Embracing Sub-Optimal Relationships

If affection is kindled by time and attention, the default settings of our techno-economic order undermine our capacity to give either. We are instead encouraged to live as machines rather than creatures, optimizing for all the wrong metrics.

manufactured neediness prepares the ground for new commodities. The goal is not to alleviate loneliness or isolation by fostering vernacular human relationships, which, of course, cannot be readily monetized, but to insinuate, pejoratively, that such relationships are inefficient and full of friction.

a manufactured neediness so that we might be all the more beholden to the goods and services marketed with the promise of alleviating our plight and addressing the very neediness they cultivate