Influencers are fungible to capital and their identities are serially replaceable

Evidence

“You don’t get it,” Tilghman recalled saying to a coworker in her boring office, who couldn’t believe she’d trade in her life of glamorous influencing: “You think you’re a slave, but you’re not… . When you’re an influencer, then you have chains on.” Her years of influencing left Tilghman depressed and stressed, worn out from constant striving to achieve luxury. And, like so many other influencers who have quit and been forgotten, Tilghman’s exit from influencing doesn’t particularly matter from the point of view of capital. For every @LeeFromAmerica there once was, countless others are willing to take her place and become the next personality to go viral. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 27

Categorization

• XREF: The interchangeability of the influencer-personality maps onto Marx’s reserve army of labor, and parallels how corporate personhood makes any individual manager/CEO disposable — the person is the company yet also interchangeable within it.
• CANDY: A former influencer telling a bored office worker ‘you think you’re a slave, but when you’re an influencer you have chains on’ is a punchy anecdote about glamour labor.