KILLING REALITY: A postmodern approach to the critique of consumer society

Abstract

In the capitalist world, according to postmodern thinkers, mass media dominate objects, i.e. the entire reality, creating a powerful consumer society from modern society in which the process of consumption itself can be seen as a process of classification and social differentiation in which signs/objects are arranged as status values ​​in a social hierarchy. However, by exploring the impact that technological revolutions have on the economy, politics and society today, contemporary authors point to the emergence of a new form of capitalism: surveillance capitalism – in which the users of the technological universe are no longer clients/consumers but raw materials for collecting data and transforming personal thoughts in order to gain as much profit as possible for the owners of capital, and in which democracy stumbles under the wealth and power of a handful of irresponsible technological corporations.