Generic cars serve as controlled, risk-free stages for influencer authenticity

Evidence

Glimpses into private, intimate space carry with them a risk—that something truly private will be revealed. Think of any listicle of “Selfie Fails,” photobombs, YouTube humiliations, in which something in the background of a video, ignored by the photographer, makes itself known after the fact: a dog defecating, a toilet, a dildo, a naked partner in a mirror, a mirror revealing that the photographer isn’t wearing pants… . Unless one presumes the home to be a stage, the intimate privacy of the home is, in fact, risky. The car, in contrast, is boring and generic—off-white, beige, or gray, maybe a little dirty. The specificity of a car is easily obscured. In a car you do not have to worry about what will be in the frame. One wants a banal, generic car because one wants a banal, generic background. … Viewers likely have no idea what brand the automobile is, nor is anything in the cabin worth a second glance. In contrast with, say, a video recorded in a bedroom or a living room, these car-set videos lack the revealing details that give those homey vlogs a sense of raw authenticity, as most cars look the same from the inside. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 193

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes why the car interior works as a controlled media background — a load-bearing element of the ‘car’ infrastructure being defined in this chapter.