CORPORATE DRAGON SLAYER or: Writing Is Punk Rock
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We are living within the bowels of a veritable ouroboros of commodification—a corporate dragon of the highest order, itself filled with thousands upon thousands of little corporate dragons. And with this essay, I aspire to harness the power of punk rock to inspire both you—the reader—and me to slay these beasts.
The corporate dragon is a unique species of dragon, as they are the only species able to commodify literally everything they come into contact with and—through biological and/or magical forces not yet fully understood—cajole those around them into participating in this commodification, even if the participants are totally miserable, fully aware of the degradation brought about by said commodification, and don’t want it to happen at all. It follows that corporate dragons are master manipulators—near mind controllers, really. Another key trait of the corporate dragon is that they are able to camouflage themselves for both defensive and offensive purposes, blending their scales into any surrounding as long as there’s some gold to be found from doing so. It follows that corporate dragons require only gold to survive rather than food, which is a trait unique to them within the entire animal kingdom. One may find corporate dragons well hidden at punk rock shows, in art galleries filled with pro-Marxist paintings, and in television programs in which the narrative extols values of anarchy or some other dissident political view that one might think runs counter to the corporate dragon’s very nature as a gold-loving, winged reptile; but, as stated earlier, the corporate dragon can and will blend into any environment at even the faintest whiff of gold.
Corporate dragons are soul suckers and dream harvesters that use the serpentine timepieces they've coiled around our wrists to track how long we sleep and, by collecting data on our heart rates and blood oxygen levels, can tell how much of that sleep was prime-dream-sleep for dream harvesting; they even give each of us a SleepScore™ and trend out that data on snake-like line graphs right there on the phones that we just can’t look away from because there’s just so much to do on those little things—so many videos to watch, so many totally-not-edited profile pictures to compare ourselves to, so many posts to post, so many headlines to regurgitate like we actually know what we’re talking about, and the memes: oh god, the memes—burning holes in our pockets and minds. The average person spends 6 hours and 40 minutes per day staring vacant into a glowing rectangle of some sort.#1 Every application we open, every URL we click, every syllable we speak, every photo we take, and every word we type is harvested so that product, marketing, and sales teams far and wide can analyze the data with large language models—themselves built using stolen data—to develop hip new marketing campaigns to sell us more stuff that we will supposedly like (based on all the said data). They have profiles on each of us that they use to determine which mind-numbing videos and stupid memes to feed us intravenous, trying to keep us in our own little bubbles of self-gratification so that we continue buying the quote-unquote cool stuff that we supposedly like (again, based on the data). This is all done so that, during their quarterly business reviews, they can present the pretty line-go-up graph on the slide deck software that their company pays millions of dollars every year to use—knowing full well that the slide deck software company itself is also harvesting the data of the people using their software while they (said software company’s employees) are also being harvested by whichever software applications they happen to be using themselves; and then all of this data is sold to some other company for a quick couple million—”By using our services, you consent to the collection, use, and sharing of your data as outlined in this agreement”—thus, the commodifiers are themselves commodified, and so on and so forth forever.
What this means is: We are feeding greedy treasure-loving dragons with our own data then kneeling under their lifted tails with our mouths wide open all ready to consume the shit that explodes out of their scaly, rancid assholes.
The whole corporate dragon media paradigm is contingent on our continued consumption of dragon shit; and the more we focus on eating dragon shit, the more bloated the dragons become, munching up all our data, shitting it back out for us to consume, only for us to feed it back to them so that they can shit it out all over again, i.e., the whole nasty thing we just went over ad infinitum. And somehow, they have made us think this whole thing is really fun and/or deeply meaningful in some way, to the point where many of us spend our whole lives simply consuming dragon shit while becoming more bored, depressed, and aimless, all the while not knowing why we are so bored, depressed, and aimless. And, in some sick stroke of genius, the corporate dragons have made us believe that the cure to this bored, aimless depression is actually just eating more of their shit—so we continue to lap it up, thus becoming even more bored, depressed, and aimless, which only drives us to eat more dragon shit because, once again, they have somehow convinced us that their shit is the cure to the existential dread of that something-is-missing feeling that we all know oh so well. (If it seems like I'm repeating myself, it’s only because I'm mirroring the whole corporate dragon shit cycle that itself repeats itself like some sort of perpetual motion machine of pure sorrow.)
