Market-driven exaggeration of eccentricity makes the individual complicit in his own commodification.

Evidence

From one angle life is made infinitely more easy in the sense that stimulations, interests, and the taking up of time and attention, present themselves from all sides and carry it in a stream which scarcely requires any individual efforts for its ongoing. But from another angle, life is composed more and more of these impersonal cultural elements and existing goods and values which seek to suppress peculiar personal interests and incomparabilities. As a result, in order that this most personal element be saved, extremities and peculiarities and individualizations must be produced and they must be over-exaggerated merely to be brought into the awareness even of the individual himself. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 760 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Although all elements on the side of the universal process of exchange are made commensurable with each other, individuality is only possible giventhisrelationship.Afterall,individualityisnotapurebeing-for-itself, but rather becomes one in relationship to another. Thus, the process of levelling is at the same time itself a process of differentiation and also of individualisation. Individuality as differentiation emerges through comparability with others. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1250 (#expands, via linked claim)

I understand their cynicism, but I’m too old and soft to share it. It seems to me that both things can be true: these young influencers can be in real emotional distress over the pressure to produce mediated widgets and the cruelty they continually face from those they have invited into their lives, and they can simultaneously be figuring out how to monetize that pain. Because that is what they have been told they must do if they are to avoid becoming attention-economy roadkill. And, like so much else, it’s a vicious cycle. If you successfully thing-ify yourself, then other people will begin to believe you are a thing and will throw all kinds of hard objects at you, sure that you will not bleed. And then you have to conjure up even more revealing forms of self-exposure—up to and including having a full-blown nervous breakdown in your bedroom with the webcam rolling. Don’t come for me, these influencers seem to be pleading to their fans-turned-foes, I’m wounded—can’t you see that I’m bleeding here? Forgetting that the pack loves blood and there is nothing bloodier than performative trauma. — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 207 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The self’s seeming uniqueness is a mass-produced commodity falsely posed as natural — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 117; Individuality paradoxically emerges through the exchange process that levels it. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1250; Neoliberalism displaces race into market-mediated commodified self-presentation (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Overwhelming objective culture forces individuals to exaggerate their peculiarities #corroborates (0.90) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 760
• Individuality paradoxically emerges through the exchange process that levels it. #expands (0.85) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1250
• Self-commodification in the attention economy creates an escalating spiral of exposure and attack #expands (0.85) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 207
• Neoliberalism displaces race into market-mediated commodified self-presentation #expands (0.80)
• Individuality itself is an illusion produced by the law of value #complicates (0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 932