Relation by Images
What you're reading is an attempt to delve deeper into the fourth aphorism featured in Guy Debord's 'The Society of the Spectacle'. You can read the third one here.
Here's the actual passage:
The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.
Upon reading this, I found it a tad bit too 'academic' in its undertones. I'd imagine that this sentence would roll right off the tongue of an effete professor with a tweed jacket who constantly keeps lamenting the dearth of curiosity in his students (this description may or may not have been inspired by real events).
However woke this sentence may sound, I think there is a certain truth to it that must be fleshed out.
Revisiting the Spectacle
In the last few posts where I referred to the spectacle, I kept reiterating that the spectacle, as Debord puts it, was more than a representation and that its consequences extended far beyond that of what we perceive to be an ordinary, harmless image.
Framing the spectacle as a social relation among people is enough to have anyone declare this as the work of one of those deluded intellectuals with a penchant for armchair activism and bland theorizing. But, when you examine an image that evokes a certain sensation in you, you might begin to see how this actually reinforces certain hierarchies.
Putting things in their Place
That long-lost friend of yours from high school might share a picture of themselves standing next to a sculpture found on the campus of some elite educational institution announcing/celebrating their admission to a highly selective program. Why would someone do this? I can think of a few reasons:
- Communicate a joyous event in their life to a group of well-wishers
- Signal their capabilities to the job market as evidenced by acceptance to an elite school.
- humblebrag
Whatever the intention behind such a post may be, the effect it has on you could be anything depending on who you are, what you're doing, and what your relationship with this person is like. It could inspire any one of the following emotions: joy, envy, fear, hope, melancholy, or even surprise.
What's certain is that your perception of this person in relation to you is highly likely to have changed significantly, even though nothing has actually changed.
It's perhaps why so many people are quitting social media in droves. I did it for a while too, but my earnings are unfortunately not independent of my activity on LinkedIn, so I soldier on.
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If any of this sounds relatable, please write to me. Part of the reason I write this is to seek out more people who feel the same way I do about the modern Internet.
If you enjoyed reading this, you might like my cleverly disguised rants on LinkedIn too.