Personal branding went from discredited to universal within a decade

Evidence

It also became clear that a great many of us were dead wrong about the impossibility of everyday people being brands. Ten years after Peters’s discredited “Brand Called You” article, the iPhone launched, and soon enough, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were at our fingertips. Suddenly, everyone on those free platforms had the tools to fashion a personal brand—quirky, glam, edgy, nerdy, revolutionary—and project it well beyond their own circles, all for the low, low cost of consumer tech and some well-chosen accessories. The age of the influencer was upon us. — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 175

Categorization

• XREF: The normalization of personal branding is the structural precondition for the whole doppelganger device: a woman who brands herself must now compete with a near-namesake who hijacks the same brand space. — connects to: The favored self-branding platform shifts every few years — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 971; Self-branding succeeds for few yet is promoted as a universal fix — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 525; Early tech insiders found self-branding rhetoric ridiculous yet recognized its pervasiveness. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 426