Coronavirus: Is Panic Buying the real virus?

Coronavirus is sweeping the globe. Fact. To what speed and what extent varies on a rational perspective of the fear-inducing-media sources we absorb.

Add a dash of gullibility and it can be anywhere from epidemic to the apocalypse.

Yes, people have died.

Yes, it will continue to spread. In the same way, any virus would.

Initially, the casual factor of global infestation was relatively widespread travel amongst patient zero cases.

Despite doomsday media predictions, look closer and you will see that fatalities are roughly 3% . Most of the unfortunate victims had underlying conditions or are simply in the susceptible elderly age bracket. This NOT to say that the loss of any lives should be considered frivolous, or the tragic circumstances behind infections at Nursing homes worldwide wiping out many in the elderly community. It IS to say that media fearmongering does not and will never help.

[UPDATE: As of Friday 11th April – The recorded total of global deaths is currently at 102k out of 1,699, 490 confirmed cases amongst 210 countries and territories worldwide.

The majority of not all currently exercise national wide lockdowns. A large number of world leaders and officials have contracted the virus and it has been proven fatal to people fo all ages and not just those considered at risk i.e. the elderly or those with underlying health conditions. ] 

When writing this blog, the vast amount of cases were still residing in China, slowly moving to Korea. Then over the following weeks, Italy was overrun and finally, most of Europe is on lockdown. The causal factor of large outbreaks has been the clustered conditions of those living in confined spaces for a set period of time, such as cruise ships, ski lodges and popular islands resorts. It seems that the largest cases of spread (not fatality) are significantly larger in highly populated cities. As opposed to relatively isolated, rural communities.

As of 10th March, not much has changed to contradict the ratio of contracted cases to death. It seems the peak has travelled from China to Italy…  but you can check for yourself here. The underlying point still remains that deaths are a very small percentage of the population. Sadly, the most vulnerable.

[UPDATE: As of Friday 11th April the recorded global deaths total currently stands at 102, 799 out of 1,699,490.

By my very crude ( and probably incorrect calculations) this works out as about 6% of worldwide cases.]

In light of the recent updated as of 10th April 2020, where does the article below published the Daily Mail online ( a supposedly respected British newspaper) earlier in March get its information from?

15 million? According to CNN, as of 6th March, there aren’t even a quarter of a million diagnosed cases worldwide, let alone 3% of that! As of April it works at 102k, about 6% of worldwide cases.  Whilst that is an increase of 3% in a month. If this rate continues it would take another 3 months ( multiple April’s total by x3 for each month) to reach anywhere even near a million deaths. That means a further 9 months to reach 9 million in one year. Without any preventative measures or an eventual vaccine or cure maybe? 

What does the DM know that everyone else doesn’t? 

In reality, stats and accuracy are ultimately irrelevant in a social climate where each individuals’ ego and privilege are pandered to. In our consumer society, our individual importance is elevated by grooming our insecurities and egos with advertising and media on a daily basis.  It would require little effort for the same hegemonic system of mass communications that fostered this climate, to tip it into mania. Eventually, the survival instinct kicks in, leading to a mass hysteria that overrides rationality. Then the social priority shifts to protecting the individual consumer’s self-centred needs. We take action and get prepared by buying ‘safety’ in the form of things. Rather than consider the welfare of other fellow humans.

( So soon after Brexit, too).

Thanks to decades of fear-inducing media and strategic advertising tapping our emotional intelligence and appeasing our desires, the modern citizen has learned to price their individual safety over social responsibility or perhaps even human decency. You may have the money to buy all the handwash in the shop because you got there first.. but should you?

 . . .Don’t others need it?  . . .

Is your life, your survival more important than other people? If so, why?

Interestingly, several key cases of infestation have been in church groups, both Korea and USA. So will the meek still inherit the earth I wonder?

Has ‘I was here first’ or ‘You snooze, you lose’ become the new ‘survival of the fittest’?

Consumerism over Darwinism? Well, both have worked well in the cause of western capitalist ideology so far.

Surely, consumer rights are not superior to human rights?

We don’t see people panic buying medical supplies to give away or making rash charitable donations for others much. There is no such thing as ‘panic-donating’.

The answer is simple enough:

There is nothing wrong with washing your hands, or even stocking up on anti-bacterial handwash but.. leave some for the rest of us?

Global incidents like this bring the world closer in some sense but rather depressingly, inspire the worst too. Cue the instinctual notion of ‘price gouging’. The amateur entrepreneurs soon found a way to profiteer by (presumably) stockpiling and then selling face masks in the rising dawn of a worldwide epidemic.

