"Did you see Idol last night?" ... "Can you believe the Pats went for it on 4th and 2?" ... "It turns out Lost jumped the shark in season one, but none of us noticed!" ... Small talk and Monday morning quaterbacking around the water cooler are hardly human interaction. Although an utterance of, "There was nothing good on TV last night so I read this book in which the author says we no longer directly live, but experience a false representation of life through an endless succession of spectacles," might be met with a slightly more authentic form of human contact: the blank stare.*
"The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images."
* The Blank Stare, once the weapon of sardons and malcontented comedians, (see: Bill Hicks,) has matriculated into common use and been commodified by the spectacle to punctuate and soften irony. A goofy "just kidding!" sung after every "insult," (see: Jon Stewart.)
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