The whole thing really is genius in some grotesque, twisted way—not only have these corporate dragons convinced us that consuming their shit is necessary but also that it's super cool, as if it’s the most non-conformist thing to do, ever; they have commodified nonconformity—think Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols on Warner Bros. Records—and somehow they've tricked us into thinking that this commodification does not undermine the very essence of nonconformity itself, and then, to top it all off, they sell us t-shirts with anarchy symbols all over them, and we wear them without a second thought.
Dragon shit is leaking out of our brains from our noses, ears, and mouths on a global scale. Many of us even base our entire identities around which corporate logos we like most. Whole cultures and subcultures and sub-subcultures form around television shows, video games, comic books, manga, and anime, and the specific characters within each of these entertainment mediums have fandoms within their own fandoms within even more fandoms; and we fight over which flavor of this dragon shit is, like, the best flavor—which fandom is the coolest and has all the best stuff, as if there’s some sort of universal objective measurement to begin with—which makes us feel like we have unique opinions that we totally came up with ourselves when really we are being manipulated into camps by the corporate dragons so that they can continue to gorge themselves on our data, plundering our gold both literal and figurative. We go around on social media platforms—many of which are owned by some of the most dangerous corporate dragons in existence—and post images of our favorite pieces of dragon shit, identifying as fans of such-and-such dragon shit or so-and-so dragon shit, and this makes us feel like we’re individuals, like we have preferences that we picked ourselves—but, in reality, some corporate dragon with a bachelor's degree in marketing picked them for us through long games of subtle product placement, social engineering, emotional manipulation, nostalgia baiting, and sometimes even straight-up bullying.
Some of us know that this whole dragon-shit thing is going on and call it out for what it is, but then we turn right around and bury our faces into a handheld video game console or veg out in front of the television watching cartoons or whatever; then that same someone might retreat into excuses like, “I’m just one person, what can I do about it?” or “At least I’m aware of it, right?” with a shit-eating grin in which they hope their teeth might sparkle like some sort of video game protagonist because they imagine themselves as such sometimes since the corporate dragon shit is just so stained all over our bodies and minds that it’s nearly impossible to wash off, and it shows—oh, it shows. (And, if it wasn’t obvious, this paragraph is based on own personal experience as a mega consumer of dragon shit; I am not proud.)
The corporate dragons have really done a number on us.
I will admit, however, that some of this dragon shit tastes really good—like candy, almost. But, just like candy, the dragon shit doesn't fill you up, regardless of how much you eat, and there’s always this feeling that something is missing after you swallow a big mouthful. There’s some sort of existential void that, despite how much dragon shit you try to shove down into it, just can’t be filled up, and this drives us to search for even more exquisite dragon shit, hoping that we will one day find that one piece of magical shit that will finally fill us up; but we never will, because dragon shit is just that: shit. And then we die, reeking of shit; our surviving relatives will remember us only by the names of the lights reflected off our emaciated, shit-stained faces—“Your father loved watching that Mick and Rorty”—and eventually, they take our collection of dragon shit and sell it off at some estate sale or other, returning it to the endless cycle of corporate dragon shit. And in sixty years, we—as real human people—are totally forgotten, like we never even existed at all, and the corporate dragons continue on selling their shit to our successors.
I know this to be true, yet I still eat the dragon shit.
So, the question becomes: how do we prevent this from happening to us? How do we stop feeling so empty and start feeling more fulfilled? How do we make real, human connections that don’t rely on corporate logos or catchphrases or whatever?
The corporate dragons don't want us pondering these questions because if we stop to think about what we're actually consuming—the nature of it all, the how of its creation, the “what” of its “what the fuck?”—even for a moment, we stop feeding the corporate dragon, and the corporate dragon doesn't like that very much at all. The corporate dragon especially doesn't like it when we write about these questions at length, as I am doing right now; and this is counterintuitively clear by the corporate dragon's response: the moment someone writes an even semi-popular essay or book or whatever questioning this whole dragon shit paradigm, some corporate publishing dragon—(there are many corporate dragon variants)—swoops in to buy the rights, intent on commodifying the work into a “It’s So Cool to Hate the System”-type product to then sell to so-called rebellious intellectuals; thus, the criticizing of corporate dragons becomes corporate itself—the corporate dragon is suddenly wearing a mohawk, pretending they are one of the very people criticizing them.
