Mass Production and the Death of Meaning
How has the oversaturation and overproduction of media and goods stolen meaning from our lives?
By Lennon Gray
Overwhelming is a word that does not begin to cover what the past few years have been like, and this crushing weight is intensified by the proliferation of content and products in our “free market.” What I will investigate in this piece is how this mass production of content and tangible products erodes meaning from the human experience, and how the implications of this are extraordinarily dangerous. To start, let’s explore a few economists’ and philosophers’ ideas on the issue, and what they might mean for us.
How It All Started - The Era of Abundance
John Maynard Keynes, the founder of the school of thought of Keynesian Economics, held considerable influence on the views of mainstream macroeconomics after World War II until the 1970s. Along with John R. Commons, he coined the term “era of abundance,” referring to the enablement of businesses to rapidly increase their output, thereby reducing their per-unit costs and increasing profitability.
In a market solely motivated by profit, this seemed fantastic. Unfortunately, this exceeded what the market could profitably absorb, and became highly concerning. To avoid becoming unprofitable, there was only one solution: encourage consumers to overconsume.
This idea resulted in a monstrous feedback loop, creating nasty effects the more it reinforced itself. Continuous mass production led to what we call consumer capitalism, artificially stimulating consumer demand to keep up with continually increasing production.
This has created several crises that we now face today. Everything has been given a new name in its relation to the bolstering economy, and everything exists solely as a business transaction. The creation of overconsumption is rugged capitalism characterized by constant economic strife, completely unchecked in the name of profit, and giving rise to several economic crises that were supposedly “once in a lifetime” events, but have managed to occur at least three times in the span of twenty years—the dot.com bubble bursting, the 2008 crisis, and the recession brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Even in the name of public health, the economy was not allowed to stop churning—profit was and continues to be prioritized over people. This begs the question: does human life have any meaning in this kind of system anymore? Furthermore, what meaning do our creations hold, and is there a purpose for such meaning in this system?
The rest of this essay hinges on this, that an economy built on infinite growth and that sees human beings only as a means to a profitable end results in overproduction and the death of meaning not only for human life, but also for the content and items we make. Everything has become commodified with no concern for meaning, and increased consumption leads to a system of conspicuous waste.
As I have stated, this does not apply only to tangible products, but is also apparent in our consumption of media. Not only does this mean humans have no other value in this society other than economic, but this means our creations have little to no meaning. Truthful and genuine messages have no place here. To transition into this conversation, I will provide background on French sociologist Jean Baudrillard’s views on the concept.
Introduction to Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard was a sociologist, philosopher, and poet with a focus and interest in cultural studies. His works primarily examine the impact of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication. Now, I will be emphasizing his ideas regarding consumerism and the proliferation of content.
Expanding on the idea that the effects of mass production do not only apply to tangible, physical goods, Baudrillard also holds that this can apply to mass media. Mass media is mass produced, increasingly fast paced, and contains unimaginable amounts of information. The sheer amount of this information results in much of this media becoming meaningless, even if some of it has genuine meaning. Its existence in a pool of endless information causes information overload and exhaustion, so even if it was valuable, parsing through this media to find it becomes a fruitless task. This excess media is not produced with media literacy or deep thought in mind, rather, it exists solely for profit, meeting a quota, and generating enough clicks.
This over-saturation of media results in the public quickly forgetting every tragedy that passes by. We are told to pray for those affected, but we forget even faster than we learned of the problem. Our brains are immediately flooded with information, and in between these systemic issues, we are bombarded with a myriad of useless content (which celebrity wore what, who is “beefing” with who, and so on). Nothing is resolved due to the infinite amount of media we consume, and our minds become overwhelmed and we feel as though we are stuck in a state of stasis where nothing can be done. This could be argued to be the sole principle of this over-saturation, to ensure that we forget and that nothing improves, and that humans will continue their lonely economic existence and keep the machine churning. People simply do not have the time to consume it all, so the tragic impact of these social issues is reduced in their minds, so these tragedies lose their meaning.
Buzzfeed is an excellent example of this, and has often been criticized as a result; Buzzfeed is the poster child for pushing out meaningless content, even designing quizzes to discover what kind of bread you are. To make matters worse, they have begun to use artificial intelligence (AI) to write their articles, thereby exemplifying the problem. AI is used because it is solidly known that humans cannot keep up with this rate of overproduction. Like I stated before, this necessitates overconsumption in our system, which then necessitates overproduction, allowing the cycle to continue. We can’t stop being fed inane, mind-bendingly dull content. If you flood the media sphere with information, it will multiply. Baudrillard summed it up in his work “Simulacra And Simulation,” writing “The real is produced from miniaturized cells, matrices, and memory banks, models of control -- and it can be reproduced an indefinite number of times from these. It no longer needs to be rational, because it no longer measures itself against either an ideal or negative instance. It is no longer anything but operational."
Adding insult to injury, Baudrillard noted that we are living in a time dominated by appearances rather than substance. This is why the overproduction and over-saturation of media continues to flourish, because its nature emphasizes quantity over quality. Baudrillard continues, stating that the media fabricates “non-communication” and exists primarily to prevent response (as mentioned before when I discussed the perpetual news cycles of tragedy). If you are overwhelmed with content, and most of it is meaningless clutter that exists to prevent your timely and understandable reactions to tragedy, then the economic system that views you as nothing more than a profitable pawn will continue to churn.
He also notes that information devours its own content. Rather than allowing communication to flourish, the overproduction of information “exhausts itself in the staging of meaning” and “the pressure of information pursues an irresistible destructuration of the social,” meaning that an endless amount of overproduced content dissolves the ability to critique in public forums without quickly being washed away; its motive is not to innovate, but to result in total entropy. More and more disorder, more and more chaos, all without solution. Signs and images are all that remain, with answers and states of being prescribed. Nothing changes.
What We Can Do Going Forward
What is the solution in this vast sea of meaningless? How can we get it back? How can we stop it from seeming so hopeless? Baudrillard’s answer is to create the possibility of response. And this is where all of us need to take part. The system does not unravel itself unless every one of its parts acknowledges its place in the machine. We must be aware, and ready to tear it down wherever it stands. We must demand to be heard.