The Affective Toxicology of Social Media

Abstract

The toxicity ascribed to social media indicates deeper systemic problems than those usually designated as its toxic ills. Although the widespread afflictions resulting from social media consumption constitute grave social problems in their own right, they allude to a dysfunctionality that precedes and transcends the individual troubles. The ill effects not only predicate toxicity, they indicate social media as both causal factor and self-perpetuating outcome by creating the conditions of reciprocal obligation and the dependency on the “Like!” which together function as the engine behind the compulsion to repeat. Platforms seek to maximize their users’ screen-time because all screen-time is unpaid productive net-work that contributes to the platform’s capital and to its bottom line. We examine the dynamics of social media toxicity as an affective affliction using Marcel Mauss’s ideas of reciprocal obligation from The Gift (1925) and Spinoza’s Ethics (1677) as a practical philosophy that sheds light on the underlying machinism of digital social platforms and the creation of value as the space-time of social networks by way of cultivating narcissism. It does not purport to be the “be-all, end-all” explanation of the phenomenon, but seeks to produce an alternative, supplemental — albeit incomplete — image of social media use.