"There are plenty of otaku in Japan, frohe Arbeitslose in Germany and workaholics in Andalusia"
-The Coming Insurrection
In modernity, the collapse of meta-narratives force us to find our own meaning in life. Such a sentiment is pervasive. This preasure is always on you. What are you going to do to "find yourself"? How are you going to bring meaning to your life? Do something productive. Give your life meaning. This has been a source of much confusion for me. In this context, what does "meaning" mean? The idea that a life could have meaning or be meaningful has always struck me as nonsense. Not to sound too reddit atheist here, but life is simply a chemical and energetic process. I suppose the same could be said of anything meaningful though. The most beautiful poem just lines on paper, the most awe inspiring cinema just light reflected off a screen. I think there is a difference here. The difference is in the segmentation and reduction of complexity. Other senses of meaning spewing from meaningless physical processes are particular, zoomed in snapshots of experience, life is a totality of experience. I live my life without any search for meaning, beacause I don't understand the task at hand. Many suffer at the hands of this task. I will suffer by my own hand instead. Find meaning in your job. Find meaning in Netflix. Find meaning in your amazon purchases, in your club nights, in your side hustle, in your performative friendships and failing romances. You can simply choose to exit. Walk away from meaning and be free. Give up on life.
You can't think about the world for very long without being confronted with the question "what ought to be done?" You may engage with self improvement regimens, or political action. I'm not against hobbies. In fact, I'm extremely pro hobbies. I am a pro-hobby extremist. If we could simply acknowledge that the differnce between stamp collecting and studying marxist literature is minimal, not to denigrate reading but elevate stamp collecting, we would all be better for it. When I ask you to give up on life, I am asking you to give up on "life" which gets in the way of your stamp collecting. The new revolutionary subject is not the precari-proletariat, not the hacker or the technologist, certainly not those abominations who call themselves "artists". The revolutionary subject is as it has always been, you who are too lazy to work.
Neo-China, as it tends to do, is arriving from the future. Discovering new ways of hanging out, the flat lying fish touching "gods of sanhe" (三和大神) pioneer a simple doctrine, "work hard one day so you can enjoy the next 3 days". These migrant workers at Sanhe job market who pick up odd jobs one day to spend the next few days grinding LoL at cybercafes. When they can't get work, they sleep and piss on the streets outside the labor recruitment agencies. Many are addicted to gambling. China's "lying flat" movement was widely documented in the west. Western publications love to pick up on any trend which show's China's labor power waining, promoting the chinese work culture as uniquely brutal, rather than just typical of any industrial economy. The differnce is, in china you can stay in a cybercafe overnight for a couple bucks, you can get a bowl of noodles for under $1 at a sit down noodle bar. In western metropolises, we lack this underside. Gentrification and price gauging have robbed us of cheap food and we simply have nowhere to go which isn't expensive as fuck. Americans can't even drink in public or cross the road without the cops getting involved. I'm not playing defence for China here, what I'm saying is everything you've heard bad about China is not unique. They're "lying flat". Why aren't you?
You haven't given up on life because you still believe it hasn't started yet. You think that some day in the future, a vague "something" will happen and then your life will really begin. That will not happen. Give up. What they don't tell you is that you can just leave. As another group of east asians who have chosen to exit, the NEET, hikikomori otaku in Japan say, "人生はクソゲだ", life is a shit tier game. Give up! This is not some anti-capitalist political strategy. I know I said something about a revolutionary class earlier, but that was a joke. Another lie you tell yourself is that your political opinions and actions matter. They so obviously do not. You can organise 3 million people to march against a war, and all you'll get out of it is a mention in the Guiness World Records. You have no impact. You have no power. If you work hard, you are paid the same as if you had slacked off. If you slack off, you might get layed off. If you work hard, you still might get layed off. Working hard is a supersitious rituatual self-flagellation. You don't need to try so hard. Even if you fail in life, life is all you have failed at.
