It’s Content All the Way Down
Something that is becoming an increasing issue in the digital space is the idea of “Content” — because content is everything and everything is content. There has been an immense and intentional homogenization of content in the eyes of society, done purposefully as power over the internet has become consolidated into the hands of only a few companies. If media environments are the complex ecological biomes of messaging and conveyance, we live inside of then what is occurring now is the ecosystem being destroyed to make room for media farmlands. We see the use of this term “Content” in places like the nebulous job title “Content creator” or how Netflix claims to have the best “Content,” AI “Content” is going to change the future etc. But this term, “Content” is also a means of devaluing both the producers and consumers of social media and online entertainment as well as the internet medium itself. Content is the vehicle through which the Technopoly mutates into Technofeudalism and people are made worse for living under it.
In Technopoly, Postman talks about how new technologies alter how we perceive things and this move into “Content” is another example of this trend. As Web 1.0 shifted into Web 2.0 and we now wait to see what emerges as Web 3.0, the various things that make up the patchwork surface of the web from fitness influencers to the New York Times articles to cat video compilations to meme tweets are placed into the equal value category of Content and intentionally recontextualized to lessen their meaning for the profit of places like Google who dominate the space. As the medium of the internet, especially social media, has developed these companies have found ways to make it increasingly integral to our lives. Similar to how the telephone altered how we used mail for communication, texting, FaceTime, social media etc. has done the same. These new technologies and techniques have radically altered how we function.
Inside of this shift into the social media age is the idea that once people are online or trapped in the lens of a stranger, they cease to be people but now Content touches on two things; how Postman’s Technopoly has further evolved into Varoufakis’ Techofeudalism and Turkle’s ideas of technology fueled social isolation. As the stranglehold on digital and social technologies consolidates and users are increasingly put in the place of both the creator and the audience — or prosumer, producer and consumer, as some term it — this further destabilizes and isolates those users, allowing their perceptions to be further distorted. What starts as a lightly edited picture in a magazine one knows has been altered because it is Hollywood turns into a face-tuned selfie on Instagram one cannot know is edited, which then turns into women like annazxc1122 who’s image is so distorted that they are now inhuman and yet still desired.
The first factor in this is the progression from Technopoly to Technofeudalism. Postman defines a Technopoly as a “totalitarian technocracy,” the “submission of all forms of cultural life to the sovereignty of technique and technology” who’s aim is “a grand reductionism in which human life must find its meaning in machinery and technique.” It eliminates all its opposition by making them irrelevant, putting forth instead a reliance on the judgment of technology and technique than the fallible and inferior human judgment. The Technopoly lacks an “information immune system” which eradicates all sense of purpose, meaning and cultural coherence. We can see this all around us. Our timelines are flooded with information and almost none of it is useful or fact checked, it exists solely to be consumed. Turkle’s anecdote of checking her e-mail first and last thing in her day is familiar to us now. It is impossible to keep up with the constant stream of Content. And yet, most of us cannot stop trying to do so, usually at the expense of other aspects of our lives.
Decades later, Varoufakis published his book Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism. There has been a significant amount of development in the time between the two books and Varoufakis’ conceptualization of Technofeudalism feels a natural progression of Postman’s Technopoly. In the 30ish years since Technopoly was written the information overload has not been truly tamed, but it has been successfully monetized. So much more of the world is now mediated via the internet and devices like smartphones that it has created new dynamics for us in terms of our socialization, work, entertainment, and shopping. Technofeudalism claims that capital as we understood it has mutated into cloud capital, while things like profits and markets are still present, the main driver is now Content or, the very information overload itself. Cloud capital can reproduce itself without a labor market or factories, we help it grow every time we make a post or give our information to a new site. We are penned into the various walled gardens of Web 2.0 and presented with facsimiles of choice and traditional capitalism.
While Amazon may call itself a marketplace it does not function like one. Unlike a true market, no two experiences will be the same, algorithms will look at your past activity and feed you a completely different result and the site directly profits from your reviews.
The sellers on Amazon cannot intimately communicate about pricing, they cannot unionize, and they cannot stop Amazon from charging them fees just to list on the site or impose any rules or demands they wish. They are no different from medieval merchants limited by sumptuary laws about what they can sell then told to pay rent for their stall. Subscriptions are another form of this rent. If you would like access to the media library of Netflix or the sometimes critically important programs of the Microsoft and Adobe Creative Suites, you will have to pay rent to the Technolords to do it. You can have all the information you want, but only if you work in the digital fields and pay for the pleasure. As Varoufakis puts it, in this new media environment built by the shift from Technopoly to Technofeudalism we are made “Cloud Serfs”, and our purpose is to create Content.
