En busca del aura perdida: Espectacularizar la intimidad para ser alguien

Abstract

This article analyzes the phenomenon of the exhibition of Internet users' intimacy through blogs, photoblogs, webcams, YouTube and Facebook. These novelties are examined as symptoms of some transformations in subjectivities, concerning a disruption in the typically modern ways of being and living in the world. The axis around which subjectivities are built is tilting away from the "psychological interior" towards an increasing "outwardness" of the self. In a culture driven by the imperative of visibility, the cult of the appearance and the search for celebrity, the old interiorized essences are fading. Thus, to be somebody, people have to show themselves spectacularly. As an effort to rescue the lost authenticity, each person exhibits, on the body surface (and on the screens) the attractive character he or she wants to be.