TO BE OR NOT TO BE A PROTAGONIST

2023

The identity and gains of the "NPC performer" in these trendy live streams are less concerning than the enormous audience fuelling this captivating entertainment business. To agree to be controlled in exchange for money is not a new phenomenon per se — and as such, perhaps, not that interesting. However, it appears as a novelty due to how these mechanisms — in contemporary society — are enacted along with its moral, legal and economic democratisation. Within the logic of oppression and control of the other, prostitution is an excellent example to which this new media phenomenon can relate. Beyond the sexual pleasure sought from prostitution lies a more contorted charm: dominance and the capacity to exercise power over another individual, the excitement of knowing that the individual is forced to obey our desire, to be subjected to our most primordial desire. In general, possessing what the other desire and coercing it into our desires is one of the most potent sexual excitements, even when no sexual activity is performed. For no other reason, there is a say in Italian, roughly translated as "to command is better than to fuck". Although it is well known that money and power are synonyms in our society, this is a faulty dualism — money is just a vehicle. Nobody wants money per se — numerical abstractions — but everyone wants what money signifies: power. It is essential to clarify that the need for dominance is not superior to sex but rather an enhanced stage of the sex drive and that dominance is intrinsic in human beings due to its association with it.  As such, individuals dominate and are dominated — it is an escapable human condition — everyone, without exception, must compromise. However, in the social constructions in which individuals participate, it is evident that there is a disequilibrium: almost all people are serfs rather than masters — subject to constant obligations both in the public and private spheres. Individuals are born and grow in a system of well-defined hierarchies since introduced in their first institution — the school — within its power structure. They soon fathom how those above can influence the lives of those below. Nevertheless, the most poignant discernment also occurs: how it feels to have power (termed "responsibility" within the educational institution). Everyone remembers that kid appointed to "supervise" the class during the teacher's brief absence with the duty to write the names of those who misbehaved on the blackboard. The young students were usually pleased and proud to carry such a role. In our contemporary society, there are fewer and fewer supervisors and more and more supervised. It is a fact that the wane of freedom can only lead to repression. Then, as command and dominance are intrinsic traits, individuals must find a way to release repression without compromising legality and morality — as constantly controlled and judged individuals. The live streams in which the actor is at the mercy of the public are the most exciting — and yet safe — opportunity in which the social individual can participate in the commodification of power — a practice from which the majority is typically excluded. These spectacles are the perfect stage in which the spectator can move from the condition of dominated to the condition of dominator — psychoanalytically: moving from being an object to being a subject. People have the desperate need to feel individual in our yet already individualistic society — to see the other as a controllable object is an exacerbation of the latter — controlling a real-life NPC is a new form of solipsism, of profound narcissism. Society should worry about how the normalisation of seeing others as objects of use and consumption implies a profound lack of empathy. Society should talk about its psychopathy clearly expressed in this new trend, a marker of the exasperate research of being the protagonists of life.