Social Media Turns You Into a Product
When people hear “you are the product,” they usually reach for a familiar story: the advertisers, the data brokers, the retailers mining your clicks and interests to sell you things. That’s not the story I’m telling here. I’m not writing about what economic parties do with you. I’m writing about what you do with yourself — how you become the seller, the marketer, and the merchandise all at once. Nobody harvested this from you. You packaged the product of you, and you put it on the shelf yourself.
Social media transforms you from a person with a story into a product to be sold. We use it to increase our appeal in the eyes of others — to seek their validation, desire, and acclaim.
Your feed is an advertising space: a place to signal your key attributes, your unique distinctions, your customer value proposition. Moments that could be special become a sizzle reel.
Formerly intimate occasions — proposing to your beloved, discovering the gender of your child — become key marketing moments. Rather than being enjoyed for the life-altering events they are, they become hyperplanned, over-glamorized, high-production-value photo shoots, staged to capture just the right cover photo and B-roll to market to your followers, friends, and strangers.
You want the five stars. You want to be envied and lauded. You hope the algorithm gives you top-shelf space and prioritizes your contributions to the feed, because you are a product people want to consume. Your life events become a production for other people’s consumption, hollowing out magical moments into curated spectacles for others’ enjoyment.
I believe social media takes more from us than it gives. Moments that would have been enjoyed with our own two eyes and our whole heart are instead viewed through a tiny screen as we collect the requisite photos and videos to post. We consume them much the way strangers and friends do, reliving our own lives through external eyes. We become disconnected from our inner sensations and from the unique viewpoint that sits between our own two eyes; instead, we see through a lens.
Even knowing at some level what it costs us, it’s hard to disengage from the game. Collecting the likes, hearts, shares, and reposts feels too good. But as the saying goes: play stupid games, win stupid prizes. There isn’t much left for us at the end of the day.
I don’t write this from a place of privileged perspective or greater-than-normal discipline and self-control. If what I’m describing sounds familiar, it’s because I know these dynamics intimately and am subject to the same incentives. I had to decide to log off — and log out — of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and the other algorithmic feeds.