10.47313 Disconnected: Social Media, the Neoliberal Selfie, and Gendered Encounters

Disconnected: Social Media, the Neoliberal Selfie, and Gendered Encounters

Abstract

Social media is often touted as the platform where voices of the marginalized
people can finally be broadcasted and heard, and thus new connections across
culture and nations are reimagined. In this paper, however, I argue that because
social media is governed by the neoliberal logic, it produces the subjectivity of
the neoliberal selfie who connects at the performative, rather than collective or
meaningful, level. As such, the more we spend time on social media, the more
disconnected we feel. We feel alienated even from our own feelings. The case
studies for this paper come from Asian American feminists who use social media
to raise awareness against sexual harassment and gendered pain. Using the digital
platform, they absorb its logic and perform and perpetuate the neoliberal selfie
gaze, thereby stopping short of making structural changes