Network Inertia: an obsession with the virtual
Every time I look out my bedroom window the world will have grown a little brighter until, finally, it is really day, like it happened without my permission. And then, sooner each day as the winter nears (5:00, 4:30, 4:00) the dusk will come around too, and I won’t realise it’s night until I go and check and confirm: yes, it is night. The preponderance of the daily rhythm is torn apart by the machinations of the ever-available 24-hour clock and a desk that happens not to face the window…
Herbert Marcuse noted that mass media and consumer culture helped create an environment in the second half of the 21st century which led to a pacification of the working class. Proponents of neoliberal economics had pursued deregulation, privatisation, and trickle-down economics; in the UK, the selling off of council houses helped build a new middle class from old bricks. The short-term benefits of market orthodoxy raised living standards, which were combined with a media-borne consumerism to de-emphasise working class identities. We thought we had it made. Marcuse called this pacification - not just of the working class, but of society on the whole - One-Dimensional Thought.
More recently, Jean Baudrillard outlined how we live in a world of the “hyper-real”, where signs are prioritised over real objects and the simulation of life is increasingly prized before life itself, ideas synthesized by Jodi Dean into her theory of communicative capitalism.
Against this backdrop. there was a stalling of the unlimited economic growth promised by neoliberal economics, first in the 90s – precipitating Third Way politics – and then in the Great Recession, showing up the theory that the financial sector could be controlled or “played” by centrist politicians. It was the end of "the end of boom and bust". The mechanisms of growth that helped maintain One-Dimensional Thought were breaking down, leaving a gap in the psyche for a new means of satisfaction.
Like Socrates’ metaphor of leaking jars, modern society needed to find a fresh source of pleasure to continue fulfilling the lofty expectations of neoliberalism in the absence of perpetual growth. With hindsight, it is intuitive that this void has been filled by the network technologies of communicative capitalism. In these networks, individuals are both consumers (they either pay for the service or endure advertisements) and producers (they themselves contribute content, be it tweets on Twitter, videos on YouTube, or music on Soundcloud).
In summary:
1. In the early phases of neoliberalism, politicians sought to increase living standards to grow the base for supporters of right-wing political ideology and de-emphasise working-class identities.
2. As the gains from this short-term economic project dried up, individuals looked for new ways of exercising control over their lives, in order to gain satisfaction, while right-wing politicians looked for new ways of exercising control over voters, in order to gain political power.
3. These objectives converged in an increased use of network technologies by individuals and a resulting increased engagement in the virtual world.
The consequences of consumers opting-in to their own commodification by these networking technologies are multitudinous, but for my sake, the most interesting case is the impact on political conscience. I will term this concept network inertia.
There are two key properties of network technologies that prioritise investment in the hyper-real over the real (more so than might otherwise be the case).
1. These technologies are designed to attract our attention, elicit a response, and ensure maximal time investment (for advertising purposes). The dopamine response to social media triggers is well understood, but the anxiety response is less so. There is an incentive to check messages continuously, but neither the absence of messages (why isn’t anyone messaging me?) nor the presence of messages (I have to respond to these messages, how will I respond?) can bring long-term satisfaction, only perpetuate the addictive necessity to receive more notifications, more “dings”, more dopamine.
2. These technologies are, in effect, “marketised” – there is a competition for attention. Consumers pay (in the form of advertising revenues generated by the site owners) to generate content (tweets/posts/videos). In return, they consume the content produced by others and others’ reactions to their content.
More recently, network technologies have begun to introduce means by which consumers can profit from their content generation, i.e. to become active participants in the commodification of their interactions with others. This blurs the line between professional content generation (i.e. television, traditional music media) and social content generation (i.e. a skit on YouTube, a song on Soundcloud) to a point where the social is simply a doppelganger of the professional, where there is no content actually generated in the public domain (as was the case in early MySpace, Soundcloud, Youtube etc.) and all content is instead generated for private benefit and private consumption.
In sum, network technologies overwhelmingly provide a competitive environment for the consumption of dopamine. While the scale of time investment on behalf of the producer differs quite drastically (compare a video essay or a music track to a single tweet) the act of consumption is broadly unified, characterised by a desire to consume in order to clear a notification that is then prolonged by a series of algorithmic “suggestions”, either followed through in a vain attempt by the consumer to clear the decks, or ignored by the consumer as they slip into the despondency of realising that the decks can never be cleared. Regardless of whether the consumer is actually watching something they are likely to spend significant time periods scrolling, which generates advertising revenue.
In the case of Facebook or more significantly Twitter, the culture of identity politics plays into this competitive environment: there is a desire to identify with the correct signs and to be seen to be on the right side of history. Discourse on websites that are the natural evolution of 90s/00s web forums, from Twitter to Reddit to even 4chan, is consistently characterised by a need to “present” correctly. The competition is therefore not only present in the market environment but also in the socialising context: there is a battle to be won in what many characterise as a “culture war”. While some on the left have dismissed the culture war as a political construct, it seems intuitive that the permanence of conversations on social media, combined with the fact that the most liked (or, sometimes, most controversial) content floats to the top, would lend itself to arguments over signs.
“Share this for clout online…”
While worthy causes in their own right, minority rights, trans rights and women’s rights have all been incorporated into the maelstrom of identity politics. Here, it is more important to present correctly in line with one’s peers, and push down any entity that seems to be (not is, seems to be) going against the dominant sign, thereby garnering likes (notifications; dopamine) or at the very least attention (success in the market).
