It is a new phenomenon to live continuously in the milieu of the gaze of others, to be followed by hundreds or thousands of eyes, augmented by Big Other’s devices, sensors, beams, and waves rendering, recording, analyzing, and actuating. The unceasing pace, density, and volume of the gaze deliver a perpetual stream of evaluative metrics that raise or lower one’s social currency with each click. In China, these rankings are public territory, shiny badges of honor and scarlet letters that open or shut every door. In the West, we have “likes,” “friends,” “followers,” and hundreds of other secret rankings that invisibly pattern our lives.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 1490