The Space Transfer Of Inequality And The Power Mechanism Behind Taste Differences

Supported by the development of digital technology and platforms,digital space has become a crucial place for interpersonal communication and interaction,with far-reaching effects on social relations and social structure,and has also turned to a refuge from the inequality of reality.However,not everyone can benefit equally from digital technology and be treated equally in digital space.The emergence of digital space has offered people who are treated unequally in real life a new utopia,but social inequalities have not been significantly moderated in this utopia.The only difference is that people are becoming much blunter to detect inequality.The reason behind it is that a cultural shift was brought by the consumer-centrism,and interaction in the digital space has crossed the boundaries of time and space simultaneously,which cause a focus shift from social status to aesthetic differences,and the flattened communication pattern has replaced the traditional tridimensional social interaction.However,the digital space is not a rootless city in the sky,nor an other-world that has already arrived.Behind each "digital avatar" is an individual living in real social connections,and within each "digital portrait",there is a "subject" that has been defined and shaped.The choice of taste has become a dependence for people in the digital space to flaunt individuality.In the pursuit of such individuality,however,people would fallen to the pretty flimsy bubble of “free choice” and enter the thermostatic cocoon room of “subject shaping”.The difference of taste has made inequality more obscure and urge people to escape from the inequality of reality,which affirms the problem in the reality,pursing a symbolic taste in the digital space and treat it merely as a cultural choice.The difference of taste is not the result of pluralistic choice,not the expression of autonomous individuality,but a shaping of unequal subjects,an object of socially dominant power.As a cultural phenomenon,it is an affirmation culture.Seemingly artistic and subjective,the choice of taste is indeed the product of social construction,the direct expression of cultural power.Meanwhile,it combines with political and economic power to form a complete power structure.Power has gained a new life in the digital space: cover its essence of domination with entertainment symbols,realize its self and implicit discipline through the competition and control of the right of choice,degenerate into a simple consumption behaviour under the balance of instrumentalization.Thus,the difference of taste manifests its political nature,which is,as a representation of power,game and conflict,acting in the digital space.