Data surrender is a rite of passage into the speculative community

Evidence

The ritual use of financialized digital commodities relies on contradictory promises whose exchange fuels anxiety but also renews our speculative imaginations. The promise of received likes on a Facebook post, of views on a posted Instagram story, or even of partner matches that may follow a bout of Tinder swiping are undercut by a compulsive recurrence. They appear at once realizable and elusive, both gratifying in the present and doomed to fail in the future, binding users in an uncertain albeit hypervisual sense of sociality. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 298

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Rides the contradiction at the heart of platform life: promises that are simultaneously gratifying and doomed, realizable and elusive — a paradox that resists one-sentence reduction.
• XREF: Echoes the reader’s finance-and-imagination thread: speculation as a collectively binding social ritual rather than individual consumer choice. — connects to: Surrendering personal data is a ritual initiation into the speculative community. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 189

Broader Connections

• Surrendering personal data is a ritual initiation into the speculative community. #corroborates (1.00) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 189