The Contexts of Hyperconsumerist Culture and Social Media Platforms

The advent of social media and their platforms has accelerated the processes of diversion to experience and hyperconsumerism. The hyperconsumerist culture has penetrated all areas of our lives in a natural, sophisticated and inconspicuous way. This study focuses on select links between hyperconsumerism and social media, as well as on the rituals of consumption, their specific manifestations, forms and functions. We use OnlyFans, a social network with erotic and pornographic content, as a pars pro toto example of the above principles of consumption rituals. Its immense popularity testifies to the relativization of values, norms and taboos, detabooization – or an outright non-tabooization – of intimacy and consolidation of the cult of pleasure. Furthermore, we will conceptualize the invasion of digital media and the Internet, which accelerated both the expansion of pornography and its secularization and deprofessionalization, and an even greater ubiquity and accessibility to all age categories. We reflect on the effects of these changes on the digital natives, the so-called generation Z, and the nascent generation Alpha.