Yes, this game. Yes, we've lost. (Thanks, BoingBoing.) This probably doesn't need explicating, but the Game is a perfect metaphor for the sprezzatura of postmodern identity. We all succeed at playing the role of ourselves as long as we simultaneously fail to become self-conscious, and repress or disavow all our efforts to appear effortless. That is, we win as long as we forget to acknowledge the way we use consumerism for self-fashioning, the way we buy into the way trends work and perpetuate and/or modify the meanings of objects, and so on. As long as that is the case, we can transcend it all. Once we get wind of what we are doing behind our own backs, we fall back into the muck of alienation and desire; we "lose."
I think Lacan invented the game.
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