the rise and fall of videophony (pp. 150–151)
callers of course found that they were once again stresslessly invisible, unvainly makeup- and toupeeless and baggy-eyed behind their celebrity-dioramas, once again free—since once again unseen—to doodle, blemish-scan, manicure, crease-check—while on their screen, the attractive, intensely attentive face of the well-appointed celebrity on the other end’s Tableau reassured them that they were the objects of a concentrated attention they themselves didn’t have to exert.
Context
The closed loop, and it's the Entertainment's blueprint. After all the masks and cutouts, the culture arrives at the Tableau: you hide entirely behind a photograph of a gorgeous, "intensely attentive" celebrity while you sit unseen, doing whatever you like, "reassured" that this beautiful attentive face is fixed on you and requires nothing back. Strip away the videophone premise and this is a description of a person watching a screen — invisible, unaccountable, bathed in a simulated attention that costs nothing. The society has spent a whole technological arc and vast sums to reconstruct, at great expense, exactly the passive one-way spectation it started with, now aimed at a manufactured attentive face. The Entertainment's victim is this consumer with the last safety removed: the beautiful attentive image finally holds his gaze so completely that he never gets up from the chair.