self-determination on any level or by exercise of any attribute. Such as, for example, will, desire, wisdom borne of experience, taste, perceptual acuity, or even something as basic as a spontaneous emotional-aesthetic response.

It's true that on his home page, VC generously allows as how his site isn't for everyone and reminds those who might have a different take on things that they're free to get their information from Fox News. So he's a little less aggressively doctrinaire than GB in that regard, I suppose. But they're both black/white, swallow-my-Koolaid-or-be-damned, rigidly doctrinaire egocentric flim-flam artists. And they're both working to shrink the boundaries in which you feel that you can safely and freely range, not to expand them. They're also both trying to cultivate your dependence on their ostensible authority and acting like you're more privileged as a result of that rather than less.

I say: Fuck that shit. Boycott that site starting right now, before it makes another penny riding Alex Jones's shit-stained coat-tails into the small-to-medium time. Same goes double for Jones, as I've said before. And wish I had said more forcefully earlier than I did. That stuff is toxic to anyone who's even a little bit vulnerable to it. Much more so than it appears to be.

And I really mean that. It's dangerous and malignant, and I beseech everyone to consider the above as seriously and impartially as they can. After which, needless to say, go with your own judgment, not mine, I also beseech you.

I really do see something perilous there, and really am trying to convey it in a way that makes it perceptible to others, in all good faith. But it's not like I'm infallible, obviously. Plus, you know yourselves better than I do, even more obviously. And anyway, I trust your capacity to determine shit for yourselves, personally.

So just take it as a ludicrously overstated suggestion. Okay? Because I wouldn't even argue that it wasn't, necessarily. It's serious to me, but that doesn't mean it can't also be a big joke to others. C'est la vie, I'm fine with that.

Thanks C2W. Yeah, It's another example of that new mash-up of models of burying the truth, mutating a living bud with poison before it grows and proliferates. Heaven forbid Ellen's work might gain some mainstream exposure and credibility. The half a dozen or so serious activists on mc will probably be covered with this crap on various venues before long.

Does anyone have any insight on effective counter-strikes to this monarch-celeb meme?

[barracuda]

Every review of Lady Gaga's Telephone video I have read has had one quality in common: none have made mention of the seeming fact that this is the first big-time music video (with an incredible breadth of distribution) to feature, within the first minute of the video, a full frontal shot of the star's shaved pussy.

I would have thought that perhaps that might have ocassioned at least a line or so in one of these sophisticated and jaded reviews, but apparently this moment of pop barrier-breaking is seconded to the tittilating understanding that she is referencing the rumors surrounding her alleged hermaphroditism, and to facile blog referencing of current internet MC undercurrent memes as if you are revealing some information unavailable to anyone who's teevee viewing happens to include the tevoing of Tara, Dollhouse or one of the dozens of other shows trying to generate frisson by mainstreaming child sex torture.

I guess no one found it quite as interesting as I did.

[82_28]

Agreed barracuda. Very, very odd. It feels like something synonymous to a whole culture's denial of heroin addiction just before they overdose and die.

Another thing. I woke up this morning and it dawned on me that I will never be able to unexperience this Lady Gaga . It kinda drove me nuts and gave me anxiety for awhile. I want that shit out of my brain. I don't like where any of this is going. It simply will not end well. Let's put it that way.

[Project Willow]

Every review of Lady Gaga's Telephone video I have read has had one quality in common: none have made mention of the seeming fact that this is the first big-time music video (with an incredible breadth of distribution) to feature, within the first minute of the video, a full frontal shot of the star's shaved pussy.
...

I don't know what this means, if anything, but I didn't even notice it. I'm reticent to look a the vid again as well.

[82_28]

Every review of Lady Gaga's Telephone video I have read has had one quality in common: none have made mention of the seeming fact that this is the first big-time music video (with an incredible breadth of distribution) to feature, within the first minute of the video, a full frontal shot of the star's shaved pussy.
...

I don't know what this means, if anything, but I didn't even notice it. I'm reticent to look a the vid again as well.

It is pixelated out, but it's near the beginning where they say something like "see, she's not a guy" as she spreads behind the jail bars.

[compared2what?]

Agreed barracuda. Very, very odd. It feels like something synonymous to a whole culture's denial of heroin addiction just before they overdose and die.

I don't get this. As best I can understand the parallels, the non-commentary on the pixelated depiction of shaved pussy in a pop music video is to the denial of heroin addiction just before overdose and death (approximately) as the non-outrage at the Ziegfeld Follies' incorporation of near-nudity as a feature of legitimate theatrical entertainment is to the indifference to workplace safety for sweatshop employees just before the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.

