Hi, my name is Max and I’m thinking of selling out. I’ve thought about it for a long time, but I’ve been reticent to actually do it until recently. “Why?” you may ask. Well, for one, I’m not entirely sure what the hell "selling out’" even means anymore. Do you? As I sit here, trying to explicate just what "selling out" is, or being labeled a "sell out" might actually mean, I’m thinking about one thing: selling out! I can’t rightfully explain what it is, so I’ll treat this as an exploration—a concept, an idea, a philosophical viewpoint (maybe even complete and utter bullshit), but something I think many grapple with, few understand, and others so willingly embrace.
Be sure, this is a think-piece, this is content, this is some sort of metric data—marketable and being marketed to you (to possibly read via Twitter while you’re taking a shit) for consumption while you blink endlessly away from whatever work you might be doing, but so desperately need to escape. Yes, if you’re reading this you might have already sold out, bro! Congratu-fucking-lations. But know that "selling out" is more than the sum of its parts. It’s the exception to the rule, as the rule. It’s the Man, man. It’s everything you know it is, and yet it doesn’t actually assure happiness or financial stability, or really anything at all. So why do we all seek it while simultaneously lambasting the notion, the idea, the act of "selling out?"
When you think about it, they basically sold our asses out before we even had a say.
I recently graduated college with no immediate or immanent career plans and a burning (not in that way) desire to succeed—something that has been dubbed being “out here” by other contributors to this site. Generationally speaking, I’m coming into my adult life in what might be one of the worst economic downturns in modern history, a fact that casts a bleak shadow on the precepts of independence (owning art in a cool loft) and the triumph of the individual will (taking girls out to dinner at places that have menus). So, in some ways, the true notion of "selling out" is somewhat nullified by the fact that we already live in a capitalist and materialistic society. (I know, quite the spoiler alert as you read this on a laptop that costs $1,000.) All the same, we all want our own lives and to reach our fullest potential in the real world, and not necessarily be weighed down by the conventional trappings of material existence. Or maybe we really do?
Either way, I know we are in large part a generation of conflicted egoists (some more than others depending on how many pictures you take of yourself per day). We get called Millenials, Gen-Y and sometimes even spoiled brats because we want more than what has been offered to us. Surely we are a hurt demographic. The standard perception of "selling out" our forebearer set for us, to which we now apply ourselves, has become harder and harder to achieve. When you think about it, they basically sold our asses out before we even had a say.
Consider this: we live in a day and age where we’ve curated and quantified and data-mined ourselves to the fucking antithesis of extinction. One of my greatest personal fears is that I will some day be forgotten, but at the dawn of the 21st century we all became data, and now I know for certain I’ll never be forgotten, just like you. But we may be lost among the one’s and zero’s. We’re just information that passed into the great database in the sky the moment we made a Facebook or Tumblr or whatever wackness we participated in on the Internet before that. Even at birth, we’re logged somewhere for safe-keeping, given a number, and so it goes. Maybe this is a dystopian (because that shit kinda read like a B level 1984) or even pessimistic outlook, but when you realize the scope of the near-meaningless concept of "selling out," at this stage in the game, it really doesn’t change the way we exist today. At all. "Selling out" is part of the deal we’re given from day one. The only rules that change along the way are what we give up or what we take along the way to becoming who we are.
If creating an independent and worthwhile life is "selling out," then consider me sold one hunderd times over.
As I struggle with my initial wading into the deadly warfare of starting a career, I must subject myself to the formal deliberations and obligations of that process because you need to act like an adult to become an adult. Does this make me a "sell out" because I am doing what hundreds of thousands of other people my age are doing? No. It makes us a demographic, plain and simply. Selling out isn’t the kind of thing that can be quantified, but too often people try to qualify it, resorting to calling those that have used and engaged with the system "sell outs" because they made the moves they wanted to make in order to pursue their career, their happiness, their [insert whatever the fuck lifestyle here]. I'm calling straight bullshit on that. Johnny Rotten is a sell out after all, and he is punk rock. But we’re growing up in a time of bunk promises and raw deals, and in many ways we feel hurt and betrayed, resorting to sticking with out of date notions about individualism and materialism, and how they can’t be mutually exclusive. Selling out has all to do with how much you give up, not how much you create for yourself. If creating an independent and worthwhile life is "selling out," then consider me sold one hunderd times over.
In the end, maybe all the punks sold out and the gods are dead and blah blah blah, but don’t confuse this with some crackpot ethical egoism stance that Ayn Rand would strike. It's something we all must face, every generation that was and will be—the reality of now and always and until the robots rise up and shoot us all in the face, is that we all must do what we need to in order to get by. We’re all in some way culpable in "selling out" whatever and however it may be, but we are not sold out if we maintain our integrity and don’t compromise on who we all are as people. Whether or not I can, will, or have already sold out is yet to be determined and decided, and I only hope that when the time comes and the Man calls upon me, it’ll be on my terms and not theirs.
Max Gardner is a writer and filmmaker living in Brooklyn. Read his blog here and follow him on Twitter here.
