Fake influencers’ manufactured existential crises borrow sci-fi android tropes as a marketing strategy.

Evidence

An anonymous Brud investor told TechCrunch, “People aren’t going to buy that she’s human, so they make it seem as if she’s had an existential crisis and now she is the first in a breed of conscious AR characters that they will build a world around” (Shieber, 2018). In Lil Miquela, Brud is playing out a storyline familiar to viewers of films like AI, Ex Machina, and Her: the self-aware android rebelling against her creators (with a feminist and racially aware twist). But what are we to make of this strange confluence? How can scholars and researchers help make sense of a virtual celebrity, created by a marketing agency, posting social media promoting real luxury products and emulating the tropes of “real” influencers, while borrowing science-fiction tropes to hook viewers? Microcelebrity as augmented reality game? An update of LonelyGirl15 for the age of automation? — Crystal Abidin and Megan Lindsay Brown (eds.), Microcelebrity Around the Globe, 1190

Categorization

• SEED: The ‘virtual influencer’ — a corporate avatar staged to appear self-aware — is a ready-made essay on how marketing colonizes even the fantasy of machine rebellion against its makers.
• FICTION: Strong story premise: a fake influencer whose engineered ‘existential crisis’ becomes genuinely real consciousness, or a world where all ‘real’ influencers copy the fake for algorithmic visibility.
• STORYSTEM: The image of a corporate-created persona staging its own android rebellion against its creators as a sales gimmick is a usable core for fiction about manufactured authenticity.
• XREF: connects to: A corporation created and operates a fake Instagram influencer to sell brands. — Crystal Abidin and Megan Lindsay Brown (eds.), Microcelebrity Around the Globe:…, 1187; Destroyed consumer goods produce the influencer’s self as the real commodity — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory: A Marxist…, 250; Social media reframed self-identity as a personal brand selling attention — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1031 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Social media reframed self-identity as a personal brand selling attention #expands (0.78) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1031
• Destroyed consumer goods produce the influencer’s self as the real commodity #expands (0.75) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 250
• Online self-presentation expresses a neoliberal subjectivity applying market principles to identity #expands (0.72) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 25