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The concept of fetishism has traversed numerous academic disciplines, from anthropology and psychology to sociology and economics. Historically, the term “fetish” originated in colonial encounters, describing objects believed to possess magical powers. Over time, its meaning has evolved, informing analyses of sexuality, commodity exchange, digital cultures, and even machine learning systems. Today, the word “fetish” is encountered in diverse settings: as a sexual interest, a form of consumption, a mode of social attachment, and a lens to critique the naturalization of social hierarchies. This essay explores the multifaceted nature of fetishism through a series of case studies, drawing upon empirical research in online social networks, economic theory, digital media, and artificial intelligence. By examining how fetishism operates in these domains, the essay seeks to clarify what a fetish is, how it is constructed, and what social functions it serves.
One of the most widely recognized contexts where fetishism is discussed is sexuality, particularly in relation to non-normative desires and practices. Here, a fetish is commonly defined as a strong sexual fixation on a particular object, body part, or practice that is not typically considered sexual. However, understanding fetishism solely as an individual psychological trait neglects its social dimension. Fay et al. (2015) conducted a pioneering analysis of FetLife, the world’s largest anonymous social network for BDSM, fetish, and kink communities, to interrogate the social structure of fetishism online. Their study examined over half a million European users, analyzing connections, group affiliations, and demographic data. The findings challenge the notion of fetishism as an isolated, private inclination. Instead, they reveal a vibrant, organized community characterized by complex gender-based interactions, distinct roles (such as “Dom,” “Sub,” “Master,” “Mistress”), and a pronounced sexual market dynamic. Notably, the gender distribution among socially active users was relatively balanced, and the network structure exhibited both sexual and platonic ties (Fay et al., 2015). This case demonstrates that fetishism, in this context, is not merely about individual preference, but also about collective identity, social learning, and community formation. Online social networks such as FetLife facilitate the negotiation of desires, the creation of safe spaces for marginalized interests, and even public health modeling for sexually transmitted infections (Fay et al., 2015). Thus, a fetish in the sexual sense is both a personal attachment and a shared social practice, shaped and sustained by community norms, roles, and interactions.
This case suggests that in contemporary digital culture, a fetish can be understood as a form of heightened attention, ritualized display, or collective fantasy—not necessarily pathological, but potentially productive of new social norms and identities. The language of fetishism here is metaphorical, yet it signals the potential for desires—sexual or otherwise—to be organized, amplified, and commodified through media technologies (Mejova et al., 2016).
Fetishism also extends into the realm of consumption and popular media. The rise of hashtags such as #foodporn on Instagram exemplifies how objects of desire can shift from the sexual to the gustatory, blurring the boundaries of what constitutes a fetish. Mejova et al. (2016) explored this phenomenon in their study of nearly 10 million Instagram posts from 1.7 million users worldwide. They investigated whether the use of #foodporn reflects an unhealthy, fetishized relationship with food analogous to the way pornography allegedly fosters unrealistic sexual expectations.
Their analysis revealed that while the hashtag does signal intense, sometimes obsessive, interest in visually appealing foods—particularly sugary desserts like chocolate and cake—the broader context is more nuanced. Users also associated #foodporn with positive emotions and health-related topics, and healthy posts tended to attract greater social approval (Mejova et al., 2016). The “fetishization” of food, in this sense, functions as a performative act within digital communities, centered on sharing, aspiration, and lifestyle branding.
This case suggests that in contemporary digital culture, a fetish can be understood as a form of heightened attention, ritualized display, or collective fantasy—not necessarily pathological, but potentially productive of new social norms and identities. The language of fetishism here is metaphorical, yet it signals the potential for desires—sexual or otherwise—to be organized, amplified, and commodified through media technologies (Mejova et al., 2016).
The concept of fetishism is also central to economic theory, particularly in the Marxist tradition. Here, “commodity fetishism” refers to the process by which social relationships among people are obscured and replaced by relationships between things—commodities—making the products of labor appear as natural and autonomous entities. In a recent theoretical reconstruction, Liuh (2025) critiques the foundations of neoclassical macroeconomics by reframing the Cobb-Douglas production function through the lens of the Maximum Entropy Principle. The argument is that the aggregate production function, often treated as a technical law, is in reality a statistical artifact—a “lossy compression” of micro-level heterogeneity. This aggregation disguises the social and historical relations embedded in production, “naturalizing” them into apparent technical constants. Liuh (2025) argues that such naturalization is a mathematical manifestation of Marx’s critique of fetishism: the transformation of historically contingent social relations into seemingly eternal laws of nature. This economic case study broadens the definition of fetishism beyond sexual or consumer objects, highlighting how systems of knowledge and technical representation can themselves be fetishistic. The fetish here is not an object of desire, but a structure of thought that masks underlying social dynamics, rendering them opaque or immutable (Liuh, 2025).
