Reading behind influencer frames reveals a spatial working of late capitalism.

Evidence

Our argument is that we can observe the contemporary autonomy of capital, along with how this autonomy has led to a strange context in which people aspire to live as if they are themselves corporations, when we begin attending to the practices of influencers. We can see into the material workings of late capitalism simply by looking at what is indirectly represented on social media, by looking at representational content, reading for backgrounds of production—forms of capital, as it were—that are certainly not intended to be the focus. In the chapters that follow, this often means looking at where videos were literally shot—in houses, in cars, in thrift stores, storage units, warehouses—drawing out the implications these spaces have for the generation and circulation of capital in influencer culture. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 55

Categorization

Category: Craft and Method

• XREF: This is the book’s stated method — reading ‘backgrounds of production’ — which maps directly onto the reader’s four-infrastructure framework (house, car, market, warehouse).

Related

• Influencer culture makes people aspire to live as if they are corporations (similarity 0.88)
• Influencer videos’ recurring backgrounds reveal capitalist infrastructures. (similarity 0.88)
• Influencers synthesize individual identity with capitalist infrastructure such that personhood itself becomes corporate (similarity 0.85)
• Everyday influencers’ domestic and automotive spaces form infrastructures producing the self. (similarity 0.84)
• Influencer authenticity is fabricated across four spatial infrastructures (similarity 0.83)
• Examining successful influencers reveals capital’s intrusion into their content (similarity 0.83)
• The market is what moves influencer backgrounds from house to warehouse (similarity 0.82)
• The influencer’s crafted self derives its uniqueness from interchangeability with property (similarity 0.81)
• Successful individuals now act as if they were vertically integrated corporations (similarity 0.80)
• Influencer self-images are constructed commodities built on concealed material infrastructure (similarity 0.80)
• Even critiques of warehouse exploitation are channeled through self-commodifying influencer formats (similarity 0.80)
• Property ownership is a racialized, obscured basis of influencer success (similarity 0.80)
• Influencer culture fragments into workers and owner-conglomerates within one person (similarity 0.79)
• The warehouse is where home, car, and market converge for influencers. (similarity 0.79)
• Influencer labor is secretly grounded in manufacturing and supply chains, not immaterial work. (similarity 0.78)