Today the Spotify Wrapped playlists have been rolled out on the app (as well as the analogous thing for Apple music I guess, if you use that). Of course, being the beacon of taste and sophistication that I am, mine is beyond reproach. I have listened to the exact calculated permutation of songs, at exactly the right minutes, such as to bring about the optimum, the ideal of musical consumption. Utility maximization, with the utility curve tangential along the market line of all auditory choice. Internal Lagrangian functions constantly calculating to determine what to listen to, and when, and in conjunction with other decisions of taste in a constant network which optimizes sophistication, culminating in a final playlist upon which all may look in admiration. Finely displayed in the medium of my Instagram story, peering through the protective glass of your phone screen, masterfully framed by your phone case, like an artwork on display. It even tells you the amount of minutes listened, the measure of time effort put into this final display, effort then collapsed into a singular .png image.
Through social means, Spotify Wrapped being one of many, we subject ourselves to a social panopticon, not only aware that we are being watched, but deliberately posing under its gaze, in hope that the watchers be pleased with us. As prisoners, we toil endlessly for the admiration of our observers. Unlike prisoners, we have the keys to our own chains, and we chose to adorn them in the first place. There is no compulsion in it, you could simply choose not to post or engage with social media, not to share your Spotify Wrapped, not to share your status online. In fact, to engage with the system requires an active effort on our part, we must create accounts with these social media platforms, solicit others around us to follow and engage with us there, link these accounts between each other, update our statuses with each change. We choose to because of an innate desire for the attention and admiration of others, which has now been channeled through means of social media, condensed into a phone screen.
And now in knowing that others can see what we do, there is an innate shift in behavior, a self-judging in considering what others may think. The private has become the public, listening at home on headphones has now become indistinguishable from listening on loudspeaker in a crowded mall. An inner voice may say, “What would others think of me listening to this?” And where in the past there would be no means by which they could know, other than to physically invade into your private space, now they simply check your socials for your status updates, which you willingly provide to all. And perhaps its not a question asked in shame, but in pride, and you share these statuses with intent, so as to say “Look at what I engage in, and admire!” And so then your private actions you attempt not just to please yourself but to impress all who may observe you, to impress the panopticon. Action is undertaken not in the anticipation of its real outcome, but of the reactions from others when they know that you have undertaken said action. We have then been conditioned to incorporate the voice of the panopticon into our inner consciousness, a continuous self evaluation of the social validity of our behaviors, perhaps as powerful or even moreso than considerations of our own desires or morality. Through this we police ourselves and give away control of the private to the social, the inner has been destroyed and now all that is left is the outer display, a calculated facade whose sole purpose is to be observed.
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