To their credit, Boots and Lloyds pharmacy have unexpectedly taken steps to counteract this new low in disaster capitalism by rationing certain essential products for better distribution and help preserve more lives instead of making more profit. 

It is a shame they have to do so and thus enforce both the necessity and requirement of large retail brands in an ever-tightening yoke of policing the consumer-citizens. It is surely strange days ahead when large corporations show a greater ethical outlook than our own democratically elected authorities. However, according to the Metro, the global corporate giant  Amazon have taken no such responsibility.

The government have also ‘officially’ advised there is no need for panic buying when England’s chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty revealed behavioural science evidence shows that the ‘response of the British public to disasters and emergencies is extraordinary outbreaks of altruism’. I have seen examples of this in my local social media networks but is this just entirely sentiment based?

If Whitty’s claims prove to be true this is very reassuring and we can all fondly remember the solidarity of rationing during WW2, as spoon-fed to us by the winners of history: Our grandparents because surely no one under the age of 80 was even born before world war II.

Modern-day Black Friday supermarket openings and the dash for the limited supply of cheap HDTVs show our society in a different light though. Quite where Professor Whitty’s optimistic altruism come from is anyone’s guess. My guess is a more ‘simpler time’, perhaps when the NHS was more generously funded.

Interestingly this article I recently located online from Teresa May’s reign of governance a few years back hints at shortsighted governance well before the recent Brexit debacle. If reported accurately, it might reveal how a laissez-faire approach to the economy prior to Brexit transaction helped pave the way for recent disasters.

( *The article seems a legit trustworthy source but due to the absurd nature of contemporary British politics, I really can’t be sure)

The Psychology of Panic Buying is thus:

“Panic buying, Taylor says, is fuelled by anxiety, and a willingness to go to lengths to quell those fears: like queueing for hours or buying way more than you need.”… “It’s probably true that panic buying is ultimately a psychological mechanism to deal with our fear and uncertainty; a way to assert some control over the situation by taking an action.” (Lufkin[2020])

Even government authorities officially advise against the situation perhaps knowing it does little to stifle the public reactions.

The experts say the fact that panic buying is happening at all can prompt people to participate.

“[Panic buying is] getting excessive play in social media and news media, and that amplifies the sense of scarcity, which worsens the panic buying,” Taylor says. “There’s these snowball effects of a further increased sense of urgency.” (Lufkin [2020] BBCOnline).

My cynical side makes me think the government are aware of this but continue to crank out the dogma to ensure a boost of profits that hold up industry performances. Arguably to distract from their own inadequate governance.

Recent official government advice to stay away from social gatherings in pubs and venus has caused anger in the leisure-entertainment industry. By not officially ordering closures or lockdowns like the rest of Europe, Boris faces allegations of appeasing the insurance companies:

“The government’s decision to not force pubs and restaurants to close means that businesses cannot claim cover from insurers.”(Hancock [2020])

So why, in the face of a clearly biological threat that has no relevance to material wealth, do we behave like this?

Here is my theory: Karl Marx coined the idea of the commodity fetish, surviving many definitions and variations. The most relevant here is the idea that people and things change roles; ” social relations take on the character of object relations, and commodities assume the active agency of people”(Apter [1991]P.12).

In short, we sometimes view things more importantly and preferably as we do other humans.. especially products we desire or even fetish.

If you disagree with this, ask yourselves why you don’t give out spare change to beggars but happily save for a new sofa or kitchen?

French theorist (and unwilling postmodernist) Jean Baudrillard [1929-2007] once wrote that modern-day capitalism was so imbued in a system of signs/product and exchange value that our contemporary society might grow too reliant on the symbolic value of /signs products over practical, tangible uses.

People have long bought vastly over-priced Nike trainers for their brand image, or ‘coolness’ instead of the practicality of shoes to wear.

Decades later and younger generations grow-up in a consumer-heavy world where the only means of identity, socio-orientation or even the individual’s understanding of the world around them, is via the brands and products we buy. Thus, the mentality that goes along with them.

If you don’t think this true, go shopping and ask yourselves why you trust Tesco or Asda brands over products you have never heard of? Most of the time it is the same quality contents or a very similar product inside the box.

(Better yet, if you are a ‘native’ English speaker then go shop at  Lidl and see if you trust a brand that isn’t even written in English).

