Nightlife participation became individualized self-performance for an online audience

Evidence

Three years after 9/11, the waning scene in downtown New York looked to the glossy, celebrity-driven culture of Los Angeles for a new source of energy. This was evident at the Misshapes, New York City’s next iconic party. Like American Idol, Misshapes downplayed music in favor of spectacle, with amateur DJs offering chaotic sets that sounded like an iPod on shuffle mode. The real attraction was its photo wall, inspired by Japanese street photo magazine FRUiTS, where attendees posed for portraits that later appeared online. Participation offered a pathway to minor internet notoriety. As writer Tricia Romano observed, “We were all watching reality TV and we were all starring in our own nightlife type of reality TV online.” — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 152

Categorization

• QUESTION: This is a precise case study for the reader’s counter-thesis question: could the camera-wall self-performance ethos be the era’s actual signature culture, which Marx reads only as blankness?
• SEED: A possible counter-argument essay anchor: the meta-claim ‘everyone consumes everything as performance’ may itself be the signature identity of the 2000s-2010s, contra the omnivore-monoculture blankness thesis.