Corona Corruption
History is a chronicle of “shocks” — the shocks of wars, natural disasters, and economic crises and their aftermath. This is the essence of what was coined as “Disaster Capitalism” by journalist Naomi Klein. The exploitation of citizens by the elite and super-powered governments during the face of a global crisis is unfortunately not news. Each time millions are being killed, capitalism makes a killing amount too.
Poignantly, the Coronavirus pandemic has created lucrative opportunities for businesses to thrive; Amidst a global crisis, digital platforms are seeing an increasingly high surge in their services. The global quarantine has led to more than just innovation in dance moves.
This period of mass disorientation has led to an increase in demand for OTT platforms such as Netflix and Amazon subscriptions. Disney+ which launched smack in the middle of the isolation period has enjoyed a whopping 50 million subscribers with the figure projections aiming at continuing even after the quarantine period. To put this into perspective, it took Netflix over 7 years to achieve what Disney+ achieved in 5 months!
This leads to an interesting revelation about habit formation. Most of us desperately cling onto our screens to try and escape the daily rut, by investing a copious amount of hours on our social platforms. It is essential to explore the ramifications this may have on culture and society. It is undeniable that we use technology as part of our response to the catastrophe, yet the immature regulatory laws and monetization of private data can make technology companies dangerous allies.
While Netflix and Amazon are enjoying a subscription hike and Disney is profiting through more new subscribers, websites like She-In or Fashion-nova are using the pandemic to sell products under the category of home & lounge. Printed masks being sold on fashion websites is a clear indication of the callousness of capitalism.
These conditions seem like the perfect time to find ways to accrue a large customer base. The adult content streaming platform Porn Hub also announced a free subscription for their premium service until the end of quarantine. This is definite click bait for many users and will surely result in additional retained subscribers.
Another popular video-sharing platform ‘Tik Tok’ is on everyone’s lips if not phones already. What was considerably popular amongst Gen Z’s are now having millennials succumb to the pressure and Tik Tok is enjoying a surge in the number of downloads. Despite reservations from fans and family, six of UK’s most popular Tik Tok Celebrities are quarantining together to create content all around the clock, calling it the “Tik Tok House”.
Every moment we spend scrolling, stalking and sharing, we feed more personal data about ourselves which corporate tech giants can monetize on. ‘Big Other’ is the name given by Shoshana Zuboff to the unforeseen power created by the tech giants: Google & Facebook. Her work, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, is a meticulous portrayal of the incursion of the Big Other into our digital lives and its brutal rendition of our data. The relentless surveillance of our online clicks, shares and likes are slowly shaping our personal history.
Before the pandemic, this data was used to sell targeted advertisements based on searches. Now, the current situation is providing Big Other to weave themselves deeper into the fabric of our lives, all under a humanitarian guise. The talk of a contact tracing app being built by Facebook and Google is a further indication of the false good that they are trying to impart. This mantra of freedom and security for everyone is a ruse, exploited by the Big Other, especially during a global crisis.
As Sean McDonald writes “It is time to move past the binary conversations about the public interest, and the public good. When both ‘public’ and ‘good’ are inherently political concepts and not guarantees”. The responses to the pandemic in the current movement will shape the discourse to come for the next few years. As chaos theory suggests, the butterfly flaps her wings and a few weeks later, someone somewhere drinks bat soup.
In times of emergency, we all do what is best within our capacity and in a situation where everything is increasingly digital, is a watchful eye enough? I conclude with this statement written by Parag Khanna and Karan Khemka, “The world may soon pass peak virus but true recovery will take years — and the ripple effects will be seismic.”
References
Zuboff, Shoshana, Big Other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information Civilization (April 4, 2015).
https://www.cigionline.org/articles/digital-response-outbreak-covid-19
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/06/naomi-klein-how-power-profits-from-disaster