Baudrillard argued that the excess of signs and of meaning in late 20th century “global” society had caused (quite paradoxically) an effacement of reality…so now the symbolic value of consumerism has clearly overwritten the practicality of the purchase.

Now….”modern societies are organized around the production and consumption of commodities, while postmodern societies are organized around simulation and the play of images and signs, denoting a situation in which codes, models, and signs are the organizing forms of a new social order where simulation rules. In the society of simulation, identities are constructed by the appropriation of images, and codes and models determine how individuals perceive themselves and relate to other people.” (Kellner[ 2005])

Buying excess food and hand wash will perhaps stave off a virus and keep you fed but it won’t stop you from catching it entirely. With such a divorce from the real, with consumer citizens engaging sigs and images over real-life effacement of reality. Has panic buying has become a new reaction to protecting our own mortality? Since when has buying excess materialism stopped us from being mortal humans? An endless cycle of commodity consumption has arguably meant objectification of the unreal over the real and perhaps even the value of human life? “Baudrillard’s “the end of transcendence” where individuals can neither perceive their own true needs or another way of life.” (Kellner [2005]).

So panic buying becomes the contemporary equivalent of ‘fight or flight’ in our consumer society. To put it shortly….buying things won’t stop you from dying.

We arrive at what Baudrillard might have considered the ‘valorization’ of mortality.

Everything could be resolved easily if we cared more about people than things. . . but where is the money in that?

HERE are instructions to make your own anti-bacterial handwash

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sources cited:

” The psychology of panic buying” By Brian Lufkins [2020] BBC[online

Available online here: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200304-coronavirus-covid-19-update-why-people-are-stockpiling

 

“Fetishism in Theory: Marx, Freud, Baudrillard.” Feminizing the Fetish: Psychoanalysis and Narrative Obsession in Turn-of-the Century France, by EMILY APTER, Cornell University Press, ITHACA; LONDON, 1991, pp. 1–14. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt207g6z5.4. Accessed 5 Mar. 2020.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt207g6z5.4?seq=12#metadata_info_tab_contents

Kellner, Doug [2005] “Jean Baudrillard”, Stanford encylopedia of Philosophy[Online] dated Fri Apr 2005

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/baudrillard/#SymbExchPostBrea

Are Memes the new Graffiti?

For those unfamiliar with the concept; memes are often some form of visual documents acting in a viral behaviour or style. They are often handmade and arrive in a random or spontaneous form, kind of like opinionated artwork that reacts to a major event or trend in pop-culture. It goes without saying that they can be considered a form of expression, perhaps to the extent of how Graffiti is created.

This Drake Meme carries a message about how a Teacher’s authoritarian discipline is either outdated, incorrect or can be misused.. The importance is how the Meme is used to communicate a narrative within a social group.

More importantly, they have been well documented as a means of social interaction that uses a narrative helping to carry with it a form of popular critique amongst those initiated within a certain social group or demographic. Sometimes these messages might have a discreet or coded form of communications similar to Basil Bernstein’s [1971]  restricted or elaborated code.

Dependent on the subject matter, they can be an easy way to send an important message ( to the right audience).

A Drake Meme about how those from outside groups can misunderstand symbols and interaction within youth culture.

How do Memes work?

The best way to answer this is to use an example of a successful ongoing Meme:

Drake’s Hotline Bling music video as seen above.

This meme has been around for a while now. Although the specific visual imagery is obviously taken from a Drake;s 2016 ‘Hotline Bling’ music video: The structure can be extrapolated and used as an external narrative with its own context.

For a further explanation hear the Director of the video explain further here.

The way Memes are constructed often using a familiar structure. In the example of the Drake Meme, certain images were used from a dance sequence in the video. Presumably, because the relevant stages of the sequence contained strong contrasting or opposing positions, they combined to make what is called in photography; a juxtaposition.

Creators of the meme have used this juxtaposition to carry others forms of narrative when taken out of context and provided with a new meaning. Images alone taken from the video cannot provide a context outside of the intended original purpose i.e. Drake dancing in a room. However, when combined with other factors, often carrying a subtext that helps form an external agenda; it changes the entire context of the sequence.

In the world of Semiotics, this action would be considering moving from a denotative to a connotative meaning. (Roland Barthes [1966 ]). The unfiltered Drake video was the denotative (original) meaning and the same sequences used in a meme with additional words is the connotative ( new) meaning. Barthes sometimes referred to a third stage, an entirely new area of visual suggestions that he called ‘Myth’. This was the combination of both denotative and connotative meaning but became something bigger. 

