In the digital age, humanity faces a paradoxical task: we are expected to multiply ourselves in order to assert our existence. What was once expressed through physical presence—voice, gesture, gaze—the very expression of the self, is now replaced by digital proxies: avatars, profiles, streams of data.
We exist because we are visible. Yet visibility is no longer physical. It is algorithmic.
Symptoms of a New Conception of Humanity
This doubling—our real body here, our digital self there—is not merely a matter of technical necessity. It is symptomatic of a new understanding of the human condition: the individual reduced to a utilitarian surface, defined by function within digital systems. What begins as a practical identity strategy—digital citizenship, biometric passports, online verification—becomes a cultural cipher for a deeper shift: humans are not digitally enhanced; they are fragmented.
In this new realm, communication—once a field of human expression and encounter—has transformed into a network of signals and symbols. Emojis are not mere frivolities; they are attempts to replace a lost bodily vocabulary with graphic placeholders that simulate emotion and experience without truly feeling them. They are the ornamentation of digital discourse.
The Technical Uniformity of Humanity
As with any virtual ornamentation, the digital simulation of the human is tightly constrained. Our digital proxies demand speed, clarity, legibility. They lack the capacity to convey ambiguity, nuance, or silence on our behalf. Irony must be signposted. Sadness is encoded in a symbol. Complex emotions are forced into a visual grammar that functions superficially, but is hollow at its core.
Even our avatars—digital masks claiming to represent us—reflect this reduction. Their standardisation is not a technical flaw but a mirror of cultural uniformity. Choosing from twenty hairstyles and five faces is no freedom; it is a simulation of individuality. An aesthetic of simplification that professes diversity, yet produces uniformity.
Technically Deformed Communication—Expression Beyond Representation
The result is a communicative space brimming with noise and misunderstanding. A brief reply feels cold. A delayed message reads as rejection. Irony goes unrecognised. Intimacy is performed, not felt. In this digital culture, authenticity becomes fragile, filterable, manipulable.
One triumph of digital communication lies not in facilitating exchange, but in transforming humans into interfaces. What is lost is not merely depth—it is the unavailable, the ambiguous, the unmediated. And perhaps this is the true tragedy: not that we cannot express ourselves, but that we forget expression is more than mere representation.
Brands Become Avatars Like Humans
In a culture increasingly mediated by digital signs, public relations becomes a grammar of visibility. It arranges images, controls narratives, designs emotions. Yet what is called communication is often merely a choreography of reactions. Attention replaces understanding. Intimacy is suggested, not experienced. Audiences are no longer communities; they are target groups: fragmented, quantifiable, calculable.
The digital world demands of PR what it demands of the individual: a constant, performative self-representation. Presence replaces content. Consistency replaces development. Brands, like humans, become avatars—polished, formatted, pleasing. The self, the enterprise, the idea—all are translated into images and formats that serve platforms but rarely generate depth.
A Paradigm Shift in Contemporary PR
Here lies the crisis of modern PR: it believes it can communicate without truly speaking, touch without vulnerability, influence without risk. It confuses impact with truth.
Yet communication that only functions when controlled is not communication—it is ritual. An aestheticised play with signs in which risk is absent. And without risk, there is no relationship. Without relationship, there is no relevance.
The question is not how to remain visible. The question is what that visibility reveals—and what it conceals. What does an avatar truly communicate? What does a perfect text-image template convey when all ambiguity, dissonance, and nuance have been erased? What does a corporate emoji tell us about a company of living, breathing people?
For too long, PR has understood itself as a curatorial force—selecting, arranging, designing. It must rather see itself as an interventionist one. Not: “How do we appear?” But: “What do we set in motion? What do we question? What do we allow to become visible?”
To remain relevant—not merely strategically, but culturally—PR must not manage the surface; it must interrogate it. Not merely design, but expose. Not merely smooth, but occasionally scratch.
It is not enough to be present. One must be felt. One must surprise. And sometimes, one must discomfort.
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