Every day, most of us are subjected to depersonalization. We have to stop being ourselves and assume the persona of a corporate employer; we’re mistreated in social systems; healthcare doesn’t see us as people. All the huge institutions and corporations, which crave efficiency, don’t have the time to treat people as individuals. Everything is bureaucratic. As a result, we often feel downtrodden, ignored, or even violated. We feel like our self is being negated.
And this failure to treat people as individuals has led to an equal and opposite reaction on the part of people. Extreme individualism is all about the world acknowledging who you are – and loving you. The extreme individualist is attracted to social media. They carve out a space for themselves and establish their personhood by being as weird as possible. Attention and acknowledgement is what they crave, since they’ve been deprived of it by the world. Many people who are now influencers used to work soul-sucking corporate jobs. They felt invalidated and, motivated by a desire to be an individual, not just a number, they took to social media, which for all purposes feels more personal. At least on social media, they can express themselves.
Some degree of individualism is needed in any healthy society. We cannot all be like ants, having no individuation and serving the interests of the colony at all times. We all have desires and a need to be recognized for who we are. It’s that recognition which helps us maintain our identity. But, taken to its extremes, individualism is as dangerous as an ant mentality. It leads to people being uncooperative – they don’t see themselves as part of society. They are special, set apart and sacred.
In many ways, personality on social media is a market where attention is the currency. Cold, soulless things never get far. You have to have gusto, impetus, panache! You have to be far from normal. Normality is anathema to social media. Cooperation and shutting your mouth in service of a goal that you have in common with others is non-existent. One must always be vocal, “tell it like it is”. Your follower count is a measure of your success. And, just like in the capitalist market, the growth principle rules. That’s to say you must always be growing. No growth = stagnation. Shrinking = failure. The largest influencers command the vast majority of attention – they are the social media equivalent of the super rich: the super popular, if you will.
And so, we end up with a system that’s fundamentally capitalist in principles, and it results from extreme individualism – the exact same quality that the super rich have. The super rich don’t think they ever need to cooperate or sacrifice anything for the general good. They are beholden to no one but themselves. The same goes for extreme individuals. Attention can even be inherited! – just look at those bizarre influencer families whose children are famous before they can even speak! All we need now is some sort of rule that prevents attention being taken away from those top influencers (just like the law prevents money being taken in real life) and we’ll have the system of the super rich in miniature!
Extreme individualism, leading to an attention market, is not the optimal State. Why? Because it’s just a repeat of free-market capitalism and carries all of its ills. It still motivates people to be selfish and pursue their own goals without helping anyone else. Instead of get-rich-quick schemes, it has get-popular-quick schemes. It still screws over all those who didn’t happen to be lucky enough to get to the top, regardless of how much talent they have. It still allows talentless idiots to get to the top (no one who’s seen the super popular ones could deny it).
Why is attention the currency of social media? a) because it gives depersonalized people the recognition they need, but b) it also serves the secondary function of earning such people money. The more attention you get, the more people who are going to donate to your Patreon or whatever. The biggest influencers are extremely rich. The attention market is a capitalist system inside the larger capitalist system of money.
That’s why extreme individualism must be rejected as fervently as “free-market” capitalism.