Pandemic-era influencer behavior broke the fabricated intimacy with fans

Evidence

While D’Amelio used the pandemic as a new form of socially “responsible” content, the coronavirus led to more than a few influencers shutting down their accounts temporarily, some permanently, in their documentation of actions that fans and followers saw as morally and politically reprehensible, actions that revealed the separation and otherness of fan and influencer—a violation of the intimate relation we’ve repeatedly seen throughout this book. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 359

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the book’s core task: showing the collapse of perceived intimacy is what forces the influencer to corporatize/diversify—the self-as-firm exposed without risk infrastructure.