230422-social

"... how people become products themselves, deriving a reliable form of recognition when other kinds of social practice have been undermined. If you strive to be the product, you can believe that you are for sale on your own terms, that you’re evading exploitation, that you’re not being deceived. It feels necessary for survival, as when people used to insist that having accounts on all the platforms wasn’t optional if you didn’t want to be left behind, if you wanted to be employable, if you wanted to come across as a normal person. But it remains a form of collusion with the forces of reification rather than a form of resistance or counter-cooptation."

"Social media offered sociality for a society without solidarity."


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