ABSTRACT
In highlighting the commercialization of new social media (NSM) as an increasingly important systemic feature of society, cultural analysts express a related concern about the stimulation and harnessing of people's libidinal energies. This chapter explores the technology's systemic features through an analysis of the capitalization or monetization of social media, before identifying the general conditions distinguishing digitally mediated communication from physically co-present communication. It also explores what is so different about relationships-at-a-distance that should lead both exponents and critics of social media to think of it as separate from direct embodied encounters. The chapter suggests that while NSM and the Internet may indeed have promoted libidinal forms of communication and consumption, these digital media have also been instrumental in extending particular types of reflexively constructed identities that emerge as a consequence of engaging with the 'virtual' expansion of the world.
