“Even the famous want to be famous. No one can escape the coded submission we crave, and in the back lit screen-darkness we join in the virtual now of now. Pleasure is ruled by relentless and unavoidable image connection.
The future is not real— b boys are.”
In B-BOYZ, David Macke uses internet-based images and text to explore themes of spectacle, sexuality, and the relationship between the watcher and the watched. The book begins with the entire Wikipedia entry for cinéma vérité, a “style of documentary filmmaking… [that] combines improvisation with the use of the camera to unveil truth or highlight subjects hidden behind crude reality.” In cinéma vérité, the presence of the camera is obvious, which some argue results in film that best presents situational “truth.” Macke juxtaposes this entry with screenshots of tumblr blog posts, most of which are screenshots of gay porn. Macke doesn’t crop the images, but includes the search bars and navigation buttons familiar to users of Tumblr or Instagram. This reminds the reader that this image was originally consumed through a screen, which, through the screenshot, functions as a camera, thereby making the reader’s consumption of this pornography a type of cinéma vérité in itself.