Elite influencers are vertically integrated capital embodying the corporation as a person.

Evidence

But this liquidation of selfhood is slightly different when it comes to people like MrBeast, Emma Chamberlain, or Jeffree Star. The second type of influencer, embodied by these figures, is capital. They are an embodiment of a vertically integrated conglomerate, moving beyond the production of self as commodity to the ownership of the means of production of the self—the machinery and materials that manufacture the product called the self. Person and means of production are conflated. Jeffree Star oversees the manufacture of the makeup he brands with his name, stored in warehouses he manages, shipped through logistics companies he operates, to mention just one example we’ll draw on throughout this book. Star does not merely advertise a product to others, influencing through social relations fostered by social media. He owns and controls the entire supply chain that sources, makes, and ships the makeup he and many others, who essentially pay Star for the privilege of producing a marketable, glamourous identity, use to craft the glamourous people seen over social media. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 29

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Defines the second influencer type — person-as-capital, owning the means of production of the self — the exact counterpoint to the reader’s corporate-personhood thesis.
• XREF: This is the core evidence for the reader’s ‘influencer completes the corporate personhood circuit’ thesis — the self becomes the firm.
• SEED: Jeffree Star’s full supply-chain ownership is a ready case study for the reader’s plan to analyze a real creator via the four infrastructures (market, warehouse).

Related

• Top influencers collapse personhood into ownership of production means (similarity 0.92)
• Elite influencers are capitalists whose image obscures corporate ventures (similarity 0.89)
• Influencers become vertically integrated individuals spanning self and corporate body (similarity 0.86)
• Elite influencer success combines person with corporate form (similarity 0.84)
• Influencers are vocational, sustained, highly branded social media stars. (similarity 0.84)
• The Capstone level makes influencers full-fledged corporations, ending precarity for a miniscule few. (similarity 0.83)
• Successful individuals now act as if they were vertically integrated corporations (similarity 0.83)
• An influencer’s own image can become merely one product within a broader conglomerate (similarity 0.83)
• Influencer culture makes people aspire to live as if they are corporations (similarity 0.83)
• Influencers differ in how fully they collapse self and business into the warehouse. (similarity 0.83)
• Influencer culture splits into commodity-laborers and conglomerates owning the means of producing selfhood (similarity 0.83)
• The influencer is simultaneously owner of capital and the product sold (similarity 0.82)
• Influencer culture fragments into workers and owner-conglomerates within one person (similarity 0.82)
• The logic of selfhood becomes indistinguishable from the logic of the corporation (similarity 0.81)
• Influencers internalize the culture industry so the person and image must remain fused (similarity 0.81)