How self-commodification is becoming the future of e-commerce

Life is now, easily, a continuum: a straight line with periodic events, which now look only a little different from one another. The precarious nature of this continuum, just like life, has made our anxiety levels peak–– now the central force behind all our actions. Given this stressful backdrop, we are drawn, from time to time, into a spiral of self- introspection: an attempt to get meaning out of this continuum on repeat mode. This leads to bouts of self-indulgence: an attempt to break away from the self-perceived monotony of our lives and indulge in other pursuits.

To our ‘aid’ are “digital tools”- the latest by-product of the ‘digital era’: These tools by their very artificial nature tell us what, when, how, where, who of almost everything that we now do in a repeat mode – work, eat, read, shop, walk, exercise, entertain, play, pleasure and so on. Never before has there been such an enhanced focus on the “self”: In other words, they say how we have been reduced to a commodity.

The commodification of self would seem to be a misnomer. If a commodity is a product, something that can be bought and sold, then in what sense can the self be commodified?