#societyofthespectacle — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #societyofthespectacle, aggregated by home.social.
-
Triggered (in good way) by a recent comment by @samvarma, AI music DJs be like...
(...or the end state of performances once the appearance of an act/skill has become more important than the act/skill itself)
-
Triggered (in good way) by a recent comment by @samvarma, AI music DJs be like...
(...or the end state of performances once the appearance of an act/skill has become more important than the act/skill itself)
-
RE: https://zirk.us/@Doomscroll/116574682639203727
I’m thinking of starting a Mastodon book club and kicking it off with Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle.
Modern life mediated by images, commodities, performance, and passive consumption?
Feels… relevant.
Let me know if you’d want in.
#BookClub #GuyDebord #SocietyOfTheSpectacle #MediaTheory #MastodonBooks
-
RE: https://zirk.us/@Doomscroll/116574682639203727
I’m thinking of starting a Mastodon book club and kicking it off with Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle.
Modern life mediated by images, commodities, performance, and passive consumption?
Feels… relevant.
Let me know if you’d want in.
#BookClub #GuyDebord #SocietyOfTheSpectacle #MediaTheory #MastodonBooks
-
RE: https://zirk.us/@Doomscroll/116574682639203727
I’m thinking of starting a Mastodon book club and kicking it off with Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle.
Modern life mediated by images, commodities, performance, and passive consumption?
Feels… relevant.
Let me know if you’d want in.
#BookClub #GuyDebord #SocietyOfTheSpectacle #MediaTheory #MastodonBooks
-
" Cole Allen was dangerous. “Cole Allen,” the political narrative, is dangerous, a tool with which MAGA polices its internal dissenters—”I bet Tucker would have cried”—and reinforces the implicit divinity of its primary ego. But not for long! Both will likely be mostly forgotten in days. Tomorrow King Charles is coming to America! Maybe Tuesday we’ll take Cuba. The Straits will be closed this Wednesday, but victory will be restored by Thursday evening. There’ll be more Epstein disclosures, or another kerfuffle with the pope, or just a new poll, and we’ll know finally and at last that Trump is “DONE.” We may not notice, as we post the “BREAKING” news, how all-caps have crept into our language. We won’t have time, because we have moved onto a new spectacle, or we will have tuned out from spectacle. (I think of a liberal friend who acknowledges he hasn’t read the news since the election because he just can’t, and a left colleague who boasts that he hasn’t because he can—ignore it all, that is.) It’s into this quickening current that both Cole Allens will disappear, along with our memory of a time when one did not have to debate how many assassination attempts the president had survived, or staged, whether it is three or four or five or even more, much like the unknowable number of wars he has ended."
--from "Cole Allen": On the already-fading meanings of Cole Allen, man, meme, prop, and spectacle, by Jeff Sharlet,
Apr 26, 2026#Spectacle #USpol #SocietyOfTheSpectacle #ScenesFromASlowCivilWar
-
" Cole Allen was dangerous. “Cole Allen,” the political narrative, is dangerous, a tool with which MAGA polices its internal dissenters—”I bet Tucker would have cried”—and reinforces the implicit divinity of its primary ego. But not for long! Both will likely be mostly forgotten in days. Tomorrow King Charles is coming to America! Maybe Tuesday we’ll take Cuba. The Straits will be closed this Wednesday, but victory will be restored by Thursday evening. There’ll be more Epstein disclosures, or another kerfuffle with the pope, or just a new poll, and we’ll know finally and at last that Trump is “DONE.” We may not notice, as we post the “BREAKING” news, how all-caps have crept into our language. We won’t have time, because we have moved onto a new spectacle, or we will have tuned out from spectacle. (I think of a liberal friend who acknowledges he hasn’t read the news since the election because he just can’t, and a left colleague who boasts that he hasn’t because he can—ignore it all, that is.) It’s into this quickening current that both Cole Allens will disappear, along with our memory of a time when one did not have to debate how many assassination attempts the president had survived, or staged, whether it is three or four or five or even more, much like the unknowable number of wars he has ended."
--from "Cole Allen": On the already-fading meanings of Cole Allen, man, meme, prop, and spectacle, by Jeff Sharlet,
Apr 26, 2026#Spectacle #USpol #SocietyOfTheSpectacle #ScenesFromASlowCivilWar
-
"If [Guy] Debord were alive today, he would almost certainly extend his analysis of the spectacle to the Internet and social media. Debord would no doubt have been horrified by social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter, which monetize our friendships, opinions, and emotions. Our internal thoughts and experiences are now commodifiable assets."
#TiernanMorgan, #LaurenPurje, 2016
https://hyperallergic.com/an-illustrated-guide-to-guy-debords-the-society-of-the-spectacle/
-
"If [Guy] Debord were alive today, he would almost certainly extend his analysis of the spectacle to the Internet and social media. Debord would no doubt have been horrified by social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter, which monetize our friendships, opinions, and emotions. Our internal thoughts and experiences are now commodifiable assets."
