Mark Fisher on why Modern Life causes Depression ITA sub

Provenance

Self-transcribed from the recording's audio/video with Whisper ASR, then drawn from the frozen curation of the CCRU oral archive. The identifiers below fingerprint the exact source transcript files.

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Adjudicated APPROVED 2026-07-11 (basis: stage-1 acceptance ruling — lane open-web-talk approved for opus-only hosting; mp3 tier deferred pending a disk volume). Series: standalone. Source: audio original (.mp3).

Timestamped map

These jump targets come from timestamps preserved in the source transcript, so they work as navigational anchors rather than editorially invented section labels. Timings are approximate — they mark where a passage begins, not exact word timing.

• 00:00:00

  A lot of the work in my job, the things I don't like doing, is simple simulation of productivity, bureaucratic simulation, created by managerialists whose job, the parasites of institutions, the real parasites, not immigrants, not people claiming unemployment benefit, the real parasites of our society. The very high…

• 00:00:45

  The big lie that has been sold to us by neoliberalism is that if we withdraw security from people, we withdraw social security, then suddenly there will be this creative, this wellspring of creativity will just emerge. Okay, all that happens if you remove security from people is they get like I was when I…

• 00:01:11

  That's a stupid thing for people to have to think about a lot of the time. You know, and look at all these great people we're supposed to admire now. Not that they've invented anything. You know, Steve Jobs, he didn't invent anything. He's just a parasite. You know, Simon Cowell, he doesn't have done anything. He's…

• 00:01:32

  If that's what you want to devote your life to, just fucking do it. But don't expect us to also admire you and just, you know, and you be the model for everybody else all the time. You know, we shouldn't have to worry about making money all every waking hour of our days. That's a depressing kind of reality that…

• 00:02:16

  It wasn't normal for young people to be depressed in the 70s, let's say. Got to start off from that heroic conditions in which young people live. These are terrible conditions. Just really, really terrible conditions. You know, you, I just can't impress this, you've been deprived of things. You've been deprived…

• 00:02:38

  You've got all this stuff. You've got all this capacity to do things. It just isn't like that. And so, for Baradei, the argument is, why did, the 90s was a decade of the emergence of cyberspace and of Prozac. And for him, there's two things that totally relate together. How did people cope with these new level…

• 00:03:00

  Antidepressants as a hazing thing. Which, you can hear this, like this downer haze. That's why Drake is really interesting. The new Drake record. Full of this kind of electro downer haze. Everyone's on downers now to cope with the, just cyber blitz. Whether it's antidepressants or other forms of kind…

• 00:03:24

  There's, you know, there will be a breakdown. We cannot cope with this. We cannot cope with it.