Nostalgia of the walls: The misleading public-private indistinction in post-analogue celebrities Nostalgia de las paredes:La tramposa indistinción público-privado en celebridades posanalógicas

Abstract

This article proposes an essayist discussion of some effects concerning the dissolution of the walls between public private sphere, as a phenomenon characteristic of historical transformations related to the use of the internet social networks, whose harmful effects arouse a certain nostalgia of the walls (and shames) that once reinforced these limits. The popularity of the reality-show genre, which was also developed in the transition of 20th to 21th century, is another synthon of this changes in the ways of life, because it contributed to encourage the exhibition of what was previously considered as intimate, and, therefore, preserved from the eyes of the others. The encouragement to publicly share aspects of what used to be understood as private also feeds the digital platforms business model, stimulating the configuration of different subjectivities and sociabilities, as well as a new “moral ground”. The digital influencers or “post-analogue celebrities” are the more affected by those dynamics: by having big numbers of followers, on whom they depend professionally, they are exposed to suffering haters attacks and “call outs” with serious consequences, that can lead to suicide, as happened with the paradigmatic case focused here: the Brazilian youtuber PC Siqueira. The current trend of “return to the analogue”, therefore, could include not only the rescue of pre-digital media devices, but also of the values and behaviors prior to the popularization of new media.