Corporate brand logic imposes a forced timeless consistency on personal identity

Evidence

But because apologizing and changing our minds online is so often framed as a weakness, we either hold our tongues or risk ridicule. Friends, family, and acquaintances can see a person who lives and grows in space and time, but the crowd can only see a figure who is expected to be as monolithic and timeless as a brand. Having worked for an old and widely recognized clothing company, I know firsthand that the pillars of any brand are internal coherence and consistency over time. (That’s literally what we called them at work: “brand pillars.”) For a brand as for a public figure—which, as we now know, any Twitter user can accidentally become overnight—change, ambiguity, and contradiction are anathema. “You have one identity,” Mark Zuckerberg famously said. “The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly.” He added that “having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.” — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 552

Categorization

• XREF: Odell’s insider note on ‘brand pillars’ substantiates her claim that brand logic now governs the self — echoes Marwick/boyd on personal branding. — connects to: When concepts meet particulars only externally, administration can brand and liquidate individuals; Conformist anxiety made authenticity itself a uniform to be worn — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 892; Self-branding arose from corporate branding models applied to individual workers — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 416 (+7 more)