How-to for Neolibs
So, you’ve been quarantined again, I hear. What happened to the glass bubble or whatever it was that your campus was constructing? It was burst by external pressure? How tragic. So, you’re back to online learning. You poor thing. I sympathise. Not only is it incredibly difficult to engage meaningfully with professors and course content via a screen, but also, more importantly, now you’re worried about how you’re going to project the right image to your peers and potential employers.
How will they know you would be wearing an ethnically sourced blue FabIndia shirt to Macroeconomics if only you could? How will they know you are experiencing a crisis of masculinity because of the 52 genders you found on Wikipedia, if you can no longer drag your sweaty towel over several pieces of gym equipment? And how will they know your grand plan is to girlboss your way into a position of exploitation — sorry — ‘change the system from the inside,’ if you’re stuck at home?
I can help you out. Us neoliberals are famous for our adaptability — any situation can be turned around with the power of magical thinking and manifestation. Here’s what to do to attract the right energy from your tribe.
HOW TO BE A DESIRABLE** NEOLIBERAL MCM FROM WHEREVER YOU ARE IN THE WORLD!! (**SOCIAL DISTANCING-FRIENDLY) (UPDATED APRIL 2021)
Club Engagement
Instead of: being a core team member of the Ashoka Debating Union in which you are famous for starting speeches with things like “imagine if you were an oppressed person”
Try: joining Clubhouse. It’s a great app for you to network with people just like us — it’s got Elon Musk, capitalists without capital, diaspora Indians who know all possible alliterations with ‘desi,’ et cetera, and so forth. On Clubhouse, you are free to have heated debates in echo chambers with empty buzzwords that have no impact on the real world! The dream.
Music and Love
Instead of: standing really close to girls in the smoking room and asking them if they’ve heard of Tame Impala,
Try: politely reviewing the quality of music girls post on their Instagram stories. DMs might sound something like, “Their last good album was in 1876 this song sucks they sold out lol,” immediately followed by, “Do u want to go for a socially-distanced chai and music date lol I can get a splitter.” Since these women chose to share their music with you on their social media, they absolutely want to hear your thoughts on it.
Class Participation
Instead of: interrupting class every chance you get with a “question — actually it’s more of a comment,”
Try: SCREAMING VERY LOUDLY WHENEVER YOUR PROFESSOR ENTERS YOUR BREAKOUT ROOM. If you’re not the person leading the conversation when they enter, the professor is going to think you’re not very peng. And that would be a tragedy.
Activism
Instead of:
Try: sharing 2 social justice Instagram stories a week. There are strict rules. Each story MUST be an infographic made on Canva, to ensure it’s nothing too radical or dialecticaled. The content is irrelevant, but it must include AT LEAST TWO of the following words — normalize, mental health, more power to you, problematic, slim shady, diversity, mom’s spaghetti, sustainability. Always supplement the story with some real good political stuff like, “why is no one talking about this?!” or “TW: hot take!!” SJW* king!
*for the uninitiated, SJW stands for Sarah Jessica Womanist, a term popularised by 5th Wave feminism
Mental Health
Instead of: self-medicating with Old Monk and Ayn Rand pretty much every day on campus to get through the #normalised horrors of life under late-stage capitalism,
Try: ignoring structural conditions enabling exploitative and alienating conditions of living by practicing self-care, singing the national anthem every 11:11 (All Star by Smash Mouth), and unleashing the shocking power of the law of attraction!
Of course, this is not an exhaustive list of changes you can make to live a better, more neoliberal, blessed life. Some other choices you should make to improve your lifestyle range from being born into generational wealth to having rich parents. Treat this as a starting point as different identity groups suffer asymmetrically because of the pandemic. Not everybody has it as bad as us, but with your determination and hard work, the neoliberal identity can flourish online. Thank you for your time and remember — motivate, manifest, marinate.
-Written by Sanjana Sheth
