Marco Senaldi's Facebook Philosophy: Social Media as Reactive Spectacle

In an editorial for Artribune Magazine #44, philosopher and curator Marco Senaldi argues that social media, particularly Facebook, are not transparent tools but enigmatic phenomena that reveal the deep nature of traditional media. He contends that the true purpose of social media is not merely data collection, as commonly suspected, since users voluntarily share intimate details. Senaldi compares Facebook to a television studio without walls, where interactions are reactive rather than active, leading to hate speech and emotional outbursts. He describes Mark Zuckerberg as an apprentice sorcerer who unleashed a magical vessel without knowing how to close it. Despite its chaotic nature, Senaldi sees Facebook as a spiritual self-portrait of our time, akin to Stanisław Lem's planet Solaris, where every post adds a fresh layer to a collective 'social sculpture' in the Beuysian sense. The article reflects on the paradox of social media: they offer unprecedented freedom of expression yet trap users in a perpetual cycle of reaction.