Influencers are simultaneously product, producer, worker, and commodity

Evidence

The representation of exchange is a background against which an entirely different process of exchange emerges. YouTube is the factory where influencers work to forge themselves, but it is also the marketplace where those selves are traded. The influencers themselves are both product and producer, worker and widget. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 208

Categorization

• DEFINE: Central to the reader’s labor-theory-of-value analysis: who is the commodity and who realizes surplus — here the influencer is both worker and widget.
• XREF: Feeds directly into the reader’s plan to trace the commodity and surplus realization for a real creator. — connects to: Industry frames everyone under the dual roles of customer and employee; Fashion blogging scholarship treated influencer work as feminized glamor and aspirational labor. — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame…, 638; Influencers are vocational, sustained, highly branded social media stars. — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame…, 215