The Crowdsourced Panopticon

 “…we might say that the alienated person on social media becomes like a personality machine, emptied out and programmed by society, watching oneself do as society signals one to do. The former is a cog in an economic machine, the latter a cog in a social machine. The necessity to brand ourselves as a condition of economic and social “success” in the modern world encourages us to view ourselves as things, our identities projected into the hands of the crowd, shaped, and reflected back upon us. We watch ourselves on a screen, judge ourselves based on how others judge us on the screen, and act out the desired roles as directed accordingly. We lose ourselves to the crowd in the process. This in turn leads to a sort of nihilism or meaninglessness.”—Jeremy Weissman (The Crowdsourced Panopticon)