The logic of selfhood becomes indistinguishable from the logic of the corporation

Evidence

In other words, when thinking about class differences obscured in influencer culture, we find that one class is capital personified, and the other strives to achieve the status of capital personified. The striving class has bought into the belief that contemporary capitalism depends on social relations, on personal connections, embracing precarious flexibility and constant hustle as a route to future success and security. The other class, while its members also appear to engage in these same practices, has instead invested in the manufacturing of consumer goods, the ownership of social media platforms and apps, and the trading and speculation of real estate. Theirs is a class in which the logic of selfhood becomes indistinguishable from the logic of the corporation. This, we will demonstrate, is the fundamental ruse of contemporary influencer culture. In the name of identification, intimacy, and authenticity, of being “real” and being “relatable,” today’s influencer culture is asking audiences to identify with a way of conceiving of themselves—a mode of subjectivity—that follows the logic of a vertically integrated conglomerate, desiring this model of the self as the image and model of “success.” — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 25

Categorization

• DEFINE: Names the ‘mode of subjectivity’ — the self modeled as a vertically integrated conglomerate — which is the heart of the Corpocene concept.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that audiences are asked to identify with corporate logic as the model of the self — authenticity itself becomes the vehicle for conglomerate subjectivity — is dense and paradigm-shifting.
• XREF: connects to: Industrial progress destroys the conception of the person as a bearer of reason; Official philosophy is reduced to a mental Taylorism serving industry; A self that is both fully authentic and fully business-oriented cannot logically exist — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 514 (+4 more)