How the ‘spectacle” spectre continues to haunt our hyper-connected society

Guy Debord’s prophetic vision in the age of social media

“In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.” — Guy Debord.

In 1967, Guy Debord wrote Society of the Spectacle, a short but influential book that critiques contemporary consumer culture and commodity fetishism, primarily in the context of advanced capitalism — a topic, then much in vogue at the time of the book’s publication. Debord, a prominent member of the Situationist International movement, argued that the “spectacle” — a term he coined to represent a social relationship mediated by images. Today while Debord’s work is often read in the classrooms of Humanities grad program, it leaves behind a spectre that whispers — we have not escaped from the void of vacuity that exist; we continue to live informed by myriad spectacles of deep capitalism.