Dream Lovers

1. Digital Technologies are Reshaping Desire and Love

This book argues that we are now in the middle of a digitally driven incarnation of what Jean-Francois Lyotard once called a ‘desirevolution’, a fundamental and political change in the way we desire as human subjects.

A New Era. Our intimate lives, from love and relationships to friendships and sex, are undergoing a profound transformation driven by digital technologies. This isn't merely about new tools for old desires; it's a fundamental shift in how we desire, a "desirevolution" that re-maps our libidinal economy. Technologies like dating apps, sex robots, and VR simulators are not just mediating existing desires but actively manufacturing the future of social life, sex, and even love itself.

Becoming Robotic. As we increasingly engage with smartphones, smart condoms, sex robots, and virtual reality, our desires are becoming more predictable and machine-like. This isn't confined to niche subcultures; desiring and becoming robots are now central to social life. The integration of our deepest impulses into digital capitalism means our very capacity for reverie is slotted into grooves designed for profit, from porn to Pokémon.

Political Implications. This desirevolution is deeply political and economic, dominated by capitalist, heteronormative, and masculine politics. The book aims to identify these normative trends to criticize and reverse them, opening space for radical alternatives. We must recognize that desires have always been shaped by institutions and technology, but today's platform capitalism creates unprecedented inequality in who controls these shaping forces.

2. Platform Capitalism Actively Manufactures Our Desires for Profit

Capitalism doesn’t just prevent us from getting or being what we want. It also creates the desire for what we want and for who we want to be, before mediating, limiting and controlling those desires.

Engineered Desires. Platform capitalism, the dominant economic model of our digital age, doesn't just fulfill existing desires; it actively creates and shapes them. It presents us with an illusion of free choice, making us believe our organized, mediated desires are spontaneous and our own. This system thrives on a continuous loop of desire and unfulfillment, ensuring we constantly seek new commodities and experiences.

The Central Commodity. Love, in particular, is positioned as the "central commodity" within capitalism. Dating services, for instance, sell the illusion of complete satisfaction, a lasting solution to the problem of desire for a love object. This makes love a pivotal mechanism for capitalist control, transforming it from a disruptive force into a stable, predictable structure that serves economic interests.

Seizing Control. To counter this, we need to understand how our desires are "gamified" to suit corporate and political agendas. This requires a combination of economic and technological reform, allowing us to "seize the means of producing desire" for ourselves. By making visible the political patterns embedded in our emergent technologies, we can begin to change them and repurpose technology for progressive ends.

3. The "Smart City" is a Gamified Arena of Libidinal Control

As they are used in the latest predictive applications, our digital footprints, besides revealing our desires, are also responsible for the very construction of these desires.

Predictive Control. The "smart city" is emerging as a key site for the management of desire, where technologies like AI 'drone cars' and predictive network analytics aim to automate and smooth urban life. These systems don't just predict what we want; they incrementally edit our impulses to suit corporate and state agendas. Our digital footprints become blueprints for constructing future desires, not just reflecting current ones.

Regulating Movement and Desire. Applications using Google Maps APIs, such as Uber, Grindr, and Pokémon GO, are crucial in this process. They regulate our paths, map the city, and transform what we want. Pokémon GO players, for example, were early "cyborgs," following instructions issued libidinally, demonstrating how these apps can gather crowds in desired locations or prevent them in undesired ones.

The Global Arcade. The digital city functions as a "global arcade of desire," akin to Walter Benjamin's Parisian arcades. These immersive spaces, now mediated by our screens, are designed to fulfill impulses while simultaneously perpetuating a cycle of desire and disappointment. This continuous loop of "hainamoration" fuels contemporary consumer capitalism, ensuring we remain perpetually engaged in profit-generating interactions.

4. Data Algorithms Construct Our Identities and Relationships, Not Just Reflect Them

Data claims to show us what is typical, but it also constructs the typical and makes it visible to us in a flash of understanding, where what is perceived appears to have been waiting patiently for our ‘visualisation’ to make plain.

The Myth of Neutrality. Data is often presented as a neutral reflection of reality, but it actively constructs what is considered "typical" or "normal." Dating algorithms, for instance, don't just reveal existing social biases; they proliferate and re-write sectarian trends by matching users based on similarity. This process establishes and extends norms, making them appear as if they have "always-already been there."

Imposed Identity Politics. The internet, once envisioned as a space for identity experimentation, has been reshaped by platforms like Facebook to enforce a "one identity" model. This "datafication of objects" structurally imposes identity politics, turning individuals into consistent data strands for personalized curation and targeted advertising. Systems like China's Zhima Credit score formalize this, ranking users based on behavior, preferences, and even their friends' online characteristics.

The Libidinal Splinternet. This leads to a "libidinal splinternet," where digital space is organized into distinct blocks, or "filter bubbles," based on class, race, and other identity categories. Users circulate within these micro-economies of desire, generating profit for corporations while simultaneously preventing the development of mass solidarity and resistance across diverse groups.

5. Simulations and Virtual Realities Redefine the Artificiality of Sexual Desire

The reason why sexbots are so problematic and yet so fascinating is that they expose precisely the artificial character of the sexual relation.

The Gamification of Intimacy. Dating simulators, AI chatbots like Replika, and sex robots are blurring the lines between games and reality, setting the tone for future relationships. These technologies gamify interactions, transforming human relationships along with the mediums that mediate them. The pleasure derived often comes from interacting with the interface itself, rather than solely from connecting with another human.

