Filling the Void by Marcus Gilroy-Ware

Author:Marcus Gilroy-Ware
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Filling the Void: Emotion, Capitalism and Social Media
ISBN: 9781910924853
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2017-02-08T04:30:00+00:00

— FOUR —

You are now “in a relationship”

For the love of money

People will steal from their mother,

For the love of money

People will rob their own brother,

For the love of money

People can’t even walk the street

Because they never know who in the world they’re gonna beat,

For that lean, mean, mean green

Almighty dollar, money.

The O’Jays

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

Henry David Thoreau

They “trust me,” dumb fucks.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, speaking about early Facebook users

We get it all the time.

Sergeant Brink, LA Police Department, on people calling the police for help when Facebook is unavailable

This book has so far focused on our consumptive use of social media, emphasising what we get from that usage, what our motivations are for seeking those rewards, and the emotional and cultural contexts in which that consumption takes place. To acknowledge the enjoyment in any act of consumption, however, is not to ascribe unqualified positive value to it. Understanding consumption, including that of timeline media, is essential, but it would not be a complete picture without looking at the broader commercial and economic paradigm within which our “filling” of the “void” takes place. Consumption is part of an exchange, and for all that we might get from our use of social media, or hope that we’ll get from them each time we open a particular social media app or website, the large companies that own these platforms get a great deal from us too. We need to examine the terms of that exchange very carefully, and it is against this backdrop that we must understand why the idea of “filling the void” matters so much. It is to the nature of this exchange that this chapter turns.

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