Self-branding shifts economic risk onto workers while demanding constant unpaid labor

Evidence

Michelle Thompson had clearly followed the instructions in personal branding books to the letter: she had a Tumblr blog (advocated by many self-branding gurus since it is free and simple to use), but had printed her URL and e-mail address incorrectly on her business cards. Thompson’s attempt to use social media as she had been directed made her seem amateurish. At the same time that personal branding is posited as an economic solution, it shifts the burden of stability, financial success, and advancement to the worker. Anyone who fails to achieve these things can be blamed for not “wanting it enough” or not working hard. But self-branding entails considerable work. The strategy spills into all parts of life more than does a forty-hour-a-week job, due to the overwhelmingly frequent need for maintenance and monitoring. And the anxiety, distress, and uncertainty felt by many of my informants have not been reported in the self-branding literature. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 524

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ‘responsibilization’ critique in neoliberal governmentality studies and to invisible, unpaid immaterial labor in platform economies. — connects to: New Economy rhetoric framed corporate labor as creative self-actualization to secure unpaid overtime. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 144; Brand monitoring is exhausting unpaid emotional labor enforcing a dual gaze of self-surveillance — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 491; Networked audiences force users into unpaid labor to keep their brand image pure — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 492 (+11 more)

Broader Connections

• Self-branding imposes significant emotional and temporal costs on practitioners #expands (0.82) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 508
• Self-branding success is unsustainable for most and structurally excludes marginalized workers #complicates (0.80) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 444
• Depoliticized labor markets discipline workers through the threat of unemployment and lower wages #corroborates (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 796