When I write this, I have to pinch myself as a reminder that this is not some theory about what is happening in a book or a TV show, this is a theory about what is happening in the real world.
This is network inertia: an obsession with the world of the virtual (and the assumed) to the detriment of the world of the “real” (and the possible). The ability of individuals to challenge capitalist realism and its custodians is stymied by the extent to which they are affected by network inertia.
“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born.” - Antonio Gramsci
Even full-time content creators (professional consumers of network technologies who produce content with a sufficient number of supporters to garner benefits approaching a wage) whose content focuses on the political will be prone to focusing on the parasocial relationships with their audience and the impact of real events on the hyper-real sphere to consider their influence outside that space. Content creators who have attempted to engage in “real” politics (e.g. by running at elections as independents or under the banner of a small political party) have been catastrophic failures. The disparate nature of their supporters (across a country, or across countries) and their specific cache with a given niche group (and set of signs) pose inherent problems for content creators. More broadly, however, and much more troublingly, it is unlikely that supporters of a given content creator will mobilise in the sphere of the “real” as this is not their home; the signs that they share with the creator do not apply to the same extent in “real” politics. What incentive do supporters have to turn out in favour of the “real”? This can be applied to democratic processes, where, in spite of growing “LeftTube” and alt-right support on YouTube, turnout has not substantially increased among 18-24s in recent elections. Therefore, it is intuitive that the ability of content creators to mobilise in “real” politics is limited.
A short case study. While the most recent mass protest movements (Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion) both have tangible political goals at their centre, they are largely characterised, both in theory and in practice, by the signs their members adopt. This is exacerbated by how these groups’ manifestations are then reported by the mass media (within network technologies), focusing on their signs as opposed to their “real” political objectives, as the signs have more cache. It’s common for the signs themselves to be exaggerated for controversy’s sake, such as XR’s martyr complex or BLM’s “defund the police”. A cogent policy proposal is unlikely to break through in this environment, and why would you try?
What about outcomes? The most visible outcome of the recent Black Lives Matter protests was the calls for removal of several statues across the country of well-known slave owners. These calls were successful in several instances, but it is worth noting that the taking down of a statue is fundamentally the taking down of a (more old-fashioned) sign. The extent to which these actions aid in creating systemic change is doubtful, especially given that the right-wing opponents of BLM, those who continue to play down their aspirations, do not trade in statues but tweets and videos. Moreover, the understanding of those in government is that the outrage seen on network technologies does not have a serious impact. Anger on the internet is not nominally attached to a union (IWW or IWGB being notable exceptions) given that those in younger age groups – more invested in network technologies – are less likely to be members of a union. This means there is little economic impact attached to virtual animosity, even if it is unified in government opposition. This anger also has little impact when it comes to elections, when the turnout in 16-24s remains so slim. The transfer from the virtual to the “real” is paltry. Politicians govern in the void. Meaning fades to incomprehension.
Even full-time content creators (professional consumers of network technologies who produce content with a sufficient number of supporters to garner benefits approaching a wage) whose content focuses on the political will be prone to focusing on the parasocial relationships with their audience and the impact of real events on the hyper-real sphere to consider their influence outside that space. Content creators who have attempted to engage in “real” politics (e.g. by running at elections as independents or under the banner of a small political party) have been catastrophic failures. The disparate nature of their supporters (across a country, or across countries) and their specific cache with a given niche group (and set of signs) pose inherent problems for content creators. More broadly, however, and much more troublingly, it is unlikely that supporters of a given content creator will mobilise in the sphere of the “real” as this is not their home; the signs that they share with the creator do not apply to the same extent in “real” politics. What incentive do supporters have to turn out in favour of the “real”? This can be applied to democratic processes, where, in spite of growing “LeftTube” and alt-right support on YouTube, turnout has not substantially increased among 18-24s in recent elections. Therefore, it is intuitive that the ability of content creators to mobilise in “real” politics is limited.
A short case study. While the most recent mass protest movements (Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion) both have tangible political goals at their centre, they are largely characterised, both in theory and in practice, by the signs their members adopt. This is exacerbated by how these groups’ manifestations are then reported by the mass media (within network technologies), focusing on their signs as opposed to their “real” political objectives, as the signs have more cache. It’s common for the signs themselves to be exaggerated for controversy’s sake, such as XR’s martyr complex or BLM’s “defund the police”. A cogent policy proposal is unlikely to break through in this environment, and why would you try?
What about outcomes? The most visible outcome of the recent Black Lives Matter protests was the calls for removal of several statues across the country of well-known slave owners. These calls were successful in several instances, but it is worth noting that the taking down of a statue is fundamentally the taking down of a (more old-fashioned) sign. The extent to which these actions aid in creating systemic change is doubtful, especially given that the right-wing opponents of BLM, those who continue to play down their aspirations, do not trade in statues but tweets and videos. Moreover, the understanding of those in government is that the outrage seen on network technologies does not have a serious impact. Anger on the internet is not nominally attached to a union (IWW or IWGB being notable exceptions) given that those in younger age groups – more invested in network technologies – are less likely to be members of a union. This means there is little economic impact attached to virtual animosity, even if it is unified in government opposition. This anger also has little impact when it comes to elections, when the turnout in 16-24s remains so slim. The transfer from the virtual to the “real” is paltry. Politicians govern in the void. Meaning fades to incomprehension.
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