I am thinking of the mindset of wanting to hook up with as many people as possible not taking into consideration other people ‘s feelings or who might get hurt in by the process, which objectifies other individuals. That is an individualistic thought process, right?
Edit: I meant commodification in the sense of online dating apps, escort services, only fans, porn, prostitution and patriarchy. This trickles to the culture due to base and superstructure, and it is adopted by individualism.
It's more closely related to atomization than individualism.
Pre-1950's America was still very individualistic but they also had third spaces and more close knit communities. Without meaningful connection, those who are able to hookup achieve a facsimile of intimacy. Those who aren't able to get that turn to escort services, onlyfans, and patriarchy etc etc. This compounds the problem until society breaks down.
Of course people do have casual sex for just fun just as they did throughout history. But the major shift towards that isn't because people changed their minds suddenly.
What do you mean by “atomization”? I have never heard that term before.
The separating of humans into individual elements, or atoms, such that they're disconnected from each other.
Basically, breaking the social bonds that once held human society together. A community is very strong, a group of individuals with no connection to each other is weak. What union-busting does to the workplace, atomization does to society at large. Individualism is tangential but not quite the same. Individualism is a sort of ideology that things should be this way. They should be self-reliant and depend on themselves etc etc. Atomization is the state being unable to form meaningful social relationships due to isolation.
What do you attribute the major shift towards hook-up culture?
Social media and the monetization of every public place is the immediate cause. With social media, you can get a facsimile of easy social interaction. For the few who do go out, there are increasingly few places that you can go without spending money. Add in a bad economy and friends are a luxury that few can afford. It's easier and cheaper to sit at home and use social media, hookup when you need sex, and only go out when you need. Social media is the fast food of social interactions. You know its unhealthy but it's the path of least resistance.
But these trends started much earlier. Social media is just the tool used to create it. I can't explain everything coherently but contributing factors to atomization are cars, the economic downturn after the WWII boom, the loss of the church as an institution, privatization of public spaces, monetization of culture under capitalism, the threat organized communities posed to capitalist projects, etc etc.
Based on what you are saying the culprit seems to be capitalist’s culture of alienation and the privatization of everything including hanging out spaces, which have very expensive prices to do anything communal. The way I see it, social media is just the last thing people can do for free that involves other people. I wouldn't say that social media is to blame, but capitalism is to blame.