Guy Debord published The Society of the Spectacle in 1967. It’s a critique of media and consumer culture, and it eerily explains how we live (or fail to live) today. It’s a neat little book and it’s a good companion to Marshall McLuhan’ and Quentin Fiore’s, The Medium is the Massage.
In 2025, the media studies you, which is both freaking dystopian and inescapable as a fact.
Here are ten examples of The Spectacle in action:
ONE: The Spectacle renders attention an absolute virtue:
TWO: The Spectacle externalizes human identity:
THREE: The Spectacle scrambles meanings and fractures truth:
FOUR: The Spectacle presents the world to us as a shattered mirror:
FIVE: The spectacle turns everyone and everything into a shallow brand entity:
SIX: The Spectacle obliterates depth and authenticity by repeated omission:
SEVEN: The Spectacle keeps us anxiously busy, never really doing anything:
EIGHT: The Spectacle distracts us from our true selves:
NINE: The Spectacle neuters resistance via distortion:
TEN: The Spectacle demands that you want what does not matter:
Genius as always. Doubly so if this was written before the Kirk killing. Now I have reading homework! The typo in the medium is the mAssage made me chuckle.