Affinities of Affectivity

The smartphone is still the reigning fetish of everyday communication. In fact, it has become the fulcrum of all interactive agencies in daily life. Yet, what is generally unnoticed about it is a screen-induced inter-subjectivity that supports a significant level of exploitation in communicative linkups where affective contagions are rapidly propagated. Through the entanglements in interactive communication that technological innovation promotes, smartphone users can become vulnerable to new forms of predatory economic relations not immediately visible in their daily routines. It can be proposed that the techno-hegemonies have tapped into these entanglements to inculcate contagious behavior as fundamental to the operational enterprise of affective capitalism. This is a capitalism that relies on collective social relations as a springboard to mediated relations of production. However, there are indications that these relations of production may be reaching their limits in the growing numbers of courtroom challenges.