Dear readers,
Take a look at the following article from the NY Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/technology/06tube.html). Useful in juxtaposition with the excellent extended polemic by the Retort collective (Afflicted Powers: Verso Press, 2005). Here's what the Retortists say, with respect to Debord's "society of the spectacle" in particular:

"The notion 'spectacle' was intended, then as a first stab at characterizing a new form of, or stage in, the accumulation of capital. What it named preeminently was the submission of more and more facets of human sociability -- areas of everyday life, forms of recreation, patterns of speech, idioms of local solidarity, kinds of ethical or aeshtetic insubordination, the endless capacities of human beings to evade or refuse the orders brought down to them from on high -- to the deadly solicitations of the lifeless bright sameness of the market" (Afflicted Powers, 19).

It is fascinating how both state and terror are entwined and entrapped in the spectacle. Witness how one of the readers quoted in the NYTimes piece liked the video and found it compelling because he "liked to watch stuff blow up."