When I say to give up on life, what do I mean. I'm not asking you to kill yourself, although if you feel like you want to, that's understandable. The "life" I'm talking about is the life in "work-life ballance", "social life", "life of the party", "healthy lifestyle", "living it up". In many multiplayer online video games, there is a ranking system. As you improve at the game, you rank up. Usually it uses some tiers like bronze, silver, gold, platinum or something along those lines. When people play those games, they feel an urge to grind up those levels, to rank up, to climb the ladder. Why? The game doesn't force you to do this. You can simply choose to ignore this system and it will not effect you in any way. And yet still, the vast vast majority of players see the ranking systems in these games as the "goal". There's nothing special waiting for you in global elite. It's just more counter strike. This is the perspective I am offering. Ignore these ladder systems. Live at the bottom of the barrel. Not because it's noble, but because why bother to do anything else? Let your personal higene slip a little. Forget to wash the dishes. Cancel your gym membership. Eat cheap slop and feel like shit. Daydrink. Work as little as possible. Don't think to yourself "if I can work a few more hours, I can afford this luxury", insteaad think "if I cut out this luxury, I can work fewer hours!" It's cliche to point out that we live in the cyberpunk dystopia, so start living like it! Why are you spending your hard earned money on some grass finished steak when you can buy Huel Essential powder for $1 per meal. Drink the slop, drink it up. "I'm better than this". You are not better than this.
An under discussed mode of power under state capitalism is the power of lacking value. Capital deterratorialises and reterratorialises zones in order to produce itself, but it's own failing is that it can't see beyond itself. In "the art of not being governed", James C. Scott discusses how and why the hill people of Zomia grow cassava rather than rice as is predominant in the valley populations. Cassava is a tubar which reaches maturity in about 1 year, but will stay perfectly edible for up to 2 years if just left as-is in the ground. However the second you dig it up, it starts to go bad quickly. In under a week, it's worthless. This is a direct strategy of state evasion, the state can't tax or confiscate your harvest if it's completely worthless to them. You can't transport it any long distance, and even if you can get it down the mountain quick enough to sell, no one wants to buy it because rice is considered a higher quality food, and is in ready supply. So it's simply more hassle than it's worth for the state to go through the effort of taxing this harvest. According to Marx, Workers under capitalism have been alienated from all of their powers other than their labour power, and are then forced to sell that labour power for a wage. Like the zomians only have the agricultural product of their swidden farms, you must make your labour power worthless. Be lazy, work slowly, sabotage or undermine and play dumb if called out. Work few hours and if the going gets tough, quit. As Sartre said, "Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat." Instead of working, you should spend your time playing video games, masturbating, and watching anime. Not shounen garbage. Watch Gochuumon wa usagi desu ka. This is praxis.
If at all possible, you should quit your job. You should take whatever welfare the government will give you. Steal whatever from whoever. Rice and beans constitute a nutritionally complete meal. So do potatoes and butter (as long as you eat some oats from time to time also). The planet is heating up, so we're chilling out. This is not just about work-life. Quit your social life. Don't go out and waste your money on pints that cost 10 quid, follow the tramp index and get pissed for cheap. Fuck your friends (literally and figuratively). If you've got a mate who's better off than you, get them to pay for as much shit as you can. In return, if you're better off than a mate, pay for their shit. Cancel dinner dates to stay at home and play eroge. Leave those godawful discord servers you're in. Do the opposite of "networking". Be needlessly abrasive, because it's funny. Laugh at your own jokes. Get addicted to an MMO. Piss in the streets to reclaim the built environment. Never go outside unless you absolutely have to. If you can't find a girlfriend, give up.
The powers that be which aim to maintain social cohesian will make it hard to live easy. Anything which goes against the productivity cult is often labeled as degrading the moral fabric of society. If you stop bringing vallue to the table, if you give up on life, the populous will recoil in shock. They are scared because they have just been confronted by someone who accepted "I am not better than this", and they now feel as if they are being told "you are not better than this either". This offends and terrifies them. It's important to note that they aren't entirely wrong. Giving up on life is harmful to other people. You may no longer pay taxes, you may cut off friends. You may be rude of abrassive, you may take up public space. You may smell bad. You may do immoral things.
Due to the dissapearence of cybercafes and cheap lodgings, the sanhe gods can no longer be found in the same areas as they were. But similar groups still exist scattered accross shenzen. Akihiabara has become a shell of it's former self, catering to tourists rather than otaku, but comiket is still going strong and you can buy doujinshi in nakano broadway. The great american hobo died out long before I was born. But we will continue to give up on life regardless, because why bother to do anything else, after all even if we fail, life is the only thing we have failed at.