The Influencer Factory: A Marxist Theory of Corporate Personhood on YouTube

Influencers are more than social media personalities who attract attention for brands, argue Grant Bollmer and Katherine Guinness. They are figures of a new transformation in capitalism, in which the logic of the self is indistinguishable from the logic of the corporation.

Influencers are emblematic of what Bollmer and Guinness call the "Corpocene": a moment in capitalism in which individuals achieve the status of living, breathing, talking corporations. Behind the veneer of leisure and indu...