Guy Debord creates a distinction in the societal timeline. A point in which humanity moved away from the authentic experience of social life to its representation. Images have supplanted genuine human interaction. Debord frames his argument through a Marxist lens where the wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails presents itself as immense accumulation of commodities. Advanced capitalism has pushed this further where the decline of being into having, and then having into merely appearing. Therefore, the actual function of an object has lost its prestige to the socially applied appearance of the object. Thus spectacle has created a cyclical model of consumption (“The spectacle is both the outcome and the goal of the dominant mode of production”), where the objects of consumption control the consumer. According to Debord the object of this fueled consumption is the social relationship between people that is mediated by images.

“It is not something added to the real world — not a decorative element, so to speak.” If the spectacle is explicitly linked to capital, yet is not added to the real world than it is something whose production alters our understanding of the real world, “-the spectacle epitomizes the prevailing model of social life.”

People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.

                                                                                                                         -Banksy?