Call it The Fight Club Paradox revisited. Simply put, we have come to accept and expect that people would rather video a wrong with the eventual intent of sharing that wrong online, rather than preventing that wrong or getting involved. Like, it’s ok… It’s a perfectly normal thing to do. It’s acceptable to do. No one questions it.
We see it, but instead of stopping it, we document it, post it, and turn it into content. We don’t just watch from afar. We record it because the recording itself has value.
That’s the status quo now.
Jan Wozniak’s 2022 article Confronting the Rise of the Social: Hannah Arendt, Fight Club, and the Late Modern World, suggests that “in late modernity, the private and public spheres blur, and moral boundaries erode.” I don’t disagree.
I would add that not only have our moral boundaries eroded, but our actions, depending on the circumstance, appear to be more acceptable (a lowered bar if you will), self-servingly performative (see Warhol’s 15-minutes of fame), and algorithmically driven than ever before. We don’t blink. We consume.
We share.
We bask.
We rinse.
We repeat.
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