There is a major ‘did this man have a time machine??’ element to this 1967 work of French philosophy. Because when he argues that late stage capitalism is turning us into the society of the spectacle, aka “a social relation among people, mediated by images”

Umm, yeah. Can confirm.

He doesn’t just predict things like instagram. He predicts a lot of the very specific features of instagram that we’re struggling to put words to, like:
▪️ the shift from consumption to the appearance of consumption
▪️ how instagram doesn’t just connect consumers to products but *creates* consumers for products 
▪️ even the interaction between totalitarianism and social media, aka social media as “the ruling order’s nonstop discourse about itself; its never-ending monologue of self-praise, its self-portrait at the stage of totalitarian domination of all aspects of life.”

So why the three stars? Put very simply: Debord neglects his Hegel. He posits a dualism between “the real” and “the image” (Hegel has specific critiques for all types of ontological dualisms, including this one). And if a philosopher tries to posit a dualism, straight to the trash 🗑️

Especially if said philosopher tries to critique Hegel as “teleological”—a misreading I’m tired of.