“Marx set forth and denounced the obscenity of the commodity, and this obscenity was linked to its equivalence, to the abject principle of free circulation, beyond all use value of the object. The obscenity of the commodity stems from the fact that it is abstract, formal, light in opposition to the weight, opacity and substance of the object. The commodity is readable: in opposition to the object, which never completely gives up its secret, the commodity always manifests its visible essence, which is its price. It is the formal place of transcription of all possible objects; through it, objects communicate. Hence the commodity for is the first great medium of the modern world. But the message that the objects deliver through it is already extremely simplified, and it will always be the same: their exchange value. Thus at bottom the message no longer exists; it is the medium that imposes itself in pure circulation. This is what I (potentially) call ecstasy.”,

Jean Baudrillard, from “The Ecstasy of Communication,” 1983