Influencer companies and their merch arms received pandemic payroll subsidies

Evidence

During the coronavirus pandemic, Jeffree Star Cosmetics and Killer Merch were both recipients of Payment Protection Program loans, or “PPP” loans, federal loans intended to keep workers on payrolls—the former receiving a loan for 413,675, the latter for 649,970, supporting a reported twenty-one and fifty-nine employees respectively. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 317

Categorization

• QUESTION: PPP loans to influencer-owned corporations treat YouTube stardom as one more small-business payroll — worth chasing how this redraws the line between celebrity and worker for the Corpocene case study.
• XREF: Contrasting data point for the reader’s case on a real creator: state subsidies quietly prop up the influencer-as-firm that markets itself as self-made.