And it feels really good to criticize corporate dragons. In fact, it feels really really good to write anything at all. In fact in fact, it feels really really—really—good to create literally anything; and writing is probably the easiest way to create something that is uniquely one’s own. I would go as far as to say that you—dear reader—should be writing right now (instead of reading this). Write your life. Because if I had to pick something that makes me feel fulfilled—outside of spending time with my kids or having a real long, deep conversation with a close friend about this very topic (or something like it)—I would have to pick writing. I can’t explain exactly why; all I know is that, when I’m in a deep writing flow state, nothing else matters in the world, and when I have completed a work that I’m proud of, I lean back, reread it, and feel deeply fulfilled, as if I have left my mark upon the dragon’s hide, and this pleases me greatly on a real deep human level. Even if, say, months later, I reread the same work with more experienced eyes and think the old work immature or poorly written, I am still glad to have written it—I have never regretted the act of writing, ever. And, when I pass, those around me will have a written record of my soul—something more than just, “he really liked Final Fantasy.”
Writing is my wheelhouse, my passion—and I would imagine artists of all kinds feel this way about their own methods of creation, too. I would extrapolate then that, from my experience, the way to reach true fulfillment—outside of family and friends and community—is by creating something that is uniquely you instead of consuming dragon shit every waking hour of the day; and I would argue that you should be creating something right now, at this moment, to save your very soul.
If corporate dragons can wear a mohawk, corporatizing the very act of rebellion itself, perhaps then I, too, can use this contrarian appeal to convince you—the reader—of why I think writing is so important, and why you—the reader—should write down every thought that comes into your head regardless of whatever hang-ups you might have about doing so.
So, allow me to put on my mohawk for just a moment while I tell you this:
Writing is the most punk rock thing a person can do.
I don’t mean Sex Pistols signing to Virgin Records type punk rock; I mean real do-it-yourself type punk rock; I mean that real get-up-on-stage-and-scream-your-heart-out-without-a-care-in-the-world-even-if-you-don’t-have-any-equipment-because-you-just-fucking-love-doing-what-you’re-doing type punk rock; that real piss-on-a-picture-of-the-president-and-light-a-photo-of-the-Pope-on-fire type punk rock. I mean the real raw, emotive human type punk rock. The type of punk rock that’s delivered with conviction and verve; the type of punk rock that corporate dragons just can’t fully camouflage into.
In this commodified world, writing is one of the few things left that you can do without involving yourself with corporate dragons in some way. You need not commodify yourself to write; it’s basically a zero-cost art form—totally removed from the corporate dragon paradigm. A near-perfect do-it-yourself type punk rock thing. You don’t need a fancy computer to write; you don’t need expensive video editing software or MIDI controllers or instruments or paints or brushes or even a pen or pencil to write; you can literally go outside and write in the dirt with your finger if you wanted to. Writing is simply the act of using the written word to free your thoughts from the prison of your mind. You don’t need an MFA or a bachelor's degree to start writing. You don’t need to know how the Chicago Manual of Style differs from the Oxford Style Guide to start writing. You don’t need to know how to use a semicolon or an em dash or a serial comma to start writing. You don’t need to know why and when to capitalize certain phrases and/or letters to start writing. You don’t need to know what a “synecdoche” is to start writing. U dun even need to no how to spell to start righting; if ur semi-literate, evn at teh first-grde lvl, u can right—reeders will just kinda parse te words somhow, it’s a well-documented scientifical thaing. The whole spelling-grammar-syntax triad is highly overrated. You can just start writing whenever. You don’t need to pass a test. You don’t need some authority figure to sign a permission slip. You are punk rock—you can do whatever the fuck you want.
Go forth and write.
