From Susan Sontag’s warning to AI algorithms: why capitalism needs “light” humans, and how the Age of Consciousness reclaims seriousness
A video recently published on Instagram poses a bitter question: “The cotton-candy society: how did we lose seriousness to entertainment?” The video, based on an essay in Tarjoman magazine, cites Susan Sontag’s 1996 warning — a warning that today, in the age of artificial intelligence and algorithmic feeds, feels more real than ever. Sontag had said that with the dominance of a culture whose core values come from the entertainment industry, “seriousness” has reached the bottom rung: in the new “light” world, everything must be pleasant and mild, and anything serious is set aside as an obstacle to the deceptive business — business built on hype, lies, and tricking the buyer about the product — to the point where people can hardly regard anything as real and authentic anymore.
Cotton candy is a precise metaphor: something that melts the moment you put it in your mouth, leaving behind only a sweet taste. It neither satisfies nor nourishes. The cotton-candy society is just that: a culture that turns everything — even deep concepts like knowledge and human flourishing — into sellable, easy-to-digest commodities.
But the more important question is: where does this “lightness” come from? Is technology to blame? Are people at fault for becoming “shallow”? Or is something more structural at work? From the standpoint of the “New Social Order in the Age of Consciousness” project, the answer is clear: the cotton-candy society is not an accident; it is a product of ownership.
Why is seriousness bad for the deceptive business?
The key point is that very sentence from the video: “anything serious is set aside as an obstacle to the deceptive business.” That sentence deserves to be taken seriously, because it exposes a precise economic logic.
Note: this is not about business in general; it is about business built on hype, lies, and deception — business that sells the product by tricking the buyer.
The serious human is a bad customer for such a business. Someone who thinks deeply, pauses, asks questions, compares, and is not easily convinced is a problem for an industry that makes money from “engagement”: more scrolling, more clicks, more watching. The entertainment industry — and today, the digital platforms — profit not from our understanding but from our involvement. Every second spent in reflection is a second in which no advertisement is seen.
So the logic of business dictates: everything must become “light.” News must melt down to the size of a headline; knowledge to a sixty-second video; human suffering to a story that vanishes with a swipe; and even protest, to a hashtag forgotten by tomorrow. That is the cotton candy: the sweet taste of knowing, without the nourishment of understanding.
From television to the feed: the mechanized intensification of lightness
In 1996, Sontag spoke of the dominance of the “entertainment industry” — television, cinema, commercial music. But what we see today is the mechanized intensification of that same logic. The algorithmic feed is a full-fledged cotton-candy factory: each user has a dedicated production line churning out endless trouble-free sweetness — exactly what they want to hear, in exactly the tone they like, in exactly the dose their patience allows.
And artificial intelligence has brought this machine to perfection. Language and recommender models generate infinite “pleasant and mild” content — content with no challenge, no friction, no depth. Every serious question is answered with a smooth, polished, harmless reply. Even “seriousness” itself has become a commodity: success podcasts, motivational videos, “educational content” that entertains more than it educates.
The point is: the problem is not the technology. The problem is that this immense technology — the product of the social labor of millions of humans, from data workers to researchers to users — is privately owned by a handful of companies whose profit logic is the production of “lightness.” It is the same contradiction this project has addressed again and again: socialized production, private ownership. AI could have been an instrument for deepening collective consciousness; under the domination of capital, it has become an instrument for dissolving it.
The cotton-candy society and politics: when nothing is real, no one acts either
But the deepest layer of Sontag’s warning is political: “people can hardly regard anything as real and authentic anymore.”
Consider that sentence carefully. A human who regards nothing as real is not only a good consumer but also a harmless citizen. Someone who feels suffering only at the scale of a story does not organize against suffering. Someone who understands news only at the scale of a headline does not act on news. The cotton-candy society is a society in which “political consciousness” — connecting personal experience to structural causes — has become practically impossible; because “experience” itself has melted away, reduced to a sweet taste.
This is the same point we made earlier about the drawbacks of virtual struggle against tyranny: revolutions are not won by clicks. But now we can go one step further: even the “click” only matters when there is seriousness behind it. The cotton-candy society not only makes real struggle difficult — it turns even performative protest into entertainment: a protest that, like cotton candy, is sweet and quickly melts away.
Seen this way, “lightness” is a form of domination — perhaps its gentlest and most efficient form. Not with batons, not with prisons — with entertainment. People who take everything lightly need no suppression; they have disarmed themselves.
The Age of Consciousness: reclaiming seriousness
So what is the way out? Neither technophobia nor fatalism. Technology has not inherently made us shallow; it is the “ownership” of technology that has turned it into a cotton-candy machine. The way out lies in the same direction the entire “New Social Order in the Age of Consciousness” project points: democratizing control over the means of production — including the means of cultural and mental production.
Seriousness is not an individual virtue; it is a collective achievement. Humans become serious when they have a space for being serious: a space for deep discussion, for dissent, for collective reflection, for connecting personal experiences to structural causes. Such a space is the product of “councils” — not councils in the ceremonial sense, but the real participation of people in power and decision-making; from the neighborhood and the workplace to policymaking about algorithms and artificial intelligence.
As long as platforms and AI models are privately owned and their profit logic is “lightening,” every individual critique of “phone addiction” or “people becoming shallow” is blaming the victim. The issue is not individual willpower; it is the structure of ownership. Just as data centers cannot be restrained by “consuming less,” the cotton-candy society cannot be cured by “scrolling less.” The cure is changing ownership and democratic control: algorithms that serve the deepening of collective understanding instead of maximizing engagement; an AI that is an instrument of questioning and awareness instead of producing endless pleasant content.
The Age of Consciousness is the age of reclaiming seriousness. Not a dry, grim seriousness, but one that rises from collective participation and democratic control: humans who, instead of being passive consumers of cotton candy, are active producers of meaning. Sontag warned in 1996; thirty years later, we have both heard the warning and know the way out. The problem is no longer not knowing; the problem is organizing for collective knowing.
Cotton candy is sweet; but humans were not made for momentary sweetness. They were made for consciousness — and consciousness is serious.
