The putatively vernacular selfie is actually a labor-made form speaking capital’s language

Evidence

Do selfies—now self-portraits or, perhaps even better (referring back to the Times article from 2006), digital self-portraits—appear different from the disposable, quickly constructed, ephemeral selfies of the early to mid aughts? Not really, but this belies their labored construction. Let us turn to the example hinted at above: the no-mirror mirror selfie. This case both undermines the ability to claim the selfie as disposable and reframes what we might mean by “vernacular.” If these images come from some form of popular vernacular, then that vernacular is the one spoken by capital. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 83

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Corpocene thesis: if the selfie’s ‘vernacular’ is capital’s vernacular, then the influencer’s self-expression is corporate speech — the self-as-firm.
• ADDENDUM: The claim that apparently user-generated ‘vernacular’ media actually speaks in capital’s grammar echoes the grafting piece’s account of how putatively natural infrastructure serves economic ends.