The Metric Society: On the Quantification of the Social

Baudrillard notes that people are now measured by the extent of their involvement in the flow of media messages. “Whoever is underexposed to the media is desocialized or virtually asocial,”

But perhaps even more confounding is that executives at successful social networks are some of the highest status people in the world. Forget first world problems, they have .1% or .001% problems. On a day-to-day basis, they hardly face a single issue that their core users grapple with constantly. Engagement goals may drive them towards building se

Researchers have found instead that the distribution of attention remains highly unequal across a wide range of digital contexts, ensuring the hypervisibility of a few and the invisibility or near-invisibility of the great majority. The winner-take-all (or winner-take-most) logic, sustained in part by algorithms that ratify and reinforce what is a

Any questioning or discrediting of what is currently the most efficient means of producing acquiescence and docility, of promoting self-interest as the raison d’être of all social activity, is rigorously marginalized.