The influencer actively labors to commodify herself where ordinary users are passively commodified

Evidence

The “democratization” of social media, however, transformed these jobs into ones performed by everyday individuals, a form of “democracy” that led to increasing precarity throughout the culture industry. Thus, from this process, successful influencers like Chamberlain must constantly work to valorize themselves as lures. YouTube, as a platform that bundles users and sells their attention to advertisers, does not care that Chamberlain is the specific route through which attention is captured, at least beyond the influencer as a means to direct and “effectively” place specific branded content and ads. Chamberlain only matters insofar as she can continuously and consistently capture attention. Whereas users and viewers sitting at home are passively, unconsciously made into a commodity sold to advertisers, a commodity possibly termed “attention” or “eyeballs,” Chamberlain must consciously labor to make herself “interesting,” producing herself as a commodity that is both visually consumed by audiences and economically consumed by advertisers through the labor of capturing and absorbing the time of us sitting at our computers or scrolling on our phones. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 221