Value moves from singularity through mass reproduction to forgettable sameness

Evidence

This is slightly different from how objects have been valued in the past. In the time of mass production, the critical theorist Walter Benjamin argued that there was a transition away from objects possessing “cult-value.” Objects like religious artifacts or fine art had a specific value because of their exclusivity, because of their singularity in time and space, something Benjamin termed “aura.” Something had value because it was difficult to see, because it was unique, because of its provenance, because it had been touched by its creator, because of its historical specificity. This is still the case with things like antiques, with collectible goods. Something is expensive because it is difficult to obtain, because the object has a singular existence. But with mass production, endless copies of the same object can be made. The object loses its exclusivity, its aura, and instead its value comes from its ability to be seen, its “exhibition-value.” … And today, in influencer culture, an object’s value comes not only from its capacity to be seen but also from its capacity to be forgotten, destroyed, ignored, discarded. Beyond Benjaminian arguments about mass production and the commodity’s loss of aura, the excesses of the market on YouTube lead to the annihilation of all values other than those derived from an object as one among countless others, exchanged with others, infinitely replaceable. Value emerges from sameness, from a spectacle of the constant appearance of differentiated yet indistinct objects over and over and over again. Value comes from the remaking of an object into content. … On YouTube, the exchange of commodities becomes a background from which a subject emerges and understands itself as a commodity, exchanged on a market distinct from the one represented onscreen. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 211

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes Benjamin’s aura/exhibition-value framework and extends it with a third stage: discard-value — core to defining the Corpocene’s commodity logic.
• XREF: Relates directly to the labor theory of value thread the reader is tracking — the commodity is content, the surplus realized through visibility and forgetting rather than use.