Self-branding functions as self-regulation in response to economic uncertainty

Evidence

While this book is quite SFW, NSFW reflects how business norms affect technology workers’ self-presentation strategies. An online self-presentation must quite literally be “safe for work” to accrue status and benefit its creator. Whether this entails promoting one’s image as a company would promote a brand or celebrity, or adhering to a single verifiable identity so that status can persist across sites, people follow online norms that will increase their status. But what is high status in social media is often that which benefits technology companies and sustains neoliberal discourse. A verifiable identity makes it possible to leverage status across websites, but it also makes it simple to track people as they move around the web. A strong self-brand is a self-regulating mechanism that functions as a response to economic uncertainties. And while the social information created and shared through social media strengthens social ties, it does so in a limited way. “Authenticity” and “being yourself,” advice that is emphasized over and over again in social media discourse, have become marketing strategies that encourage instrumental emotional labor. For all of these reasons, social media has come to promote an individualistic, competitive notion of identity that prioritizes individual status-seeking over collective action or openness. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 44

Categorization

• DEFINE: Foundational framing: defines self-brand as a self-regulating response to economic insecurity, and connects ‘authenticity’ advice to instrumental emotional labor — core vocabulary for influencer culture studies.
• XREF: Connects to Foucault’s governmentality and Giddens’ reflexive self, plus the ‘authenticity as marketing’ thesis echoed in contemporary influencer studies and Boltanski & Chiapello’s new spirit of capitalism. — connects to: Self-optimization serves systemic market function, not personal flourishing; Social media self-branding functions as self-governance under neoliberal capitalism — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 31
• SEED: Angle: ‘authenticity is the most profitable fakeness’ — a piece tracing how ‘be yourself’ advice in creator discourse is really a demand for subordinated emotional labor that benefits platforms.