Influencer self-presentation obscures a hidden class antagonism and burnout.

Evidence

Or, what social media offer are different fantasies: the fantasy of fulfillment through self-production in the name of capitalism; the fantasy that there is something called “community” out there that hasn’t been subsumed; the fantasy that you can become famous, that you can become rich, that you are unique and special and different and deserve lots of money and expensive things because you exist as an individual; the fantasy that you can do these things and feel full and restored, not like a burned-out husk of a person; the fantasy that you can do it all from your own home or seated in your own car; the fantasy that this isn’t all an illusion obscuring a new kind of class antagonism, one barely visible, as long as we think that these images we see online are of selves, of identities, of people—and not intricately constructed performances that collapse labor power and identity in such a manner to lead to burnout and exhaustion, a collapse hidden when we assume selfies exist. Transparency for the masses. Obscurity for the rich. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 113

Categorization

• DEFINE: Spells out the book’s central collapse of labor power and identity behind the ‘selfie’ assumption.
• SEED: Angle: ‘Transparency for the masses. Obscurity for the rich’ as a one-line thesis for an essay on influencer burnout.
• XREF: connects to: In influencer culture authenticity gets redefined as total publicity rather than lack of artifice. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 613; Fashion blogging scholarship treated influencer work as feminized glamor and aspirational labor. — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame…, 638; Influencer marketing amplifies loud privileged voices disproportionately — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love:…, 486