#TiernanMorgan, #LaurenPurje, 2016
https://hyperallergic.com/an-illustrated-guide-to-guy-debords-the-society-of-the-spectacle/
-
"If [Guy] Debord were alive today, he would almost certainly extend his analysis of the spectacle to the Internet and social media. Debord would no doubt have been horrified by social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter, which monetize our friendships, opinions, and emotions. Our internal thoughts and experiences are now commodifiable assets."
#TiernanMorgan, #LaurenPurje, 2016
https://hyperallergic.com/an-illustrated-guide-to-guy-debords-the-society-of-the-spectacle/
-
"If [Guy] Debord were alive today, he would almost certainly extend his analysis of the spectacle to the Internet and social media. Debord would no doubt have been horrified by social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter, which monetize our friendships, opinions, and emotions. Our internal thoughts and experiences are now commodifiable assets."
#TiernanMorgan, #LaurenPurje, 2016
https://hyperallergic.com/an-illustrated-guide-to-guy-debords-the-society-of-the-spectacle/
-
less than 5 mins of “the society of the spectacle” / guy debord. 1974
#GuyDebord #laSocietàDelloSpettacolo #slowforward #societàDelloSpettacolo #societyOfTheSpectacle #theSocietyOfTheSpectacle
-
less than 5 mins of “the society of the spectacle” / guy debord. 1974
#GuyDebord #laSocietàDelloSpettacolo #slowforward #societàDelloSpettacolo #societyOfTheSpectacle #theSocietyOfTheSpectacle
-
I'm content it is the beginning of the end for Trump. I was considering to watch some of the debate between him and Harris, but reading this newsletter by @VickyACAB today, I've had enough. I'm also reminded how much I appreciate the people who choose to stay closer to the spectacle and summarize it back to the rest of us, so we can shut it off. https://all-cats-are-beautiful.ghost.io/donald-trump-a-post-mortem #trumpharrisdebate #societyofthespectacle
-
#SocietyoftheSpectacle section 1.4
"The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images."
Again, Debord wrote this long before the internet existed, but we can't help reading it in the context of the ubiquitous internet.
I read this as a reminder that the internet itself is not something separate from society. It is precisely HOW people interact now. In a sense, it expands beyond "images" alone, but at the same time, it doesn't. This here is a screen. I don't know if text plays into Debord's arguments at any point (still reading the book), but it makes me curious, should writing be defined as "images?"
Regardless, the point here seems to be that the "spectacle" is not separate from social interaction. It IS a component, or THE component, now, which dictates how people interact.
-
#SocietyoftheSpectacle section 1.4
"The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images."
Again, Debord wrote this long before the internet existed, but we can't help reading it in the context of the ubiquitous internet.
I read this as a reminder that the internet itself is not something separate from society. It is precisely HOW people interact now. In a sense, it expands beyond "images" alone, but at the same time, it doesn't. This here is a screen. I don't know if text plays into Debord's arguments at any point (still reading the book), but it makes me curious, should writing be defined as "images?"
Regardless, the point here seems to be that the "spectacle" is not separate from social interaction. It IS a component, or THE component, now, which dictates how people interact.
-
"The images detached from every aspect of life merge into a common stream in which the unity of that life can no longer be recovered. Fragmented views of reality regroup themselves into a new unity as a separate pseudo-world that can only be looked at. The specialization of images of the world has culminated in a world of autonomized images where even the deceivers are deceived. The spectacle is a concrete inversion of life, an autonomous movement of the nonliving."
Section 1.2 of #SocietyoftheSpectacle
I think Debord is probably talking about the ubiquity of televisions during his time, but this could have been written about #YouTube, #Vine, #TikTok, etc. in recent years.
Add the wrinkle of #AI generated images (and, soon, video) and the term "autonomized" seems more literal than I imagine Debord could have predicted.
-
"The images detached from every aspect of life merge into a common stream in which the unity of that life can no longer be recovered. Fragmented views of reality regroup themselves into a new unity as a separate pseudo-world that can only be looked at. The specialization of images of the world has culminated in a world of autonomized images where even the deceivers are deceived. The spectacle is a concrete inversion of life, an autonomous movement of the nonliving."
Section 1.2 of #SocietyoftheSpectacle
I think Debord is probably talking about the ubiquity of televisions during his time, but this could have been written about #YouTube, #Vine, #TikTok, etc. in recent years.
Add the wrinkle of #AI generated images (and, soon, video) and the term "autonomized" seems more literal than I imagine Debord could have predicted.
-
"In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation."
Thus opens Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle, first published in 1967.
And after that opening, the prophetic statements just keep on coming, as if Debord is talking about #YouTube, #TikTok, online "influencers," "content creators," or any one of the features of present-day life which serve to keep us separated and divided while buying into the illusion of constant connectedness.
Planning to share more quotes as I work my way through the book. Follow the hashtag #SocietyoftheSpectacle if you'd like to follow along.
-
"In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation."
Thus opens Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle, first published in 1967.
And after that opening, the prophetic statements just keep on coming, as if Debord is talking about #YouTube, #TikTok, online "influencers," "content creators," or any one of the features of present-day life which serve to keep us separated and divided while buying into the illusion of constant connectedness.
Planning to share more quotes as I work my way through the book. Follow the hashtag #SocietyoftheSpectacle if you'd like to follow along.
