Social media accentuates our profound alienation from our lives and relationships. Through social media, we construct images of ourselves which interact with the images of others. The social relations between images have become more “real” than the social relations between people. In order to understand the mechanisms at work here, this post will quickly trace a line from Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism through the Situationist “society of the spectacle” to the intensification of spectacular relationships through social media today. I end with thoughts towards a practice of care and connection in the time of coronavirus.

Commodity Fetishism and Alienation

Marx argues that capitalism is experienced as an intensely alienating social system because it perverts the fundamental activity that makes us human. Unlike animals, humans produce the conditions of our own social lives: food, clothing, shelter, culture, etc. When we labor, we put part of ourselves into the object of production. In a non-capitalist system, we produce goods for the use of ourselves, our families, and our communities. We put our life into the products, but we “regain” this life when our community uses the goods.

Under capitalist wage labor, commodities are produced not for use but rather for exchange value. We labor not to feed, clothe, and shelter ourselves and our community, but rather for the sake of profit for a capitalist. We imbue the commodities we produce with our life, but they confront us as something outside of ourselves, in control of another person for their profit. These commodities become “fetishes”: they seem to be imbued with energy of their own which is disconnected from the labor that has produced them. Capitalism becomes a system in which commodities interact with each other in the marketplace, disguising the real social relations between humans. We suffer a profound disconnect with the world and our own sense of humanity.

The Spectacle

In Guy Debord’s seminal Situationist text Society of the Spectacle (1967), he argues that the commodity form has so thoroughly dominated modern society that it has produced a totally fetishized world in its own image. Life is dominated not by concrete commodities but rather by images and representations which relate to each other. “The spectacle,” Debord says, “is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.” Capitalism first degraded being into having, then having into appearing. What matters now is less the reality of possessing money and commodities, but the appearance of possession. Appearance has become autonomous from social reality. Representation has become independent and even superior to our lived experience. Images are more real than reality itself.

Social Media

The advent of social media has intensified the domination of life by representation. The spectacle has deepened its grip on our lives further than Debord could imagine in his era of unilateral mass media. Social media has made us each producers of the spectacle. But our collaboration does not liberate us or give us control over the process of production. As Marx points out, alienation is located within the act of production itself. Labor is what makes us human; labor which produces commodities is itself degrading. When we craft an image of ourselves which represents us to the world, we lose part of our sense of reality and humanity. Our image interacts with other equally false images through the medium of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok.

This is why social media makes us feel so bad: it is not simply that we do not live up to the carefully crafted images of others, but rather that we must craft our own image to interact with their images. We do not relate directly to others; instead, our images relate to their images, semi-autonomously from reality. Through our production of images, the fetish of representation replaces our human relationships. It is easy to say that the solution is not to participate, but coronavirus has eliminated even this seemingly easy choice.

Social Media and Social Distancing

Our social distancing during coronavirus will likely deepen this sense of alienation. It appears that our only option to maintain many of our social relations may be to embrace social media. But perhaps this is an opportunity to humanize our relationship to social media. Maybe we can let go of the compulsion to project a carefully crafted image of ourselves on social media. Can we share our fears and failures alongside our successes? How can we use social media to practice care and connection with each other, to make it through this crisis with our sense of humanity strengthened rather than depleted?

This time of uncertainty is also an opportunity to experiment with new forms of social relations outside of both social media and our typical daily lives. Alongside posting in our online mutual aid groups, we can take concrete actions in our community. We can buy groceries for those who cannot, organize our neighborhoods to look after each other, post art on telephone poles, and write messages of solidarity on every surface to forge community out of our solitary daily walks. Against the bleak atomization of social distancing we must act consciously to build community and solidarity.