Cumming to terms with communicative capitalism

2. Who’s talking? Martin Berg PhD in Sociology 2008, Lund University, Sweden Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Halmstad University, Sweden (Corporate) Senior Researcher at the digital agency Good Old with ﬁnancial support from the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (3 year post- doctoral research project on online sociability)

3. C’licking the other Social interaction and bodily practices on cam4.com: ”the largest worldwide webcam community” Some introductory notes from my observations: ”4000 buttplug (doesnt all go in), 5000 cum, tip further if u want tnx ^^” ”such a ﬁne boy! Wow!” / ”over 5000 About time to cum!”

4. Aim and scope Analysis of various forms of social interaction on cam4.com by placing certain emphasis on the digitally mediated setting as a structured social space in which the user interface renders certain social patterns and communicative actions intelligible. An account of the social web that does not avoid the carnal, vulgar and ﬁlthy aspects of social life The user interface and the forms of interaction on cam4.com are situated in a wider societal context

5. Cam4: a closer look ”[N]ot just a webcam site, it's a whole open sexual social community, where most importantly you can always be yourself and get tipped for that”

6. Development of the internet This particular kind of online amateur pornography needs to be situated in the mode of social organisation that characterises the internet of today Two undertheorised aspects of the internet: 1) online space is not so o en theorised as a ”space” anymore, and 2) the relationship between online interaction and late modernity is seldom discussed

7. Porn 2.0 Online pornography is o en rendered invisible in online metrics and interpretations of the social web Watching porn is a question of physically clicking, scrolling, wanking and ﬂickering through bodies on display, and not so much about fantasmagoric encounters in a virtual La-La land The interface as a ”space of public privacy” and oﬀers a distanced intimacy

8. The interface The body occupies a central position in the interface: it is the very focus of activity as well as the object of social interaction. Interpassivity rather than interactivity: the interface seems to facilitate a ”sense of being active through another subject who does the job for me” /Žižek Micropayments as a means for partaking in the show without any signiﬁcant eﬀort: it is a way to inscribe oneself in the plot that is revealing on screen

9. Communicative capitalism Communicative capitalism is that ”economic- ideological form wherein reﬂexivity captures creativity and resistance” /Dean Processes of reﬂexivity become particularly clear when transferred to online sociability The relationship between the individual and the generalised other has become fundamentally corrupt in communicative capitalism.

10. Concluding remarks Cumming to terms with communicative capitalism is a question of symbolic and structural alignment: certain desires are installed by the socio-cultural context and enacted through the interface The speciﬁc context on cam4.com blurs the boundaries between private and public: we enjoy for ourselves among others; we are private in public Money and micropayments provide a dual sense of intimacy