(Audio Note Transcript)
Entertainment, as we have already noted elsewhere, is the art of diversion, the art of « maintaining » the recipient of this entertainment in a state of diversion, of ensuring that the diversion works, that is to say, that they do not pay attention to what they should be paying attention to so that the interests of the players creating the diversion are ensured.
The same recipient is maintained in this state, just as one feeds doubt on a particular point. Entertainment consists of maintaining the illusion: the person is in a heated room, comfortably seated, with artfully decorated windows, the ornamentation tailored to their every whim (the algorithmization of environments). Sometimes, the man hears outside noises: birds, nature, the conversations of free men passing by.
Sometimes, he sees a face and may feel the urge to get up.
This is where the engineering of maintenance, the art of care, comes into play. It consists of slightly increasing the background music, partially obscuring the glass by replacing decorations that, due to the humidity, were beginning to peel off, adding a foot cushion, bringing in masseuses for the shoulders, or introducing a few specialists in a subject the man enjoys—thus maintaining him in a state of captivity through diversion/entertainment.
All these techniques are refined at the group or individual level, even at the micro-individual level, taking into account the fluctuations and changes in the target’s mood. Then, when all these techniques fail, when none manages to prolong the state of lethargy through entertainment, that’s when the whole artifice of fear comes into play.
Here we are.
Notes & Silence 