It is fashionable to suggest that cyberspace is some island of the blessed where people are free to indulge and express their individuality.

This is not true.

I have seen many people spill out their emotions; their guts online, and I did so myself until I began to see that I had commodified myself.

Commodification means that you turn something into a product which has a money value.

In the nineteenth century, commodities were made in factories by workers who were mostly exploited.

But I created my interior thoughts as commodities for the corporations that owned the board that I was posting to like CompuServe or AOL and that commodity was then sold on to other consumer entities as entertainment.

Cyberspace is a black hole. It absorbs energy and personality and then re- presents it as an emotional spectacle. It is done by businesses that commodify human interaction and emotion and we are getting lost in the spectacle.