Instagram has killed the intellectual

How did we go from public intellectuals like Pier Paolo Pasolini to publishing and social media gurus and influencers — without even noticing it?

Guest post by Benedetta Sabene, originally published in Italian on her Substack.

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Premise: This is a completely personal reflection on publishing, journalism and the role of intellectuals today. It is not intended as an attack on anyone in particular, even though I will mention certain public figures as examples. I do not wish to demonise any activist, communicator or expert who uses social media to share knowledge, news or opinions — nor those who consume them. My aim is to analyse the mechanisms that generate some of the contradictions we experience today, and to offer some food for thought. The inspiration to address this topic — though it has always been close to my heart — comes from the article “The death of the public intellectual”, which I encourage you to read.

We all know — and have probably hummed at least once — the famous song Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles, released in 1979. The song tells the story of a radio pop star supplanted by artists using music videos as a new form of artistic expression, completely transforming the way music and art reached the general public, and forever marking television’s primacy over radio, which became relegated to a second-class medium. Even Queen, one of the most important bands in music history, spoke of the decline of radio in Radio Ga Ga. Freddie Mercury, in that song, sang “Someone still loves you…”, setting to music the nostalgia and deep melancholy provoked in those who had made radio and music the pillars of their art. These two songs, conceptually so simple, actually put to music the analysis of a change that would forever upend the mechanisms of communication and, as a result, society itself.

Why am I talking about the collapse of radio in the ’70s, Queen and the birth of television in a newsletter devoted to geopolitics and international crises? In reality, the link is not as far-fetched as it may seem. It is precisely in this age of international crisis, conflict and general disorientation that we must answer a fundamental question: what happened to the intellectuals? Where are the leading figures who dominated Italy’s socio-cultural scene in the ’70s and ’80s — those who took positions, who offered tools for understanding reality, who stood alongside workers in demonstrations and who took part with fervour in public debate on the great issues of the day? In short: where have the people gone who can help the public navigate the chaos of an increasingly burning world, who pose questions, unpack complexity and above all, take a stand?

The answer is simple: Instagram has killed the intellectual, just as video killed the radio star.

Once, the intellectual was indeed a highly cultured and authoritative figure, but often also rebellious, provocative, contradictory, full of light and shadow, and at times controversial. The intellectual was not especially concerned with pleasing the public, embracing majority theses or expressing comfortable positions. They had no ambition to be “likeable”: on the contrary, by participating actively in political life and public debate, and by engaging in parties and movements, clashes between positions and opinions were almost always fierce, and dialectical confrontations were entered into without pulling punches. Concepts like neutrality or impartiality didn’t even exist: these are categories peculiar to our contemporary Western society — deeply depoliticised and post-historical. A society where politics, where taking a public stand, is conceived as intrinsically negative, rather than, as it was classically understood, the active participation in the life of the city — polis; the activity that transforms a man into a citizen, into someone who takes part, because freedom is participation, as Giorgio Gaber sang. Participation in social life, and therefore political life: because politics — including international politics — and society are inextricably intertwined.

Today we live in an entirely different reality. Faced with the ongoing genocide in Palestine, citizens have shown themselves far more able to take a stand, express outrage, organise and connect with one another than the intellectuals who supposedly serve as cultural reference points in Italy. I think of people like Roberto Saviano or Chiara Valerio. After two years of indiscriminate slaughter — mostly of women and small children — and in the face of a horrific famine, those who were expected to be the loudest voices in defense of shared values and principles have withdrawn into an almost embarrassed silence. How did it come to this?

Here we must take a step back and understand how publishing and cultural production work in today’s world. We have moved from culture as a vocation (from the Latin vocare, which like the German Beruf denotes an almost theological “calling”) to a market culture, where publishing contracts, publishing houses and “friends of friends” have completely replaced the intellectual’s role as a voice of dissent — and that of the journalist as watchdog of power. Today, for an intellectual or journalist to safeguard their privileged position in the contemporary cultural landscape, they must do exactly the opposite of a Pier Paolo Pasolini or a Carla Lonzi: they must be as inoffensive as possible, step on no one’s toes, express no dissent.

Taking critical positions — for instance, to denounce the massacre in Palestine or on any other matter of national or international significance — automatically makes the intellectual a pariah within the contemporary information-cultural system, which is instead based on uniformity and the total depoliticisation of thought. The intellectual or journalist must not take a stand. But to be “impartial” means precisely not to take part, to render any issue, discussion or problem aseptic. The intellectual, who once put their intelligence and talent at the service of others, now puts them at the service of their own personal and career interests, to maintain their position of power — and thus to maintain things exactly as they are. And so the intellectual, once the cultural and political vanguard, has been overtaken by their own public, becoming the rearguard: their condemnation of Israel came more than two years later than that of the tens of thousands of people who, in October 2023, marched in Rome to demand a ceasefire, openly speaking, even then, of genocide.

