The car’s enclosed privacy makes it the ideal space for authentic self-filming

Evidence

More than the home, the car is a mobile and flexible encapsulation of privacy, a singular space that “represents freedom because: it is … a place to be alone, as a mobile apartment, a place where your children can misbehave without embarrassing you and themselves in public, a place for sexual activity; you can pick and choose your companions; the car waits for you; waiting at a bus stop is far less comfortable than sitting in traffic jams.” Today, along with these other functions, the car becomes a space to film oneself, a space where, through one’s social isolation, a camera can reveal one’s true beliefs and feelings while one is otherwise hidden from view (aside from the view permitted by the smartphone and social media). … Being a car camera guy, to use Cooke’s excellent phrase, refers to a populist desire shared by Corden, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and Jeremy Renner, as well as with politicians across the political spectrum, including Marco Rubio and Bernie Sanders. All of these “car camera guys” are united in their tendency to use smartphones to shoot videos while driving—videos in which they lecture, converse, or, in the case of Corden, sing about whatever might be on their mind that day. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 178

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘car camera guy’ trope as the privacy-enabled self-revelatory filming space, a key micro-version of the Corpocene’s infrastructure of the car.
• XREF: Connects to reading purpose: the car as one of the four infrastructures that completes the self-as-firm, with privacy as the commodity condition enabling the filming.