A classic example of this is how a Red Rose flower has been used so much over the years in advertising and promotions by Florists, it has become a symbol of Valentines Day. Now, when you see a Red Rose, it carries a connotative meaning of Romance. Rather than the true denotative meaning –  a literal flower. Now, when people see a Red Rose it can take people’s perception straight to the idea of romance ( or even more). This is what Barthes referred to as ‘Myth’ because a flower is not exactly love or sex. Neither is an image of one, it is just contained in our minds as an understanding.

This ‘understanding’ is an external context with its own agenda that eventually becomes synonymous with the image.

With so many Memes using images from Drake’s video, the actual images of Drake himself has now become understandable more popular as it is also well known. The more an image is used, the more recognised it becomes, carrying the additional meaning of the various memes. It gathers a new meaning and creates a myth that is carried along with the Meme. Thanks to Memes, Myth today is almost a form of speech.

Memes have been known to carry such a strong message that they can also be used to coordinate and rally political support and unity in certain. Whilst the true effect of influence is difficult to measure in ‘adult’ politics. Rather worryingly, they played a large part amongst the varied circumstances that led to the success of the 2016 Trump campaign. Politico magazine wrote an interesting article about the Meme Wars that supposedly went on in the 2016 presidential Trump campaign.

Hence why we, the people need to ‘Seize the memes of production’.

Bandersnatch

So I am rewatching Black Mirror’s Bandersnatch on Netflix to explore the unexplored options. The first question about the cereal seems a meaningless choice but it does draw attention to the emphasis on branding and how brands logos are used to signpost within our contemporary collective consciousness. For instance, Coca-Cola and Pepsi were once accessories of the American dream of ‘freedom’ used as propaganda for their foreign policy. Now both brands are recognised as global icons within their own respective corporations.
The option of the choice to accept Tuckersoft’s offer is a valuable gift from Black Mirror, illustrating the need to stay true to artistic integrity and retain creative authority in projects. Sadly, any non-conformist ideology is ridiculed from here on in.
The second choice between listening to Thompsons Twins or  ‘Now, that’s what I call music- 1980s’ compilation in the Walkman is equally inconsequential but probably emphasises the bland choice of musical diversity commercially available at the time. Incidentally, I have restarted several times with both options …. Colin is still not impressed by either choice.

“The concept of taste is outmoded” because “the subject who could verify such taste has become as questionable as has the right to a freedom of choice which empirically, in any case, no one any longer exercises.”

Adorno’s argument that repetitive music acts as a form of enforcement for collective consciousness, serving the socio-cultural-economic agenda of mainstream society is alive in Colin’s non-conformity. Basically, taste is irrelevant as conforming to generic music serves the capitalist purpose of the industry.

The 80s decades itself has been of fascination to recent TV programmes and sitcoms; anything from cheesy sitcoms The Goldbergs and camp films like American Pie to numerous rehashed sci-fi epics like the new Star Wars and Terminator sequels. All these things leave pop-cultural footprints and at the very least, establish consumer brands and franchises. Such action strengthens the power of cultural hegemony that serves the commodity fetish agenda.
I think what Black Mirror successfully identifies in Bandersnatch is the birth of computer coding and the parallel relationship between its effect on contemporary culture and making life choices based on the distribution of artificial reasons.

The reference to coded computer games like Pacman during Colin’s acid rant isn’t as far-fetched a metaphor as you might think. If you consider it calmly without drugs, even though Colin’s refusal of reality is entirely erratic and his confusion of complex spirituality misguided. The idea of rejecting mass consumption as a guiding moral compass still has merit. The idea of making life choices outside of consumption .. outside of brands and business guided narrative is inspiring and obtainable. Even now in 2018, the ‘grow your own’ trend has been adopted by neo-yuppies and hipsters as a rejection of mainstream commercialisation. In 2018 it is everywhere you look from craft fayres to micro-breweries.

1980s era entertainment also had something else as a major ingredient of its legacy: Patience and Potential.

I can remember having an Amstrad CPC computer and loading video games on cassette tape, waiting for ages for what would be the most minimalist graphics but the overall experience was so original and advanced at the time. The combination of anticipation and imagination probably held more artistic merit and reward than the final result of the gaming product. Such anticipation naturally stimulated imagination and thus creativity, a whole decade before instantaneous Sega/Nintendo 8 bit action and soon the extravagance of 16-bit graphics consoles smothered these qualities.
Was there a relationship between the passivity of consciousness created from beautiful and mesmerising graphics and a lack of patience for imagination? In that era, there was (arguably) also the popularity of dynamic comics and magazines over traditional literature. The use of Disneyfication in video gaming. Has this led into our contemporary lethargic dependence on consumer comfort over real progression of cultural change? All of this slowly unrolled before the arrival of global dominance of instantaneous internet connectivity.

