1st blog post

In order to fully understand what digital culture is and its influence on the lives of its consumers, you must look at it from two sides. The first side is the person who does not feel influenced by digital culture and who grew up in an era where digital media was unheard of. On the other side are the people who are immersed in the digital lifestyle and whose lives essentially revolve around it. Digital media, in this sense, does represent an end to certain traditions and despite its many advantages, creates challenges, too.

In Horkheimer and Adorno’s essay, the two discuss the “culture industry” and industrialization and how it has made us accept what happens and what others do without active response or resistance. They state that popular culture is similar to a factory that produces standardized cultural goods, through film, radio, magazines, etc, to manipulate us into a passive state. Regardless of if we have little money or all the money in the world, the pleasure we get through digital culture make people content and submissive, simply because it is an easy pleasure. Horkheimer and Adorno are successful and convincing in showing that this mass-produced culture industry creates false needs that are only satisfied further by capitalism. In a sense, they could be saying that digital culture is false hope, false happiness that is driven by a capitalistic agenda who have little care for the feelings of those who consume it. “Mass deception” then, seems quite fitting.

Yet from the outside, it is hard not to be engrossed in digital culture. We have come to the point where not using it is nearly impossible. It is difficult to imagine where it might go in the future, and how production and publication will play out.