Something I just found:
"So where did Peretti get that idea? Peretti's academic writings offer one clue. After graduating from UC Santa Cruz in 1996, Peretti published an article in the cultural theory journal Negations entitled "Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Contemporary Visual Culture and the Acceleration of Identity Formation/Dissolution." After the paper was mentioned in New York's Peretti profile, Critical-Theory.com's Eugene Wolters read through it, and found that it more or less lays out (and critiques) Buzzfeed's entire business model—a full decade before the company was founded."
"Can memes be revolutionary?
To be clear, Peretti's article isn't simply condemning these processes. Indeed, at points he, to quote Wolters, "leaves open the possibility that Buzzfeed is one giant resistance."
For example, Peretti praises "slackers" for embracing consumer culture without actually, well, consuming, thereby denying the forces of capital their ultimate victory. "This refusal to consume defuses the capitalist media's efforts to accelerate the process of identity formation/ dissolution and capital accumulation," he explains."
