r/23andMe and my pictures: Platform racial spectacles as collective racial identity formation

This essay expatiates on the collective practices of image sharing of “direct-to-consumer” (DTC) genetic ancestry tests (GAT) results on social media, specifically the strategic, selective, and structural coupling of DNA charts, ancestry maps, and selfies. Building upon Guy Debord’s theory of the spectacle, I propose the concept of “platformed racial spectacle” to theorize such online phenomena: an aggregate of images voluntarily shared online, facilitated by the social media platform affordances and its sociality culture, fabricating the mythical connections between race, DNA, bodily traits, and geographies. Indicative of the racial structure and racial formations insidiously reified through such practices, the mobilization of racialization, semantics, and somatics can be found through the platformed racial spectacle and the collective practices of conjuring such a racial project. Contextualized in the subreddit r/23andme, I further explicate the emergence and existence of platformed racial spectacle, unfurl its texture and format, and expound its spectacular functionality of unification and alteration.