Top influencers collapse personhood into ownership of production means

Evidence

But this liquidation of selfhood is slightly different when it comes to people like MrBeast, Emma Chamberlain, or Jeffree Star. The second type of influencer, embodied by these figures, is capital. They are an embodiment of a vertically integrated conglomerate, moving beyond the production of self as commodity to the ownership of the means of production of the self—the machinery and materials that manufacture the product called the self. Person and means of production are conflated. Jeffree Star oversees the manufacture of the makeup he brands with his name, stored in warehouses he manages, shipped through logistics companies he operates, to mention just one example we’ll draw on throughout this book. Star does not merely advertise a product to others, influencing through social relations fostered by social media. He owns and controls the entire supply chain that sources, makes, and ships the makeup he and many others, who essentially pay Star for the privilege of producing a marketable, glamourous identity, use to craft the glamourous people seen over social media. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 29

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the second influencer type where person and means of production fully conflate, key to the Corpocene’s inversion of corporate personhood.
• XREF: This inverts corporate personhood: companies gained the rights of persons, and here a person becomes a vertically integrated conglomerate—exactly the reader’s central framing.
• ADDENDUM: The vertical integration of the self-as-firm resonates with the corporeal-sacrifice theme where the body itself becomes economic infrastructure, though via production rather than death.