The influencer embodies desire-for-itself against a backdrop of failing commodities.

Evidence

What we really want is to perpetually desire; and the influencer, appearing against a background of waste, of a stream of endless commodities, is the realization of this desire. We know commodity culture will perpetually fail to make us happy; but we also know of particular kinds of people, particular kinds of subjects, who may never be satisfied but who always can get more. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 232

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A dense payoff: the influencer as the realized form of perpetual desire — where commodity failure becomes the substrate on which self-commodification promises endless accumulation. Sits well beyond ordinary media-criticism.
• XREF: Connects to the labor theory of value thread in the reading purpose — the surplus realized is not in a toy but in the subject-position the viewer desires to inhabit.