Followers buy Influencers’ used possessions to feel connected to them.

Evidence

A third mode of income is from selling wares. Influencers who have garnered overwhelming popularity have been known to hawk used personal items on their blogs and on Instagram. These “pre-loved” – a euphemism for second-hand – apparel, accessories, and knick-knacks are well received by followers, some of whom have expressed a desire to own “a piece of” the Influencers through their second-hand possessions. Occasionally, followers have even resorted to bidding to secure an item. Moreover, the most adored and business-savvy of these Influencers usually go on to launch their own brands in the areas of beauty, fashion, and food and beverages, using their Influencer fame to propel their business ventures. — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity, 231

Categorization

• CANDY: The idea of fans bidding on a celebrity’s pre-loved underwear to ‘own a piece’ is a fun, tweetable nugget about fan psychology.
• XREF: Connects to scholarship on parasocial relationships and fan object-fetishism; also echoes the ‘second-hand aura’ of the celebrity body in fan studies. — connects to: Influencers resell personal belongings online, converting nostalgic memory itself into profit; Influencers act as intermediaries bonding consumers to commodities under precarity — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory: A Marxist…, 13; Fan devotion simultaneously shapes markets and isolates devotees socially

Broader Connections

• Influencers resell personal belongings online, converting nostalgic memory itself into profit #corroborates (0.88)
• Influencers act as intermediaries bonding consumers to commodities under precarity #expands (0.75) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 13
• Fan devotion simultaneously shapes markets and isolates devotees socially #complicates (0.72)