COVID-19, Social Media Dependency and Desire for Omnipresence: Ways Forward.

Abstract

From 2020 until 2023, the process of vaccination and progressive control of the SARS-CoV-2 or "Covid-19" virus has allowed for monitored movement to come back. Within this short window of historical reflexion, this chapter aims to bring light to the current context of social media uses and abuses through the lens of the notion of desire for omnipresence. For that, this study articulates this goal through three different layers of analysis: first, by investigating the emergence, management and incitement of what can be described as structurally addictive platforms of online interaction and how they entail a biopolitics of social media dependency; second, by providing in the notion of desire for omnipresence, a framework to understand the driving force for our current wish to subjectively deterritorialize ourselves toward the limitlessness through a zoopolitics where the virtual profile becomes a mode and a model of existence; finally, by pointing out ways "forward" that disrupt the ordinary understanding of linearity and progress to promote modes of un-marketization of life and human affections with the aim of transforming of our current desire for omnipresence into a genuine desire for presence.