The Network Spectacle

The vigorous pursuit of online social capital operates within the broader framework of a network spectacle that prescribes what is real, true, and permissible within its confines. The prevailing optimism of digital networks is rarely questioned or criticized, but rather serves to accelerate its normalization and ubiquity in society while marginalizing most criticism. By appealing to the works of Guy Debord and his concept of the spectacle, this chapter tracks the relationship between truth and illusion on social media, as well as demonstrating how such environments privilege a capitalist metanarrative. Moreover, insights from the works of Jean Baudrillard on the idea of the postmodern relationship of the real and simulacra provides an additional line of inquiry, culminating in the understanding that the network spectacle increases the state of alienation according to the four registers of alienation Marx identifies.