Fetishism can also be found in the domain of collective identity and symbolic attachment, as illustrated by gun culture in the United States. Tahmasbi et al. (2024) analyzed over four million posts on 4chan’s weapons board (/k/), uncovering how guns function as objects of fascination, collection, and even sexualization. The study distinguishes between “Gun Culture 1.0” (emphasizing tradition, masculinity, and recreation) and “Gun Culture 2.0” (emphasizing self-defense, empowerment, and freedom), both of which can give rise to fetishistic attitudes (Tahmasbi et al., 2024). Fetishism in this context is multifaceted: it may manifest as a quasi-religious devotion, a belief in the magical protection afforded by firearms, or the sexualization of weapons and their use (Tahmasbi et al., 2024). The boundary between healthy enthusiasm, obsessive attachment, and fetishism is often blurred, but the key feature is the attribution of extraordinary value, power, or agency to the object—in this case, the gun. This case demonstrates that fetishism is not limited to sexuality or consumption, but is a broader social process by which objects are imbued with symbolic significance, mediating identity, community, and even political ideology.
The rise of machine learning and generative AI systems has introduced new contexts in which fetishism operates, particularly through the perpetuation of stereotypes and objectification. Ghosh and Caliskan (2023) investigated the outputs of Stable Diffusion, a widely used text-to-image generator, to uncover embedded social biases. Their findings revealed that, in the absence of explicit instructions, the system disproportionately generated images of light-skinned, Western men as the default “person,” and oversexualized women of color—particularly those from Latin America, India, and Egypt (Ghosh & Caliskan, 2023). The study frames such algorithmic outputs as a form of “fetishization,” where women of color are rendered objects of sexual spectacle through automated processes, replicating longstanding patterns of Western media objectification (Ghosh & Caliskan, 2023). Here, fetishism is enacted not only by individuals, but by the infrastructures of data, algorithms, and training sets that encode and reproduce social hierarchies. This case underscores the importance of critically examining the mechanisms through which objects—and people—are fetishized within technological systems. The fetish is not simply an individual fixation, but a product of collective, often invisible, processes of representation and valuation.
Across these diverse case studies, several commonalities emerge in the understanding of fetishism: Social Construction: Fetishism is not a purely individual or psychological phenomenon; it is constructed, negotiated, and sustained within communities, whether in sexuality, consumption, identity, or technology. Attribution of Agency or Value: Fetish objects—be they shoes, guns, food, or statistical functions—are invested with agency, power, or value beyond their utilitarian function, often serving as mediators of desire, identity, or ideology. Obscuration and Naturalization: Fetishism frequently involves the obscuration of underlying social relations, whether through the commodification of labor (Liuh, 2025), the sexualization of marginalized bodies (Ghosh & Caliskan, 2023), or the transformation of collective practices into seemingly natural attributes. Technology and Media Amplification: In the digital age, media and algorithmic systems not only reflect but amplify and automate fetishistic dynamics, expanding the reach and intensity of fetishization across global scales (Mejova et al., 2016; Ghosh & Caliskan, 2023). Understanding what a fetish is requires attending to these processes of social construction, mediation, and amplification. Fetishism is thus best seen not as an aberration, but as a recurrent feature of how societies invest objects, practices, and representations with meaning and power.
The concept of fetishism is both historically deep and strikingly contemporary, cutting across sexuality, economics, consumption, identity, and technology. As the case studies in this essay demonstrate, a fetish is not merely an object of excessive desire, but a dynamic process through which objects are invested with social, symbolic, and sometimes magical properties. Whether in the formation of online communities, the performance of consumption, the abstraction of economic relations, the construction of collective identities, or the automation of bias in artificial intelligence, fetishism reveals the ways in which human societies create, sustain, and sometimes challenge the boundaries between the social and the material, the natural and the constructed. Recognizing the social dimensions of fetishism is crucial for both critical analysis and ethical engagement in an increasingly mediated and object-saturated world.
References Fay, D., Haddadi, H., Seto, M. C., Wang, H., & Kling, C. C. (2015). An exploration of fetish social networks and communities. arXiv preprint arXiv:1511.01436v1. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1511.01436v1 Ghosh, S., & Caliskan, A. (2023). ‘Person’ == Light-skinned, Western Man, and Sexualization of Women of Color: Stereotypes in Stable Diffusion. arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.19981v2. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2310.19981v2 Liuh, J. (2025). From Micro-Distributions to Macro-Regularities: A Critique and Reconstruction of the Production Function Based on the Maximum Entropy Principle. arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.03812v1. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.03812v1 Mejova, Y., Abbar, S., & Haddadi, H. (2016). Fetishizing Food in Digital Age: #foodporn Around the World. arXiv preprint arXiv:1603.00229v2. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1603.00229v2 Tahmasbi, F., Chug, A., Bradlyn, B., & Blackburn, J. (2024). Gun Culture in Fringe Social Media. arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.09254v2. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2403.09254v2
