When Spotify assigns your listening age, LinkedIn computes your closest engagement or ChatGPT names you a detail-oriented researcher, we are witnessing the end of the modern subject. The autonomous, interpretive, self-determining individual is replaced by an algorithmic "dividual": a distributed data-form optimized for prediction and control.

① 𝗘𝗽𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁. Hermeneutic self-knowledge yields to dumb pattern-recognition: “the data knows you better than you know yourself”. But correlation is not meaning.
② 𝗗𝗶𝘃𝗶𝗱𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗳. The self is decomposed into platform personas—Spotify-you, Tiktok-you, Google-you. This is the proletarianization of subjectivity: separation from the means of sense-making and dependence on apparatuses for intelligibility—lost are contradiction, opacity, and becoming.
③ 𝗔𝗹𝗴𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝗵𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝘆 𝗮𝘀 𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆. Kantian autonomy gives way to algorithmic obedience experienced as self-optimisation. Recognition is non-reciprocal and instrumental; conformity feels like choice, not conditioning. The unmeasurable becomes ethically irrelevant.
④ 𝗟𝗼𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗜𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘁𝘆. Classifications generate the people who perform them: “you are an early adopter” is not a finding but an interpellation; recognition recruits behavior that stabilizes the category ("looping effect"). A subject is produced, not existentially chosen. The gap between who one is and how one appears—necessary for freedom—collapses.
⑤ 𝗔𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗘𝘅𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. Subjectivity becomes raw material in behavioral futures markets. Our interior life is subsumed into accumulation and optimisation turns into a moral imperative enforced by internal compulsion.
⑥ 𝗚𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆. Foucault’s technologies of the self meet Deleuze’s control: continuous evaluation, distributed modulation, preemptive intervention. We internalise the metrics and conform in advance to maintain classifications. Profiles shape aspiration; control feels like care. We desire our own subjection.
⑦ 𝗣𝗼𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗘𝗿𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲. Structural violence reappears as personal metrics: precarity becomes a credit score; inequality becomes engagement disparity. Collective struggle atomizes into isolated competition for algorithmic favor; oppression is felt as individual failure.

Platforms don't discover who we are; our profiles are not mirrors but templates. In the age of tech feudalism, we become the scores that measure us—we check profiles eagerly, share results proudly, optimize compulsively, grateful for knowing yourself. Identity becomes inventory, replacing the very conditions under which personhood can be articulated, valued, and recognized.

But perhaps I'm merely performing the "strategist" role ChatGPT assigned to me—trapped in the very loop I diagnose. Either way, I'll receive my year-end recap. And I share it. Mission accomplished.

#Leadership #DigitalEthics #CriticalTheory #PoliticalEconomy #AI