What does it currently mean to make content for the internet?
I’ve been a content creator for over two decades before it was labeled. Since a time before LiveJournal and MySpace, before social media existed in any context, I’ve been blogging and “camgirl”ing since the mid 1990s.
Before we wrote for the algorithm, we wrote as practice. Sharing online held different meaning that wasn’t beholden to metrics. While we can’t go back to what used to be, I find myself wondering how we might move forward to decouple the act of sharing and connecting online from what Guy Debord calls “The Society of the Spectacle”, where the act of representing our lives online becomes more important than the act of actually living it in real space.
How might we reclaim a space that once served us as humans rather than serving tech oligarch billionaires and ultimately the capitalist system that they, in turn, serve? What does a post-capitalist online forum look like? Can it even exist considering how entrenched we currently find ourselves?
At the same time, how do we use these spaces as places of knowledge sharing without succumbing to performative politics that never change the underlying power structures that cause injustice and oppression? Jodi Dean talks about how digital circulation produces a feeling of participation without affecting meaningful change. We see this in our online protests; our attention and communication itself becoming commodified under digital capitalism.
Grab a pencil and paper. Draw three columns.
Column 1: What I Give
List what your contribute online:
Posts, Comments, Images, Emotional labour, Analysis, Amplification, Attention
Be concrete. Estimate frequency and time if possible.
Column 2: What I Receive
List what you gain:
Visibility, Validation, Information, Community, Income, Regulation, Professional opportunity, Distraction
Resist moral judgement. Just map the exchange.
Column 3: Who Profits?
For each item, ask:
Does this strengthen relationships offline?
Does this build collective capacity?
Or does it primarily generate data, engagement, and profit for the platform?
Notice asymmetries.
Reimagine the Architecture
If social media were designed around reciprocity rather than engagement, what would it prioritize?
Slower feeds, Smaller circles, No metrics, Collective authorships, Resource pooling, Mutual aid infrastructure
Reclaimation begins when participation becomes deliberate rather than automatic.
Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. New York: Zone Books, 1994. Publisher page (Zone Books / MIT Press distribution):
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780942299793/the-society-of-the-spectacle/
Dean, Jodi. Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009. Publisher page (Duke University Press):
https://www.dukeupress.edu/democracy-and-other-neoliberal-fantasies
