Successful individuals now act as if they were vertically integrated corporations

Evidence

This book examines this articulation of capital and selfhood. It employs influencer culture as an entry point into a set of relations that far exceed social media. In attending to the videos and images of influencers, it draws out numerous obscured infrastructures of contemporary capital, infrastructures that relate to a deeply questionable reinvention of subjectivity and social existence. In these pages, we will sketch the emergence of an economic context in which “successful” individuals achieve wealth, fame, and luxury by imagining themselves and acting not as individuals but as if their existence is equivalent to that of a vertically integrated corporation, a context in which rights and abilities are denied human citizens and transferred to corporate entities—a historical moment we term the Corpocene. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 18

Categorization

• DEFINE: The core definition of ‘Corpocene’ — the reader’s central term to define and teach.
• SEED: Direct angle: apply the Corpocene framework to a real influencer who delegates production so fully that their personal life is outsourced.