What an absurd phrase "sell yourself". The complete comodification of society and humanity and human beings in particular. Yes you think, "I will market myself" like a product in an advertisement on TV or perhaps a call girl on craigslist. Completely dehumanizing. Further subverting the notion of the self. The self for sale, the self as sales abstraction and target audience marketing. Worse than the sexual abstraction of pornography as here it is not a biological/sexual function the "product" provides but only an emotionless market function. The abstraction playing to the whim of the abstraction. Completely obliterating honesty or integrity. Employees no longer judged by merit, it was once dreamed we might live in a meritocracy where all men rose or fell by the dint of their own labor, the sweat of their brow, but no more. Now careers, nay whole lives, even whole economies, are predicated on the sale of a non-existent product. Its a complete sham and both sides know it. The best resume, the best "selling yourself" at any interview and invariably the employee, newly hired, will be found at any given moment sitting on facebook or sexting or whatever else employs do while in their cubicles. No one believes the hard selling specifically because it is so universal. Its like crying wolf but everyone is doing it 24/7 and in doing it they guarantee the wolf, in fact, does not exist.
Or, this also reminds me, of this idea slavoj zizek was talking about in some youtube video I saw (cant be arsed to find it right now). He was describing the strange proliferation of the myth of santa claus. So for example, if you ask the parents (separate of the children) if they believe in santa claus they will of course say "no nobody really believes in santa claus thats an absurd notion but the children enjoy the idea of him bringing them presents" and if you ask the children (independent of the parents) "do you believe in santa claus?" they will say "no of course not but if I dont tell my parents I believe in santa claus then maybe they wont give me presents. And then if you ask the children, in the company of the parents, or the parents in company of the children "do you believe in santa claus?" both parties will emphatically say "yes he is real! He comes every christmas" and so on.
So the employee recognizes the resume and all this crap about "self motivated go getter! im the best brown noser ever blah blah blah" the employee fully knows this is crap and even the employer him/her self recognizes this is absolute crap but for that moment sitting in the room with one another or discussing the issue over a phone for instance, at this point they both suspend disbelief and profess complete belief in the lie they both know to be a lie. As if the one was professing belief for the sake of the other. Also of course they have to profess belief for themselves. The employee needs to pretend he cares about this shit job and the employer needs to believe that this employee cares to assuage his/her conscience. A sort of plausible deny-ability. So that an employer might say to a superior (without a chink in the lie showing) "oh yes I have picked the best candidate I could find". And on paper or in an interview an employee may in fact have created the proper environment for the employer to sufficiently suspend his/her disbelief and then knowingly believe a lie created by a prospective employee, in a kind of, "I love lucy" way in which one side is letting the other side be fooled by the one while the other winks at the fourth wall letting the audience in on the joke. "Oh yeah he is totally buying it!" "Oh my god I cant believe he thinks im buying it!" and the cacophony of laughter just grows louder and louder all the while.
Im not sure who is the parent or child and who is santa claus in this example but, ok, homework, you figure that one out I just stopped caring.
