The influencer’s identity itself is the commodity presented for consumption

Evidence

Fan interest in Maples’s private life emphasizes that, yes, what we see is a construction: we are seeing an image produced for our consumption. We are seeing a “product,” a commodity that is Maples’s very identity as presented on YouTube. Because her fans are aware of the disjuncture between image and person, Maples must join the two by revealing personal information, including the details through which her videos are composed. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 131

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• XREF: Identifies precisely what the commodity is (the identity itself) for the labor-theory-of-value analysis.

Related

• Fans who see a constructed image force the influencer to fuse image and person (similarity 0.90)
• Influencer images are self-portraits that produce a commodity identical to identity (similarity 0.86)
• Influencer self-portraits are commodities indistinguishable from the subject (similarity 0.86)
• Influencers are simultaneously product, producer, worker, and commodity (similarity 0.86)
• Influencers internalize the culture industry apparatus, producing themselves as the commodity (similarity 0.84)
• On YouTube the real commodity exchanged for profit is the influencer’s self (similarity 0.84)
• Showing oneself as a self online begins the manufacturing of the self as commodity (similarity 0.83)
• The influencer actively labors to commodify herself where ordinary users are passively commodified (similarity 0.83)
• Influencers internalize the culture industry so the person and image must remain fused (similarity 0.83)
• Influencer self-images are constructed commodities built on concealed material infrastructure (similarity 0.83)
• Influencer private life is only valuable as extractable economic content. (similarity 0.83)
• Influencers crossing past precarious hustle fuse personal identity with commerce (similarity 0.82)
• The influencer embodies desire-for-itself against a backdrop of failing commodities. (similarity 0.82)
• On YouTube individual content is de-formed while the influencer self becomes the real commodity (similarity 0.82)
• Social media identity is manufactured by underlying material infrastructures, not expressed by users. (similarity 0.81)