Pandemia de positividade: uma análise da vida de ManuCit a partir das contribuições de Byung-Chul Han sobre a sociedade paliativa

Abstract

This research is directed toward the experience of the ordinary subject in the digital realm, conceived as a malleable being open to suggestions transmitted through digital influencers who portray impossible lives. The study seeks to investigate how content creators and digital influencers operate within a digital ecosystem structured by networks of sociability, and how their content communicates with each viewer or follower. To organize and systematize the research and analysis, the work was divided into three main sections. First, the digital dynamics: this section explores how the TikTok algorithm works and how these algorithmic mechanisms personalize user experience by modulating behaviors, desires, and attention. This step revealed how the digital environment itself conditions the way lifestyle content is produced, distributed, and consumed, being essential to understanding the performative power of images in virtual space. Second, the palliative order: based on the theoretical structure of Byung-Chul Han, this section investigates the features of a society marked by the refusal of pain and the imperative of positivity. Through the reading of The Palliative Society, it discusses how suffering is denied within the digital ecosystem, principally to the rejection of negativity as a legitimate part of human experience. Third and last, to Manuela Cit, the influencer who became the empirical object of this study. This part investigates how her personal trajectory, content, and aesthetic embody the values of performance and positivity promoted by the palliative society. Moreover, it examines the symbolic and narrative strategies that sustain her digital persona, as well as the audience’s reception. Based on these categories, the study analyzes the consequences of spreading a lifestyle that transcends the limits of reality for an entire community of ordinary people who frequently consume lifestyle content.