Micro-celebrities are held to transparency standards unlike movie stars

Evidence

Social media applies contradictory ideals of counterculture and capitalism to the self, friendships, intimate relationships, and interpersonal interactions. People can spread ideas and creations to a formerly inconceivable mass audience, but only bounded and influenced by the restraints of modern neoliberal capitalism. As sociolinguist Crispin Thurlow writes, “The line between commerce and the rest of life is often blurred—and, indeed, strategically blurred—in the rhetoric of social media.” The strategies I’ve documented involve reconceptualizing and repositioning oneself into the familiar limits of a commodity: the brand or the celebrity. But they are not exactly the same. The micro-celebrity is held to a different set of standards than the movie star; in particular, the micro-celebrity is expected to be available and transparent, in line with the exhibitionist internet, rather than carefully guarded and assisted by a network of managers like the movie star. Because the self-brand is a person underneath his or her shiny exterior, with the attendant imperfections and mistakes, creating and maintaining a consistent image involves real labor, which is exchanged for the relational and personal benefits provided by social media, such as support, intimacy, and connection. This labor value is also converted into literal capital by social media companies like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, which profit from personal disclosure and its attraction of users to their products. This series of exchanges thus commodifies identity, emotion, and relationships within a digital context. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 720

Categorization

• DEFINE: Precisely distinguishes micro-celebrity from traditional celebrity via the availability/transparency expectation.
• XREF: Directly ties to prior chapters’ accounts of self-branding labor and commodification; connects to adjacent labor studies of platform work. — connects to: Micro-celebrity fame does not automatically confer high status; norms vary by scene — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 407