VR Porn and Homosociality. Virtual reality pornography, a booming industry, offers an immersive experience that can intensify existing patriarchal and heteronormative patterns. POV (point-of-view) porn, for example, fosters a homosocial identification, inviting the viewer to "become" another man and experience a simulated masculinity. This structural reinforcement of power dynamics occurs not just through content but through the very form of the technology, where the user's body is replaced by a virtual one.

Desire as Artificial. Contrary to the common belief that sex and desire are inherently natural or instinctual, these simulations reveal their fundamentally artificial character. Sexbots, in particular, expose that fantasy is often what sustains our relationships. Desire, in this context, is less about tapping into pre-existing urges and more about experiencing a "memetic" or imitative desire, a pleasure derived from taking up a subject position that wants these objects.

6. Online Dating Algorithms Reinforce Social Stratification and Limit Connection

The dating service tries to mask the unexpectedness of love by making it thoroughly predictable [and] transforms love from a disruption into a stable structure for one’s life.

Predictable Romance. Dating apps, far from fostering spontaneous connections, aim to make love predictable and stable, aligning it with capitalist structures. They operate on a "metaphorical" logic, matching users based on similarity in preferences, politics, and demographics. This creates echo chambers, where individuals are primarily connected with those who mirror their existing data profile.

The Price of Love. This system formalizes a "sexual market value" (SMV), where individuals are ranked and valued based on various criteria, often reinforcing classist, racist, and misogynistic biases. The Zhima Credit score on dating apps like Baihe exemplifies this, using a social credit system to stratify desire along economic lines, making money or value the intermediary between desire and its fulfillment.

Breaking the Bubble. This algorithmic stratification contributes to the "libidinal splinternet," preventing cross-class and diverse identity solidarity. To counter this, a new approach is needed—one that uses a "metonymic" logic, based on association rather than similarity. This would allow users to explore connections beyond their immediate "filter bubbles," fostering unexpected encounters and potentially building broader solidarity.

7. Psychoanalysis Unmasks the Political and Economic Forces Behind Our Desires

Psychoanalysis – when it is at its best – is a way of thinking which connects politics with desire, making it a vital tool for the Left to deploy if it is to succeed in the war over the libidinal future.

Beyond Instinct. Psychoanalysis offers a crucial lens to understand how our desires are shaped by external forces, rather than solely emanating from within. It reveals that what we perceive as instinctual impulses are often "drives" that are "kicked in the arse" by external social and economic pressures, making us feel as if we've chosen them ourselves. This unmasks the psychic manipulation inherent in digital capitalism.

The Illusion of Freedom. Capitalism excels at making us experience our organized and controlled desires as if they are free and uninhibited. Psychoanalysis helps us see through this illusion, demonstrating how our "deepest" impulses are the very site where politics, culture, and economics converge. It's not that love is the root of everything, but that love contains everything, making it a powerful site of power.

A Tool for Change. By revealing the artificial construction of desire, psychoanalysis becomes an ally for anti-capitalist and progressive movements. It helps us understand how our desires are constructed and reconstructed by digital development and its associated economies, a fact that capitalism eagerly conceals. This understanding is essential for enacting a "desirevolution" that transforms the libidinal economy of contemporary social life.

8. The "Gamification" of Life Turns Every Interaction into a Monetized Act

We are not interactive with them, however, but with the machine.

The Ubiquitous Game. Our digital social lives, from Twitter to dating apps, have become deeply "gamified." Every "like," "share," or "swipe" functions as an in-game reward, issued by the "ultimate game engine" of the platform itself. This addictive feedback loop, similar to poker machines or smartphone games, turns our interactions into monetized acts, where our "free labor" generates profit for platform capitalists.

Addicted to the Medium. We often believe we are engaging with other people, but we are equally, if not more, interactive with the underlying machine. This raises the question: are we addicted to the medium itself, rather than the message or the person? The pleasure derived from a dating app's "ping" or a social media "like" can be indistinguishable from the desire for genuine connection, blurring the lines between human interaction and algorithmic reward.

Players in a System. Whether we actively play video games or not, gamification means we are all affected by these trends. The "gamespace" is ubiquitous, governing our external world and relationships. This system, largely controlled by Silicon Valley capitalists, positions everyone else as players, subject to a form of capitalism where inequalities of power are amplified through the very mechanisms that shape our desires.

9. A Collective "Desirevolution" is Needed to Reclaim Our Digital Future

If we do not want digital capitalism to put our desires to work, structural change, not individual retraining, is required.

Beyond Individualism. The current model of desire, heavily influenced by digital capitalism, promotes individualized and unique experiences, obscuring its collective and constructed nature. To counter this, we need a "desirevolution" that reorients desire for mutual collective benefit, fostering solidarity across cultural, economic, and social borders. This means moving beyond simply giving citizens what they want and instead transforming what they desire.

Structural Change, Not Just Quirky Tech. While innovative technologies can serve progressive agendas, true change requires fundamental structural shifts. We need cooperative, non-profit, open-access platforms that are not beholden to the profit motives of platform capitalism. This involves challenging ownership models and intellectual property laws that privatize digital space, turning "free" services into mechanisms for harvesting labor and data.

Reclaiming the Future. The internet's early liberatory potential has been co-opted, leading to a stifling of creativity and an unprecedented shutdown of collective space. To reverse this, we need a collective "hive-mind" of collaborative workers and policies that wrest ownership from the 1%. The future of desire, and thus of politics, hinges on whether we can collectively produce and desire for a future with solidarity and a commons where everyone can live and love.