Pandemic excess reversed audience aspiration into disgust toward influencers

Evidence

The generation of excessive waste during the pandemic revealed, for many isolated at home, the absolute difference between influencer and influenced; and a relation of aspiration, for some, reversed into a relation of disgust. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 361

This duality only intensifies when one’s waste becomes something that marks one’s exceptionality from a broader economy of death. Kim Kardashian was beloved for her extreme lifestyle (or at least hate-followed for it), so why should this stop because the world is sick? The generation of excessive waste during the pandemic revealed, for many isolated at home, the absolute difference between influencer and influenced; and a relation of aspiration, for some, reversed into a relation of disgust. As writer Bobo Matjila stated in Teen Vogue, influencers were “far too removed from the lived experience of the everyday person to have any valuable input” on how to live during the pandemic. But at the same time, their removal from “everyday” life, their wastefulness—the paradox of why we watch them, love them, hate them—could now help to accelerate this very distance. Matjila continued: “On one hand influencers position themselves as relatable, but mass relatability only further isolates them from their audience… . So actually, we’re not all in this together and I’m glad the pandemic has highlighted this.” — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 361

Categorization

• XREF: The waste/excess dynamic maps to the labor theory of value the reader is tracking: excess is unproductive waste, and its public display reveals who realizes surplus.
• QUESTION: The claim that ‘mass relatability further isolates’ merits unpacking — is this a scalability paradox specific to influencer labor worth tracing in the case study?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory: A Marxist…, 361