Influencer excess must be paired with performed charitable waste

Evidence

Even Jeffree Star engages in some of these kinds of videos—well, not videos that depict Star shopping at thrift stores but videos in which he cleans out his closet. We don’t see Star literally cleaning out his closet, but we do hear him complain about the problems of simply having too much stuff, about his need to physically and spiritually “cleanse.” Star keeps his clothing in a “SECRET Black Vault” and, in a video in which he leads us on a tour of this clothing vault, from October 30, 2021, we hear him comment: “I can’t believe how much stuff I have… . I almost feel embarrassed. No one ever put me in check … and it’s no one’s fault, it’s my own … but this is a lot of shit, it’s overwhelming. It’s almost like another lifetime ago.” This waste isn’t just going to the landfill. Star tells us, “I’ve also donated a lot of clothes today to Goodwill.” The squandering of designer goods is inevitable, but the waste cannot be performed without some sense of social responsibility—of a philanthropic donation, of a gift that, unlike potlatch, signifies not a competitive equality but class distinction and difference out of a stream of interchangeable waste. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 276

Categorization

• XREF: The potlatch comparison threads Bollmer’s larger point about waste-as-luxury-signal against anthropological gift economies; resonates with the Corpocene reading of the influencer as self-firm whose ‘costs’ must be socially legible.