As qualitative validation all but erodes, the only form of validation left is quantitative. Miles run. Books read. Movies watched. Songs streamed. Beers bought. Fantasy wins. We have turned competition into connection because it’s the only way we’ve learned that we can get attention — and when you see a continuous decline in relationships outside o... See more

To paraphrase Marx, we might hunt for jobs on LinkedIn in the morning, fish for compliments on Instagram in the afternoon, criticize each other on Twitter after dinner, and be as lascivious as we like on Tinder in the late evening, without letting any of these identities define us...  Nevertheless, something is lost in this fractionalization o... See more

There’s no reason, really, for anyone to care about the inner turmoil of the famous. But I’ve come to believe that, in the Internet age, the psychologically destabilizing experience of fame is coming for everyone. Everyone is losing their minds online because the combination of mass fame and mass surveillance increasingly channels our most basic im... See more

This isn’t the same kind of attention we give to our Instagram and TikTok feeds. It is a ritualised form of intentional presence directed to a shared sense of meaning and history.

As a result, our digital commons has become commoditised and overrun by the cult of self. When we shout ‘listen!’ on social media, we are demanding that others ‘Listen to... See more