coding the self

This post first appeared on Myspace, Jan 3, 2004.

These over-HTML'd myspace profile pages are as intriguing as they are annoying...the rush to say everything about oneself, all at once, in a concatenation, nay, an explosion! of pictures and visual motifs (and/or a song, while the text, by contrast, becomes barely legible), a kind of hysterical insistence, identity by proxy, as though a list of favorite movies were not already enough to flatten subjectivity into a display of effects. There is in this rush, this hysteria, a certain honesty. Overwhelm me with your truth! And when you do, thankfully, there will be nothing left to desire and no speech.