Influencer authenticity is an arms race where breakdown videos become brand content

Evidence

The undergraduates I teach howl with laughter when we watch these confessionals. As empathetic as they are with one another, they have little but cynicism when it comes to the professed pain of wealthy influencers, even (especially?) when the influencers are roughly the same age as themselves. They place videos with titles like “Burnt Out at 19” in the same category as apology videos, wherein a YouTube or Instagram star overperforms contrition after getting caught crossing a line, like being photographed eating fish when they built their brand on sharing vegan recipes. … I gently push back on this: Why should surpassing a certain follower count preclude the possibility of feeling real pain? Why treat every emotion expressed online as a hollow performance? Alas, they invariably gang up on me, patiently explaining that in today’s self-branding game, influencers are in an authenticity arms race, competing over who can be rawer and more revelatory. They also point out that the breakdown videos that I find so moving rarely forecast a decision on the influencer’s part to abandon the hustle and grind of personal branding. Rather, they usually signal a brief hiatus, after which comes some kind of spectacular relaunch—a new venture on a more traditional media platform or a new product line. — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 206

Categorization

• XREF: The authenticity arms race and the ‘machine turning people into machines’ foreshadows the Mirror World thesis — performance collapsing into identity. — connects to: In influencer culture authenticity gets redefined as total publicity rather than lack of artifice. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 613; Influencers weaponized the bot purge to perform authenticity. — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame…, 236; Amateur-looking content makes influencers seem more relatable and authentic — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame…, 270 (+2 more)
• SEED: Could feed an essay on how self-branding converts even genuine suffering into product — the commodification of confession as the non-news of the modern web.
• QUESTION: Does Klein later treat her own confession-as-brand (writing this very book) as doomed to the same pattern she critiques here?