IOW, there are no parallels. In what way does the failure of society to comment on pixelated pussy (shaved, waxed, or au naturel) in a music video provoke you to feel something synonymous to what you'd feel about a culture's denial of the threat posed by a widespread and potentially lethal addiction ?

Another thing. I woke up this morning and it dawned on me that I will never be able to unexperience this Lady Gaga . It kinda drove me nuts and gave me anxiety for awhile.

I feel for you. I too am sometimes genuinely disturbed, frightened depressed or otherwise upset by an encounter with this or that one-hundred-percent fictional event, image, or personality to which I was randomly exposed in the course of voluntarily watching works of commercial mass-media video and/or film entertainment while fully and consciously aware that's what they were.

It kind of drives me nuts and makes me anxious when that happens. In fact, it makes me want to get that shit out of my brain. Happily, I almost always find that it's actually pretty easy to do that simply by turning my attention to the more immediate, engaging or important attention-requiring events of which daily life is made.

To be honest with you, though, if I were so profoundly affected by memories of a pop starlet's video that I found myself thinking and saying that I'd experienced and would never be able to unexperience her -- rather than, say that I'd watched her video and was very troubled by the lasting impression it had made on me -- I'd be grateful to anyone who pointed out that I'd probably get over it more quickly if I were a little more disciplined with myself wrt making ordinary rational distinctions between fantasy and reality.

And I'm not making fun of you or calling you crazy at all, btw. Emotional experience doesn't really take place in a time-space dimension, and it's mostly if not entirely an internal process. So making that distinction isn't always as much of a bright line affair as the enlightenment might have led you to believe. Elisions happen. That's natural and harmless, as long as you're roughly aware of it on some conscious level that does occur in real time and space, as far as I'm concerned.

You just shouldn't have to be so distraught over a pop video. It can't hurt you. You're much more powerful than it is. Please don't wreck your nerves feeling avoidable anguish over it. Life comes with more than enough unavoidable anguish en suite already.

I don't like where any of this is going. It simply will not end well. Let's put it that way.

Again, I simply do not understand what you're saying. What is "this" and where is it going? What would constitute an ending for it? What did constitute its beginning?

I mean, honey, it's a video.

[barracuda]

The video I am referring to did not appear pixilated, GMasked, or in any way censored during the scene in question, in which Gaga's manicured woo-woo was rather prominently splayed on the bars of her jail cell. It was a clear, unobstructed view, aside from her very sheer stockings, the native pixelation inherent in resolving a digital video in a format in which the viewing rectangle is only some seven inches wide, and the unavoidable misfortune of my own declining visual acuity. Plus, I think I only had one contact lens in that day, in my good eye.

This was, however, the Official Explicit Version, which seems to be unembeddable, and it was the day of the World Premiere, as it were, so I suppose that either my excitement, enjoyment, imagination and enthusiasm got the best of me, and I projected a visual field of mental unsharp masking in the region of her apparently unencumbered nethers, or maybe you guys didn't see the same version I did. It's quite possible I'm wrong, but I did watch it more than once, so if I managed to convince myself of something that is not so regarding the area in question, I'd like to know. At the moment, I am unable to ascertain any information about the video at all, because I am writing on an antique treadle-driven computing device made mostly of wood and stone which connects to the world-wide-web through the medium of a taut and vibrating piece of butcher's string. As soon as I am before a more contemporary machine, I will, of course, endeavor to fact check my own suppositions.

[Username]

~
indiatimes

Lady Gaga is first 'billion-view' artist on Youtube
Mar 26, 2010, 09.26am

LONDON: Lady Gaga has become the first pop artist to be viewed on YouTube more than a billion times.

Three of the singer's promos have become favourites on the site - 'Poker Face' has received 374,606,128 hits, her debut 'Just Dance
' stands at 272,941,674 and 'Bad Romance' has been watched 360,020,327 times.

It makes the 24-year-old singer the first featured artist on the website to total more than a billion views, reported Contactmusic.

But she may not hold the record for long - clips from the 'Twilight' film franchise have been watched 980 million times, while Soulja Boy's hits have clocked up 860 million views, according to video analytics company Visible Measures.
~

[Nordic]

that new video is just candy-coated potato chips. Junk food.

It's just a funny, campy, outrageous bit of fluff. It's actually incredibly stupid and in ten years everyone will look back at how ridiculously stupid it really is.

It's not gonna age well.

She and her people are brilliant marketers. Maybe they're ex-Obama people.

[Pele'sDaughter]

first pop artist to be viewed on YouTube more than a billion times

I've been curious but haven't been able to make it through even one of her videos. It has nothing to do with my age or whatever because I enjoy all sorts of outrageous things or can at least tolerate them.