The part in the film where they play the demo in the Tuckersoft office, they met the demon Pax in the Bandersnatch demo and Colin says ‘Worship him’.. Stefan replies; ‘No, don’t do that he’s the thief of destiny….”

Coded cognitive signposting in computer games

Is this actually a coded signpost? Storytelling narrative designed to prompt the viewer, hinting at them to make the appropriate choice? Implying that worshipping the thief of destiny, is the same as accepting the Tuckersoft business mogul, Tucker’ s offer: Worshipping a metaphorical demon in the form of corporate conformity against the freedom of creative integrity?

Too farfetched? Well, remember the entire film is a fictional narrative.

A lot of the new Star Wars films purposely used ‘seeding’ techniques as subconscious prompt for fans to speculate where the storyline is headed? Do we need such propaganda, long before actual final products are released. Is it no longer enough to wait and see, or enjoy the anticipation?

Well, anyone who has read the most basic reading on structuralism can see a somewhat minimal alignment with Guy Debord’s arguments in the Society of the Spectacle [1967].
Yet, how far from everyday cultural reality are the relative truths of the Bandersnatch storyline? Hint: Postmodernity. Marc Auge’s claim that in (post/super) modernity, as consumers we are likes passenger in our own lives failing to retain enough consciousness to make choices ( 1995: 103). The extreme escalation of Colin’s demise is erratic but probably known to most as the ultimate 80’s drugs fuelled urban myth. The result of ‘protagonist’ Stefan murdering his father is to be disregarded as a climax of a dramatic narrative (or even distraction). But this climax presented as a metaphor rings true with consequence of nihilism due partially from the ‘schizophrenia of postmodernity’ in capitalism. (This was well documented – See Frederic Jameson). There are numerous Baudrillardrian hyperreal/simulation references embedded throughout the entire concept also. There is some excellent fourth wall breaking later on keeping within the true spirit of postmodern tv comedy shows like Family Guy and Red Dwarf to name but a few.
However, the main postmodern feature of Bandersnatch, in a commercial, commodity-driven non-academic sense ..is the interactivity.

Anyways.

The point is that the 1980s was a time when imagination and vision proceed technology. It was decades before the internet and years before the arrival of instantaneous entertainment and escapism found in Nintendo/Sega games consoles. Even back then, boredom existed and society looked to enter the sanctity of virtual ethernet to be entertained.
The Star Wars trilogy and other likewise films took us into further into escapism and far away space battles for adventure but the boring and scientific reality is that Nasa’s Voyager 2 Probe launched in 1977 failed to reach ‘outer space’ until 2012. During its 35 yr voyage, no even remotely exciting discoveries were declared that could even scratch the exciting surface of sci-fi entertainment. Even well into the lifespan of web 2.0 internet. That era from 1977 up until the late 90s was a bland world of vision and imagination where cultural myths preceded the distraction of the internet. An era where we still had the mental capacity for social change. Gaps in our collective inevitably bridged and by Advertising.

Try not to think about what the western world would’ve been like without Advertising though.

One would hope Black Mirror have devised a way to claw some of the self-identity back for the individual, as a means for the passenger of supermodernity to regain the ground lost by Auge’s argument of passivity. Auge’s idea that lack of community meant a loss of facilities for civic interaction and then hence traditional, non-capitalist fuelled collective identity. Thus the postmodern world aided with heightened digital technology sponsored by a social infrastructure that follows the capitalist agenda has inevitably created non-places of civic interaction..” in transit sites where people are suspended between other activities but in a way certain of its own reality” (Delanty, 142). The uninspired consumer without imagination or vision becomes the ‘passenger’ of our own subconsciousness without individualised thought or consciousness would naturally follow this order. (Auge 1995: 103). According to Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida; with no opposition to the “centrality of subjectivity”.. “postmodern community being beyond unity” (Delanty, 142).
In a more scientific, less theological sense, research has in fact concluded that 95% of all cognition is adaptive unconsciousness. Is this the way society is heading? No thinking, no criticising,  just spectating, without action or even objection. The ultimate passive Consumers.

“Fuck you I won’t do what you told me”.- Rage Against the Machine