It is fashionable to suggest that cyber space is some island of the blessed. Where people are free to indulge and express their individuality. This is not true, I have seen many people spill out their emotions, their guts, online and I did so myself until I began to see I had commodified myself. Commodification means you turn something into a product that has a money value. In the 19th century commodities were made in factories by workers who were mostly exploited. But I created my interior thoughts as commodities for the corporations who owned the board that I was posting to, and then that commodity was then sold onto other consumer entities as entertainment. Cyberspace is a black hole, it absorbs energy and personality and then re-presents it as emotional spectacle. It is done by businesses that commodify human interaction and emotion. And we are getting lost in the spectacle.
Pandora’s Vox: On Community in Cyberspace by humdog (1994) as paraphrased in Adam Curtis’ All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011)