And yet all of this would be worthless without ‘content’. The most valuable part of the stock of cloud capital is not its physical components but rather the stories posted on Facebook, the videos uploaded to TikTok and YouTube, the photos on Instagram, the jokes and insults on Twitter, the reviews on Amazon or, simply, our movement through space, allowing our phones to alert Google Maps to the latest spot of traffic. In providing these stories, videos, photos, jokes and movements, it is we who produce and reproduce – outside any market – the stock of cloud capital. (Varoufakis, 2023)
For these techno-fiefdoms to function they require that we remain inside the sway of their rule so that they can continuously extract capital from us. It is possible to end up scrolling on TikTok for 5 hours so easily because it has been built to make that occur, Financiers prefer Tesla over Ford because Musk’s cars produce cloud capital when they send back real time information about the driver. More and more things that do not need to be connected to the internet are and it is to the end of finding more ways to exploit us.
This conversion into cloud serfs enforces two things on a social level; it forces isolation and turns people into commodities. As Turkle puts it so eloquently “we are lonely but fearful of intimacy,” and that fear leads many to mediate their social interactions via text, social media, online communities and parasocial relationships. This distance might allow one to feel safe from rejection, but all it does is keep them isolated and vulnerable. Exploitable even. Hou et al (2019) support this, citing studies that spell out the psychological harm of too much social media and how lessening that usage improved the lives of their participants. The goal, however, for the current dominant forces at play in our digital world is not the wellbeing of users. In fact, they rely on the idea that users will post more to try and satiate that human need for interaction and validation. There is incentive to keep people at least a little unhappy, to promise to cure that unhappiness but offer nothing but more unsubstantial alleviation as little sips of humanity are not enough to ever truly slake one’s thirst.
These two aspects Content and isolation come together in places like POV TikToks. POV TikToks are one of the most popular kinds of video on the platform in the last few years. POV stands for “Point of View” the idea being here that the creator is facilitating a scenario with the camera as your stand in where they are say, your attractive vampire mafia boyfriend who finds you unbelievably attractive and is sensitive to your feelings. Or maybe they’re your golden retriever boyfriend, or elitist rival at this Dark Academia University that just can’t keep away. It doesn’t matter who they are in the fantasy, as there is always a trend and always a creator to suit one’s taste. This is a commodification of both this person and of emotional intimacy, they are a virtual host — a type of nightclub employee in Japan whose main draw is how they feed into a clients need for affirmation in exchange for money. What these TikTokers offer is not real, they are supplying it for brief online fame and whatever monetary scraps TikTok allows them.
The goal of these sites is not quality, but quantity and with the kind of repeatable stability in structure that both makes things easier to replicate and creates the kind of certainty that moneymen like. And that is why everything is all Content now. An indie film shown at a festival or hosted on YouTube are not actually different, but thanks to the perception of the digital space as “lesser” the work of the cold serf filmmaker is valued much less, and they are paid accordingly. Online production values have increased but the wages of those who make the “content” have not, even as the host site gets wealthier. While there are many who use the internet and social media specifically to share and promote their artistic or intellectual endeavors many of the most successful are either the most replicable like Mr Beast or those that fulfill the societal standards and desires like so many Influencers. The last 20 years of Marvel movies are a testament to how this mentality is now everywhere in wake of streaming.
They seek to create the information glut that Postman speaks of because in that endless river of stuff the algorithm can always find things keep you occupied, if you are always somehow linked into the digital space then you are always creating cloud capital. What does it is irrelevant in the eyes of the algorithm overlords, they do not hold value in the thing itself nor in the people who make it. The information overload is used as an addictive and manipulative force to keep people on their app. As you spend more time seeking out social validation or a podcast to fill the void of silence in your apartment you are consuming Content, and those posts and those streamed hours enrich technolords.
Content is at its core the new form of exploitation. As the digital arena grows those who control the servers and flow of data need more to fill it with. YouTube or Twitch are a kind of techno age clothing factory or mine. You must post this much for this long over this period of time or your own income will falter. You must maintain a certain pace and online social awareness to succeed. If you are not constantly on Twitter you will miss the meme and feel alienated from your friends. An Influencer’s entire life is dependent on their platforms allowing them to exist there, along with all the people they sell themselves to and any sponsorships or deals they get. What they show of their life is treated as a consumable, as Content, and is devalued as such. And by becoming part of the Content they are no longer people, just like we are no longer blind worshipers of the Technopoly’s false promises but instead beholden to the demands of Technofeudalism.
References
Edvasian. (2023, October 31) The Asian Beauty filter crisis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrOdFzB25ng
Hou, Y., Xiong, D., Jiang, T., Song, L., & Wang, Q. (2019). Social media addiction: Its impact, mediation, and intervention. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 13(1), Article 4. https://doi.org/10.5817/CP2019-1-4
Mackey, J. (2022). The Neodiluvian Age: Homogeneity and Devaluation of Online Cultural Labour. The IJournal: Student Journal of the Faculty of Information, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.33137/ijournal.v8i1.39906
Postman, Neil. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. New York, N.Y., Vintage Books, 1992.
Shanspeare. (2022, July 9). We’re chained to our phones and it’s scarier than we think [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0ldLIDnj84
Turkle, S. Alone Together. New York, NY, Basic Books, 2011.
Varoufakis, Y. (2023). Technofeudalism: What Killed Captialism. Vintage Books.
Patrick (H) Willems. (2023, August 23). Everything is content now [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAtbFwzZp6Y