Living to be seen: Digital spectacle, the exhausted society, and the presentation of motherhood

In digital media, announcing a baby's gender, cutting a wedding cake, or celebrating a birthday has ceased to be a shared happy moment. Private moments and posts have turned into content production processes recorded from the air by drones operated by professional cameras. In this state, the digital stage has become the center of conspicuous consumption and performative identity presentation. The phenomenon that communication scholar Alice Marwick defined as "micro-celebrity" has long been surpassed. Everyone is a small celebrity in their own right. By sharing flashy moments, one is actually contributing to the platform economy. A new market is being built from our emotions through interactive data.

The other day, I came across a video on social media. A circumcision ceremony. But the circumcision child is not at the center of the "show." The mother is walking in glitter, wearing a costume with giant wings on her back; the older sister is on stage in an exaggerated ball gown, and the father is a mere extra in his suit. I say stage because it was not a ceremony or a celebration; it was a performance. The boy, who should have been the main character of the circumcision wedding, was on the sidelines, while a mother who stole the spotlight was at the center. In the video shared on social media, the mother was building her own visibility and identity through her child. There are hundreds of small stages like this in digital media. Such videos are actually a social mirror, proof that everything is now lived to be seen and shown. Cultural critic Byung-Chul Han's "performance subject" takes flesh and bone here with hundreds of thousands of liras spent on presentation and thousands of likes.

Sociologist Thorstein Veblen defined conspicuous consumption in 1899 as a status tool for the wealthy and those who emulate them. Today, "conspicuous consumption" has digitized and entered our mobile phones. Everyone stages their own little luxuries on social media. Those who want to say "I exist too" shove their stories, which they have decorated and showcased, into our faces on digital media. In this context, individual ostentation has become a shield to hide social poverty and deprivation. Ostentation is presented with a shiny illusion that covers up credit card debts, installments, and other shortcomings. Filters soften not only faces but also the tired reality. But this desire to "exist" is actually a camouflage. This new form of ostentation sells the effort to hide one's lack.

Erving Goffman, from a sociological perspective, makes a distinction between the "front stage" and "back stage" in the presentation of identity in daily life. Now, the "front stage" is the Instagram and X posts in the feed, while the "back stage" is the tired, indebted, anxious real people. People are now appearing instead of "being." No one wants to look back at the background of the "back stage." The performance never ends. The concept of "liquid modernity" by Zygmunt Bauman, who suggests sociological thinking, comes into play right here. Lives are no longer fixed; they are "liquid." Bonds are superficial, identities are temporary. Therefore, performance is displayed in every area of life in the digital age. A post is deleted, and a new one is put in its place in a very short time. But this flow does not bring freedom; it brings exhaustion. Because you have to "show yourself" again every day. And this state of constant re-presentation and ostentation consumes the individual from within in the "performance society" that Han speaks of. But there is one thing Han forgets: This exhaustion is not distributed equally. While some perform with ostentation, others make that performance possible. While some "realize themselves through conspicuous consumption," others prepare and produce the background of that stage with their tired labor.

In the performance society, who is actually tiring us out?

According to Han, modern humans are not slaves to external pressures, but to their own desire for perfection. But the desire for perfection comes from fulfilling the demands of an economic order that glorifies unnecessary consumption and is built upon it. The "tired subject" that Han softens with a philosophical approach is mostly a well-educated, urban, free, white-collar worker figure. Deep down, it is a figure chained to its own performance. But in Turkey, exhaustion is much more concrete. The exhaustion of a worker on the night shift, a cashier fainting from standing, a courier trying to catch up with orders, or a civil servant who cannot pay the rent does not stem from a desire to be perfect. That exhaustion is neither aesthetic nor philosophical. Therefore, when Han's concepts are stripped of their class context, they turn into a liberal consolation: Everyone says, "Yes, we are all very tired," but no one asks, "Who is fundamentally tiring us out?" In short, the basis of exhaustion is not psychological; it is based on a social reality and material foundations. Therefore, the mother figure at the circumcision wedding is also a symbol of social contradictions. On one hand, she stages the "good mother" image imposed by the system, and on the other, she builds her own visibility and existence through her child. The mother's labor, love, and identity have now turned into a flashy performance.

The sociality of ostentation in this age hides inequality with an aesthetic curtain. Han, Goffman, Bauman, Veblen, and Marwick all tell us something. In the exhausted society, some breathe with Veblen's "conspicuous consumption," others with Goffman's "identity presentation." They swim in Bauman's "liquid modernity"; they constantly change, unable to hold onto anything. In Marwick's world of "micro-celebrity," everyone is a celebrity, but no one is free. And again, in Han's "performance society," it is a human condition that consumes itself to show itself, but still has to smile. The real tragedy in flashy exhaustion is this: This exhaustion is not the same for everyone. Yes, we are all tired. But this exhaustion is not equal. The mother wears wings at her child's circumcision; because the system tells her, "Show your value and existence through your child." And the woman shines and takes flight with the language of the system. Yet those flashy wings do not fly toward happiness, prosperity, or solidarity.

It cannot be a coincidence that ostentation has become so widespread at a time when inequality has deepened so much. While ostentation is a state of exhaustion and performance that is attempted to be aestheticized, and while identity has become an illusion produced by algorithms, we wander through this gilded exhaustion and over invisible labor in digital media. Perhaps not sharing, not being seen, is the most powerful performance now. Because in this age, the real human is neither on the shining screen nor in the philosophies of exhaustion and performance polished in the market. The real human is still in that unfiltered face that resists silently. In those who are tired but authentic, who have social concerns, who know that taking flight alone will not bring happiness to humanity, and who say "we exist too." And perhaps the first resistance in the digital age is not to shine with individual ostentations on this misleading digital stage, not to perform, and not to participate in the algorithmic spectacle.