Reselling personal objects signals their distance from rather than connection to the influencer
Evidence
On one hand, we have a video that follows our earlier arguments about the house in influencer culture. The things that Chamberlain pulls out of her closet are intended to represent her, as a person. These objects visualize something about who she is, about who she was; they provide a glimpse of intimacy recorded only by seeing the commodities that represent the person, the influencer, and her childhood. In seeing these things, the viewer seems allowed access to the private space of the influencer, in which property is conflated with personhood. But, on the other hand, whenever Chamberlain mentions the peer-to-peer fashion marketplace Depop, invoking a speculative plan to resell her childhood belongings, she’s transforming this connection between person and property to something else. These objects are, effectively, not connected to the influencer, at least essentially. … Were these objects purchased with the specific connection to the influencer in mind, then the reselling of the object allows fans of the influencer “access” to being like them, to have them, though in a way that can never actually approach intimacy because the shedding and sale of these otherwise “useless” commodities indicates not their connection but their distance from the seller. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 215
Categorization
- XREF: Core to the reader’s person-meets-company thesis: the shed commodity marks alienation — a person behaving like a firm liquidating assets.
- DEFINE: Clarifies how resale inverts auratic connection: selling signals distance, buying copies proximity that never achieves intimacy.