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Why does a simulated public sphere need view counts?
Because the event horizon of the spectacle must include the entire world, of course.
In the past few days one of the new features on the platform of the before time, twitter, is a live view counter for every post on the site. Reactions seem to range from “meh” to “but why?” The practical answer is that the leadership of the company wants to make it clear to several audiences that there are in fact views happening on the platform. For those who still believe themselves to be shadow-banned, you are note. For those who might buy advertisements, you can see the crowd gathered here. This all makes enough sense, but the degree of meh about the feature was surprising to me, as has been the reactionary longing of some folks to stay on a version of twitter. To get some leverage on this, we need to figure out some things about people not engaging, you know, the silent majority.
Revisiting In the Shadow of Silent Majorities
This is an underrated work by Baudrillard, as are most of his works at this point, we kept Foucalt, Derrida, and Lacan, but JB fell off, which is unfortunate given how short, accessible, and direct his essays and books are for engaging communication and information research. The big thesis: the vast majority are silent not because they are…