The collapse of the intellectual’s public function has gone hand in hand, unsurprisingly, with a marked general cultural decline. Not long ago, out of curiosity, I looked at the list of the best-selling books in Italy: one of the most purchased on Amazon was The Ketogenic Diet. I asked myself two things. The first: what am I even writing for, if no one reads me? The second, far more important: how did we get here? The answer, as your mother has probably told you at least once in your life, is always the same: that damned phone. In the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, intellectuals operated in a very limited media landscape, with only a few TV channels, newspapers, magazines and publishers. Today, anyone with a phone can express their opinion and make their voice heard via social media. The birth of social media has had several profound consequences:

• The end of intellectual authority.

• The end of complexity in favor of speed.

The huge number of voices available on social media has made it genuinely difficult to distinguish an intellectual authority from a mere news influencer or book influencer. Anyone with a more or less large following automatically becomes a cultural reference point: if so many people follow them, there must be a reason. In the past, before establishing oneself as an intellectual and earning the right to the stage and the microphone, one had to publish books, take part in conferences and public debates with other intellectuals, and also participate in political and social life. Today the process is reversed: books are published and one enters public life because one already has an audience. Publishing has thus become a cultural industry: talented but unknown writers are published with meagre advances (or, most often, not published at all). Academics and researchers even pay publishers out of pocket to see their work in print. By contrast, web personalities, news influencers, or people who are simply well-known on social media sign publishing contracts worth tens of thousands of euros with major houses. Because publishing is a market, and like any market, it cares about sales: if X has tens or hundreds of thousands of followers, the book will almost certainly sell, with little promotional effort and low risk for the publisher.

Consequently, influencer books are often throwaway products, talked about — usually only on social media — for the first three months, then disappearing entirely from both Instagram stories and bookstore shelves. These books, like any other consumer good, have an expiration date. Lacking the ambition — or the possibility — to become political or cultural reference texts requiring study, research, expertise and analytical depth, they become ephemeral phenomena, destined for the same oblivion as the cheap T-shirt you bought online last year in a burst of compulsive shopping. Their function for the market is identical: to fuel capitalism through the promotion of consumption — in this case, cultural consumption.

And here we come to the second point: social media privileges speed over complexity. Social news influencers and commentators are obsessed with “explaining things simply”. Complex political, social or international issues are spoon-fed to the public like baby food. From Covid to migration, from the Russia–Ukraine conflict to voting procedures, to the war between Iran and Israel — everything is reduced to a few infographics or a daily reel in which people are not asked to think, research, or read books, but simply to consume that specific piece of content, usually on the week’s trending topic. Social media chases the news rather than analyse it, in a self-feeding mechanism that drowns the public in endless stimuli — stimuli that, by their nature, are incompatible with critical thinking, which requires time, analysis, and cross-referencing of sources. This extreme simplification is closely tied to the publishing market. Shiny reels, colorful infographics, the brand-new book that sums up all human knowledge in 200 pages — this is what is meant to be consumed. And so the influencer becomes an author, leaps into the public and cultural debate, participates in book launches, is invited to public debates and conferences. —almost always without any scientific or academic expertise on the subjects they address. The only rule is not what to talk about, but what people are talking about now — what’s trending today, what’s hot right now.

The rise of social media has brought another important consequence: the end of the mass public and the birth of “bubbles”. The mass audience died alongside the intellectual. Today, with social media, every figure — more or less well-known — belongs to a “bubble” that usually does not communicate with others. These bubbles are tiny compared to the old mass public: the lowest ratings of any TV program still exceed the size of the largest bubble. You can hear it in everyday conversation — on the street, at restaurant tables, on public transport: almost nothing that happens on social media has any impact on the daily life of tens of millions of people. And yet, each of these online figures is in constant competition to capture a bigger slice of their bubble, churning out infographics and reels — because more followers mean a bigger advance for the next book, and more chances to get into the right circles.

That said, we must avoid the trap of demonising social media outright, which have also given a voice to scholars, activists, journalists and writers who would otherwise have had no place in public debate. And, especially during the massacre in Palestine, social media has been — and still is — the primary means of spreading otherwise censored images and news, as well as organising public dissent. The point is not to “abandon social media” — a useless and regressive form of Luddism — but to “inhabit the contradiction”, using the medium simply as a tool, never as an end in itself.

I, too, as someone who began my own work in international politics — which I have studied for years — precisely on social media, now use them only when I feel I truly have something to say, and to point toward meeting spaces outside the platforms.

Because it is precisely in this climate of international crises that we must, more than ever, rediscover critique, analysis and understanding — of things and of their causes. It is essential not to give in to this commodification of culture: to delegate to this or that social media personality the task of explaining any event to us in thirty neat seconds of a reel, in four Instagram slides or in a few pages of a book that is often nothing more than a collection of stories or posts already published. Just as it is essential to understand and dismantle the mechanisms underlying the publishing and cultural market, and to confront intellectuals with their own silence. We must seek intellectuals in the places where they are still to be found: in political movements, in academia even in the much-despised parties, and above all in the classics, which by their very nature — no matter how often they are read and studied — remain inexhaustible.

And finally, we must take away the intellectual’s sceptre from anyone today who is unable to take a stand: because that betrays what should be the very essence, the public function, and the indispensable trait of the intellectual — today as in the past.

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Thomas Fazi

Website: thomasfazi.net

Twitter: @battleforeurope

Latest book: The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left (co-authored with Toby Green)