Just in case anyone's keeping score, I think that a lot of social trends of the early 21st century boil down to the basic efficacy of niche, narrow, targeted marketing. The enormous mass media apparatus of the 20th century was vastly overbuilt in proportion to the interests of the people who funded it (advertisers) who have had a long successful clawback. I think the ad reaction began with the Saatchi & Saatchi ads for the UK conservatives in the late 70s. That's basic Adam Curtis stuff.

The long tail of the advertiser reaction has been in to use advanced telecommunications to serve as an ad platform. It's a proposition that I think still has questionable influence, as I don't think internet ads do very much, but it's been an absolutely revolution in the relationship between advertisers and media firms. Advertisers want precise, granular readouts. They want data harvesting. They want auto-generated leads. And you know what are normal, conventional factors for advertisers?

Demographics. Interests. Networks.
I think it's not conspiratorial to observe that the social media giants have done everything they can to organize their platforms around these interests -- if not for the direct sale of data, then at least for the cultivation of a potentially valuable asset. And people are generally astute observers of their social media platforms! They spend hours and hours on those platforms every day! They have all noticed in subtle ways how the platform interacts with them

The platform wants you to identify with these demographics so that the platform can play matchmaker between you and a demographic analysis. The platform wants you to identify with your preferences so that the platform can play matchmaker between you and a consumer study. The platform wants you to identify with your closest friends so that the platform can play matchmaker between you and a geofenced marketer.

Again, I don't think this is very conspiratorial stuff. It's very material and obvious.

Lo, and behold!

We are observing revolutions in demographic identities.
We are observing revolutions in ideology.
We are observing revolutions in atomization.

You have lost out on your flesh-and-blood connections and you are more dependent than ever on a digital intermediary. And your digital intermediary tells you that this is solely because you like it this way, or because this is a natural tendency, or because there's nothing to be done about it. It's a kettle argument.

You're here, you're online, to feed data to the marketers. That's it. That's what all of this is for.

Your sense of self, your sense of direction, and your sense of community have more to do with a database on AWS than they have to do with your neighborhood, or your soil, or your wellness.

They'd invent a third world war if it meant that they could get you to buy more novelty socks through the referral link.

I realize that this is very Gen X style cultural commentary and I assure you I have fresher material. But I think it's worth observing where I think the postindustrial world receives its panoply of social ills.

Incidentally, if you understand this stuff as emerging from feedback between a marketer's demographic panel and a million consumers pressing buttons, then you can understand why the whole complex of contemporary demographics, ideology, and society is so absurdly inchoate. No particular individual has to have even an inkling of a big picture. It's just a heuristic sketch for organizing ad service. It might get replaced by a better sketch by a better advertiser.