Influencers act as intermediaries bonding consumers to commodities under precarity

Evidence

An “influencer,” in most popular understandings of “influencer culture,” is one whose value derives from gathering interest for brands, maintaining social bonds between consumers and commodities, and cultivating identities that attract attention on social media. Although we are given glimpses of their lives on our phones and computer screens (reveling in what seems to be extreme wealth, unboxing large hauls of products, organizing elaborate games and events, remodeling their homes, driving their cars, cleaning out their closets), these influencers are not our friends, even though we may imagine or desire them to be. Behind the luxury, leisure, and indulgence we witness, being an influencer involves deep precarity concealed behind an opulent veneer. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 13

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines what an influencer is: brand-interest gatherer, consumer-commodity bond, attention cultivator. Core term for the Corpocene framework.
• XREF: connects to: Followers buy Influencers’ used possessions to feel connected to them. — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame…, 231; Everyday financialized actors co-produce precarity alongside macro institutions — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 214; Social forms, including economic ones, function as coping mechanisms for human precarity. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 219