“While we are encouraged to join a digital stage to perform what seems like a permanency of self-appearance – but is really just a transient, one dimensional version of our self, we experience a hyper-scrutiny and collective backlash as if that one like, comment or message is a revelation of one’s whole self.” – Aaron Gozum
As the public stage of social media becomes an avatar of a facet of our identities that tends to represent and reduce our complexities to a news feed, a profile photo and a timeline, media suggests that American culture has galvanized toward a politics of privacy.
What is privacy and why does our society in the U.S. place a tremendously large value on privacy? Everyday, we are approached by messages on YouTube and WordPress asking if we would want to upgrade to a premium service that provides us the “freedom” of no advertisements as we use their digital services. Some might say, in this sense, privacy in the digital age is growingly becoming a commodity to be consumed. We live in a society where service is commodified and consuming as many commodities is what we consider the modern day achievement of Hegelian mastery.
