MUSK AGAINST BANNON: WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF PRODUSERS

Trump faces an 'impossible' coalition between digital feudal masters and exploited workers—one that will inevitably collapse.

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Perhaps the lowest point in the downward spiral of our public life is epitomized by the "CostCo Guys," a duo consisting of father Andrew "A.J." Befumo Jr. and his son Eric Justice Befumo. They gained popularity on TikTok and YouTube in 2024 for their videos filmed at the warehouse store Costco. Their first viral video featured them shopping for meatballs for Eric's mother. They subsequently began producing videos in which they rated products from Costco, categorizing them either positively as a "boom" or negatively as a "doom."

These videos are riddled with paradoxes that defy easy understanding. On the surface, they appear to be spontaneous amateur recordings, but it has since been revealed that they were carefully staged with the help of assistants. While they seem to serve as publicity for Costco, they were initially made without any collaboration with the company—and at one point, the duo was even thrown out of a Costco store while attempting to record there. As such, the CostCo Guys epitomize a widespread trend of free publicity. Thousands of individuals, particularly young women, post video clips online that promote brands of body lotion, lipstick, or nail polish—a capitalist’s dream come true and an unexpected byproduct of economic neo-feudalism.

This phenomenon—publicity created for free—is arguably more troubling than its opposite: covertly financed creative content masquerading as independent work. It marks a moment when publicity takes on a life of its own, perhaps signaling one definition of societal decline.

This trend is rooted in the new digital spaces of communication (Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok), which have fostered a culture characterized by short attention spans, rapid shifts between messages, and multitasking. Initially celebrated as an anarchist utopia that blurred the lines between private and public spheres and between producers and consumers, these platforms gave rise to a new hybrid identity: produsers (a term coined by Yanis Varoufakis). In this model, everyone participates in direct exchanges without centralized regulation or oversight—no "big Other" limiting freedom. Yet this utopia has devolved into a dystopia where individuals function as serfs within privately controlled corporate spaces.

Regarding Donald Trump, his political stance reflects a form of liberalism that allows corporations to operate with minimal state control—a particularly dangerous position in the context of global warming. For example, the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative has worked to preserve scientific data amid fears that topics like climate change and green energy would be scrubbed from government websites under Trump’s administration. This scenario represents a nightmare where the public is deprived of accurate information, leaving them unable to make informed decisions about ecological policy.

Trump’s administration also featured an unprecedented number of billionaires—an ironic reality for someone who styled himself as a champion of working people. In practice, Trump’s liberalism translated into greater freedom for digital feudal lords (to borrow Varoufakis's term). The irony deepens when considering Trump’s rhetoric against globalist corporations exploiting American workers; his administration relied heavily on support from these very corporate elites, embodied most prominently by Elon Musk.

It is important to distinguish Trump’s political framework from Fascism. Fascism entails a political monopoly by the ruling party, leaving no room for independent corporate power like that wielded by today’s techno-feudal masters. What we see in the U.S.—corporate elites directly occupying high government positions—is antithetical to classical Fascism.