AUTOSYMBIOSIS
The process of individuals becoming mutually and increasingly fixated on the concept of isolation to the point where relatonships that are normally satisfied by companionships are instead satisfied by the individual within the confines of coisolated bubbles. This process, which is according to Sloterdijk is fueled directly by the fear of being "partnerless or incomplete as a human being1," and occurs slowly over time after prolonged periods of isolation from the outside world, which in turn develops a symbiotic dependency on the phenomenological allure of isolation, self-fulfillment, and self-objectification. Society perpetuates the desire for self-objectification constantly by bombarding the individual with image based media portraying celebrities as autonomous self-objectified and self-reliant individuals. Sloterdijk argues that it is through contemporary media that individuals "sustain self-fulfillment and allow for their users to constantly return to themselves." This process of self-objectification is what Sloterdijk describes as a phenomenon as an exercise in "reuniting with oneself by appropriating the objectified." The images cited all display the idea autosymbiosis in that they each portray a different quality of isolation, rather it be for privacy, sexual desire, or medical needs.
"Such a form of life would be misunderstood if one were to fixate only on the attribute of living alone in the sense of being partnerless, or incomplete as a human being. The nonsymbiosis with others that is practiced by the single occupant in the apartment turns out, after closer investigation, to be an autosymbiosis. Here, the form of the couple is fulfilled in the individual, who, in constant differentiation from himself, perpetually relates to himself as the inner other, or as a multitude of sub-egos."1
"It is these contemporary media that sustain self-fulfillment and allow for their users to constantly return to themselves and eo ipso to the pair formation with themselves and their "surprise" inner partners. Thus it is no accident that orthodox singles often express that living alone is the most entertaining form of existence they know of It could even be said that the freed individual, because of his media set-up, could possibly fulfill the role of being his own companion."2
"Consequently, the homo alpbabeticus did not just develop the characteristic practice of self-objectification, but also the practice of reuniting with oneself by appropriating the objectified." 3