The masses’ enthusiastic participation destroys the cultural apparatus that courted them.

Evidence

Their number, their stampede, their fascination, their itch to see everything is objectively a deadly and catastrophic behavior for the whole undertaking. Not only does their weight put the building in danger, but their adhesion, their curiosity annihilates the very contents of this culture of animation. This rush can no longer be measured against what was proposed as the cultural objective, it is its radical negation, in both its excess and success. It is thus the masses who assume the role of catastrophic agent in this structure of catastrophe, it is the masses themselves who put an end to mass culture. — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 220

Categorization

• XREF: Reverses the Frankfurt School’s passive-masses thesis; the masses here are catastrophic agents, not dupes — a genuinely contrarian departure. — connects to: Mass reproduction’s erosion of the aura destroys experience rooted in tradition. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 629; Even modernist art becomes infected by the schema of mass culture. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 30; Mass culture makes audiences enact their own manipulation. (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Mass reproduction’s erosion of the aura destroys experience rooted in tradition. #expands (0.85) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 629
• Mass culture abolishes the individual’s lived history, reducing life to disposable instants #expands (0.82) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 185
• Mass culture makes audiences enact their own manipulation. #expands (0.80)
• Mass communications reduce all cultural realms to the commodity form. #expands (0.80) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 283
• Even modernist art becomes infected by the schema of mass culture. #expands (0.78) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 30
• Cultural mass production renders people interchangeable copies stripped of individuality #expands (0.78) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 113
• Mass information systems destroy the aesthetic experience they claim to promote #corroborates (0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 128