Some people are afraid to start writing because of the snooty air of pretension surrounding the whole thing—as if they are not good enough to compete with the educated literari, so why even bother? But writing is punk rock, and punk rock—as long as its untainted by corporate dragons—is totally subjective; there’s no universal law dictating which words are “better” or “worse” than other words: there's no legal document deciding which sentences are “good” and which sentences are “bad.” Your writing need not be clear like crystal or grammatically correct to be impactful and/or personally fulfilling; people will still understand you, and those who say otherwise just don't get it—they are not punk rock. Writing is a form of communication that is both very literal and very psychic; when you read the words in this essay, you are reading the actual words, understanding their literal meaning, but you are also absorbing some sort of essence of the author—me—into your psyche; you are learning more about me—the author—on a deep, visceral level, both by my stated values and my subtle written nuances like which words I like to reuse and how I structure my sentences and my overall fragmented, jumpy train of thought, &c. &c. We are literally bonding right now; that’s what writing is all about. I am up here on this stage, screaming my heart out, and you are watching and listening, not only with your eyes and ears but also with your very soul. But if you’re listening for errors in grammar, spelling, syntax, or flow, then you’re listening for all the wrong things; writing need not be treated like some sort of competitive sport in which you endlessly vie for some meaningless title of “best author”; not every piece of writing needs to be picked apart and analyzed and judged as if writing is some sort of martial arts tournament in which every word is a punch and every comma is a parry and every period is a hard kick to the face; that’s not what any of this is about; writing is about having fun and unleashing something uniquely you into the world that is more permanent than a whisper or a scream or a kick to the head. Writing is not about being better than someone else; it’s about expressing what's deep inside you, your raw human emotions—even if they're ugly and unpleasant. You don’t need to feel as if you need to elicit quote-unquote constructive feedback from random people solely for the purposes of becoming more technically proficient in some arbitrary standard set by centuries of super-white dudes subtly manipulating the English language in an effort to gentrify the written word (a.k.a. Standard Written English), because truly interesting writing is not about technical proficiency at all—it’s about raw human experience; it’s about getting up there on that figurative stage and screaming your figurative heart out at the top of your figurative lungs and not giving one dragon shit care in the world if someone doesn't like it. You cannot ask for feedback on your raw human experience and then expect to get anything constructive in return because the only person who can construct your raw human experience is you—corporate dragons may attempt to influence you, but you are the ultimate authority of you. You are the arbiter of your very soul. You are punk rock.
So, write something; liberate yourself. You are not a corporate dragon wearing a mohawk—you are punk rock. You have stuff locked away in that head of yours, waiting to be released. Go forth and write like your very soul depends on it—because it does.
In this year 2024, in which everything from our childhood to our present sense of self to even our future potential is commodified; in which everything is packaged, issued, repackaged, reissued, packed with cheap plastic memorabilia and a tacky badge, and then repackaged again; in which all manner of weird glowy cubes, orbs, and flat panels are vying for our attention, flashing colorful images at us, strobing hyperactive videos that become shorter every day, all in an effort to cram even more commodification into even smaller windows of time to min-max profit margins, all the while destroying our attention spans and draining the life from our very eyes; in which we can barely focus because they have even commodified our brains; in which consuming is not just encouraged but also baked into society at large, required to function, inescapable; in which reading has been made to seem uncool and is subtly discouraged through the continued reliance on headline outrage to generate drama that can then be exploited for profit, and the use of sketchy automatic summarization to ensure that you never have to read a full-length article or book ever again because the corporate dragons hate it, because it takes time away from feeding them through clicks and advertising revenue and subscription fees and raw data that can then be used to target you as an individual specifically so that they can commodify your very soul, mold you into the ultimate little consumer—(and, for the record, I am not above this; I consume, consume, consume)—in which corporate dragons have subverted the art of writing by replacing it with robots, all while making it seem snooty and pretentious in an effort to discourage us from writing critically about them. In the year 2024, in which the commodifiers are themselves commodified and it’s just commodification literally all the way down; in which the very concept of nonconformity has been monetized through the use of video games and pop music and movies and all forms of multimedia; in which corporate dragons want us to define ourselves using one of their trademarked intellectual property logos; in which even violence and death and war itself have been commodified; it follows that the simple act of writing—of creating something, of expressing oneself, of not consuming shit literally all the time—is the most rebellious thing that one can do.
It follows that corporate dragons wearing mohawks are not true punk rockers; true punk rockers are us writers. And as true punk rockers, it is our duty to take up the pen and stab it right into the heart of the beast; it is our duty to SLAY THE CORPORATE DRAGON.
Go forth, dragonslayer.
Citations:
#1. Revealing average screen time statistics for 2024. Backlinko. (2024, March 11). https://backlinko.com/screen-time-statistics