You’re on break at work, sitting, perhaps at your desk or in the local lunch room. You remove your phone from the right pants pocket and begin to scroll through today’s trending Instagram Reels. You see beautiful women portraying sexual behaviors, ones you might even want to join. However, there’s no partner present; they are performing a representation of sex in terms of position, style, and facial expression. If you’ve experienced this, you’ve already experienced the central thesis of Guy Debord’s book The Society of the Spectacle – you just didn’t know it.
“In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.” – Debord (Loc. 47)
First published in 1967, the book remains more relevant than ever.
The Spectacle, however, represents more than just a woman mimicking a popular anime facial expression at the moment of orgasm (Ahegao). It’s the dominant cultural model:
“…the model of the prevailing way of life.” (Loc. 62)
For example, while scrolling through LinkedIn (a social media network with a target audience of professionals), you’ll see consistent themes. Posts of recommended strategies (models) for content creation and an engaged audience – consistent posting, “What My Dog Taught Me About Branding,” “5 Secrets I Don’t Tell Anyone,” and, if you haven’t heard, image carousels are the hot new thing.
In other words, recycled insights. Models disguised as new discoveries, all while creating a sense of scarcity. Guidance on how to repurpose worthless content and repackage it to attract one more click. Advice on transforming unoriginal ideas to motivate you, the audience, to keep reading or watching.
“The first stage of the economy’s domination of social life brought about an evident degradation of being into having – human fulfillment was no longer equated with what one was, but with what one possessed.” (Loc. 99)
But why? Now that you’ve finished lunch and are standing in a professional position, why do you want to repackage and refurbish a product that was guaranteed to satisfy the consumer the first time? Because the Spectacle is its own independent entity. It’s an organism, a self-sustaining force. Its mitochondria? Advertising. Its bloodstream? Engagement. Its respiration? Monetized attention. Every inhale births an ad. Every exhale inserts a product. It doesn’t care what you’re watching, only that you are.
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Society of the Spectacle
The Spectacle is an “advanced economic sector that directly creates an ever-increasing multitude of image-objects, the spectacle is the leading production of present-day society.” (Loc. 95)
These image-objects represent currencies that commodify sex, success, opposition, and self-optimization. They possess an inherent use-value, conveying messages about what to get while suggesting what you’ll get from it. As a result, a pseudo-need.
For example, that anime O-face might arouse you—and you’re not sure why (if so, you’re in my boat). But something about it clicks. It lodges in your mind not just as an image but as an experience you want to have—not with that reel, but in reality. That image-object—the anime O—becomes more than a turn-on. It becomes a signal. And signals, in the economy of the Spectacle, are currencies.
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These image-objects don’t just stimulate; they commodify. Sex. Success. Struggle. Self-optimization. Each one carries an implied use-value. They don’t tell you what something is. They tell you what it can get you. The anime O face doesn’t just show pleasure – it sells desirability. It implants a pseudo-need: not just to see it, but to possess it. To earn it. To deserve it.
When that desire surfaces, when you start looking for it in real people – others notice. Content shifts. Trends adapt. Before you know it, your feed is full of women performing that very anime O face. A model is formed. And suddenly, it feels like there’s an abundance of anime O face everywhere.
But there’s not. That’s the trick.
The Spectacle creates the illusion of abundance while manufacturing dissatisfaction. It whispers: Everyone is getting some of that anime’ O’ face… except you.
And that’s how a performance becomes a market. That’s how an impulse becomes a product.
So what are the implications of all this? What happens when image-objects become expectations and simulations become standards?
You get resentment, estrangement, and disconnection. Incel culture doesn’t arise in a vacuum—it’s born in the space between the simulated abundance of desirability and the real scarcity of intimacy. Men (and some women) come to loathe strangers not for who they are but for what they represent. The traits associated with status, beauty, and pleasure. They don’t hate people; they hate representations.
Charles Randolph – stay Readical!
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