Social media simulates some of the surface features of counterpublics, it gives people visibility, voice, and connection. But that’s not the same as organised contestation with strategic power and sustained pressure.
Replies
What we get instead is performance without leverage, expression without structure, and visibility without impact. The algorithm rewards what spreads, not what builds. Anger circulates, but nothing changes.
jul 23, 2025, 8:15 am • 74 12 • view
That really made me think that the recent success of extremist parties may be due to them being perceived by many as "the true expression of the people", opposed to those moderate technocrats. In any case, said parties play heavily on that perception.
jul 23, 2025, 9:09 am • 0 0 • view
Simulated participation provides epistemic cover for technocratic systems: it suggests democracy is alive because people are speaking, but without collective organisation, strategic pressure, or deliberative space, it becomes spectacle, not a challenge to power.
jul 23, 2025, 8:17 am • 62 11 • view
So yes, managerial logic may respond to some pressures from the electorate. But that electorate is increasingly atomised, depoliticised, and disempowered. Social media simulates participation while weakening its democratic substance.
jul 23, 2025, 8:18 am • 56 6 • view
This is the real hollowing out. Not just of institutions, but of the cultural and structural forces that once pushed democracy to expand. We’re left with the shell of participation, but not its organising core.
jul 23, 2025, 8:18 am • 66 7 • view
It’s true that some voters may have supported reforms promising growth and efficiency. But democracy is more than preference satisfaction, it’s about agency, deliberation, and collective authorship of the future.
jul 23, 2025, 8:19 am • 56 8 • view
I'd recommend Michael Sandel's The Tyranny of Merit and Wendy Brown's In the Ruins of Neoliberalism for anyone interested in exploring those ideas more deeply.
jul 23, 2025, 8:21 am • 65 5 • view
While you make excellent points about the managerial state, I personally find the use of "neoliberal" as a term of disparagement unhelpful, much in the same way the right uses socialism (or the "even worse" communism) to say that anything they don't like belongs to that group.
jul 23, 2025, 8:57 am • 2 1 • view
I don’t see him using is as a disparagement but as a an accurate descriptor. No one disputes its existence anymore than socialism’s existence
jul 23, 2025, 9:00 am • 2 0 • view
What I find unhelpful is the problem of the package deal that comes with it. For instance, socialist states are intrinsically associated with both a functioning welfare state (good), and massive political and individual repression (bad). The same applies to "neoliberal" policies.
jul 23, 2025, 9:19 am • 1 0 • view
And, to be certain, I’m in, no way, attempting to dismiss the importance of discussions of political ideologies and state function. Just that it’s another discussion and I find SoMe is a very poor medium for that discussion. I so dread those conversations in these spaces. I’m sure it shows. 😬
jul 23, 2025, 9:58 am • 1 0 • view
I think you’re loosing sight of the topics in the piece that prompted Eliott’s thread- “social cohesion” and the “unwritten rules that hold a nation together” . He’s addressing, in large part, how and why these things faltered so, not debating the political makeup of the state, per se.
jul 23, 2025, 9:27 am • 1 0 • view
I’m not using neoliberalism as a casual slur. I use it because it names a specific ideological and policy shift: the reorganisation of state and society around market logic, individual responsibility, and efficiency over deliberation.
jul 23, 2025, 9:02 am • 6 0 • view
That shift has had profound consequences for democracy, hollowing out collective institutions, narrowing political imagination, and reframing citizenship as consumer behaviour. The term fits because its structural impact on participation is central to the argument I’m making.
jul 23, 2025, 9:03 am • 4 0 • view
From your thread it is clear that indeed you are not using this as a casual slur, but I think a lot of the nuance of your argument is lost with the use of the term. I usually prefer to look at individual policies and their consequences, which your thread articulates very well.
jul 23, 2025, 9:23 am • 1 0 • view
📌
jul 23, 2025, 6:52 pm • 0 0 • view
Episode 204 and 205 of Philophize This! also covers Sandel's work www.philosophizethis.org/podcasts
jul 23, 2025, 8:22 am • 40 3 • view
Sandel is a wonderful read. Any of them
jul 23, 2025, 8:26 am • 1 0 • view
📌
jul 23, 2025, 6:52 pm • 0 0 • view
I'd also recommend watching Adam Curtis' latest documentary Shifty after reading those, it'll give you a lot to think about.
jul 23, 2025, 8:43 am • 32 5 • view
Some of the smartest critique I’ve seen in a mighty long time. I’d add the romanticization of alcohol and the propaganda around destroying plant medicine as an actual important factor as well.
jul 23, 2025, 7:14 pm • 0 0 • view
Usually agree. But nowhere do you mention that your "vacuum" (argue it exists as depicted, but let's roll) is hyper-exploited using media 'Wunderwaffe' by hostile State actors who've properly got their anti-democratic act together, aided & abetted by myriad-motivated bad-faith internal actors...
jul 23, 2025, 9:17 am • 0 0 • view
...and our liberal democratic values and how they cope under extreme hostility & duress are so far found severely wanting. You said something about counterpublic. If that means 'illuminatepublic' to 'counterthreats' as a matter of existential urgency, I'm all for it.
jul 23, 2025, 9:18 am • 0 0 • view
📌
jul 23, 2025, 6:52 pm • 0 0 • view
📌
jul 23, 2025, 1:07 pm • 0 0 • view