Mind Your Business

*(Left to Right)* **Look 1** Outfit: Karina Rodriguez **Look 2** Top: Bianca Cristino

We have always been capitalized on. I’m running the risk of sounding like a history class lecture, but it is important for the reader to understand in the context of this article. Since the dawn of capitalism, and especially following the Industrial Revolution, there have been workers and there have been people who exploit those workers. Higher-ups that capitalize off of people and what those people can produce. The titles held by these powers-that-be have changed as society has changed, of course. The oil barons and factory owners of yesterday have turned into CEOs and corporation presidents of today. So here’s what we have so far: you are a human, you can produce labor, and corporations capitalize upon that labor.

Now, let’s take that one step further and throw the Internet into the cauldron. Then we will take it twenty thousand steps further to reach where we are today. Today, you have an alternative option to simply having the product of your labor capitalized upon. Instead, now you yourself can become the product to be sold! How thrilling. Everybody is well aware of the premise of social media as a concept, but for context, let me quickly debrief. The initial goal of social media was to connect people in a virtual space, which quickly turned into documenting milestones and big events, which then turned into documenting everyday happenings, which rapidly turned into what we know today: presenting your audience with an idealized (and often hyper-stylized) version of your life.

*(Left to Right)* **Look 1** Skirt: Morgan Grabarz Bra: IRY Designs **Look 2** Top: Bianca Cristino

And then there was the birth of the influencer. Seemingly overnight, the waves of favor were shifted away from the movie stars. Why would you care about the happenings of Hollywood when there was a girl on Youtube whose life looked exactly like yours? A more beautified and stylized version of it, but still. For a brief period of time, let’s call it a little under a decade, content creation and ‘influencing’ as it would come to be known seemed accessible only to a select few individuals. Before everyone had phones with 4K video resolution, you needed a proper video camera, access to and knowledge of video editing software, and a decent computer to make all of this happen. So that’s how it was, for a while, all of us tentatively venturing into the uncharted territory of Influencer Land with no map to guide us. Then, as it is wont to do, technology advanced, and advanced, and advanced until eventually there was no need for a HD video camera or iMovie, it could all be done on your phone. Naturally, it did not take people long to realize that they, too, could make this content they knew so well.

And just like that, influencing became anybody’s game. And thus, a new capitalist pipe dream was born. Myths of building the next super computer in a garage or exceptional athletic skills creating an escape from a bad neighborhood were rendered obsolete by this new tall tale. The newest Pick Your Own Escape from Capitalist Hell became influencing. Because, as long as there has been a 9 to 5 mundanity to escape from, we have been sold a plethora of variations of pipe dreams that offer escape from that mundanity. Now, instead of withering away in a stuffy cubicle for the rest of your adult life, you can follow this simple formula and never have to see an office water cooler:

Put your humanity and sense of self on the back burner, you won’t need it for this.
Decide in which way you would most like to commodify yourself, what niche you most want to cater to. What about yourself that you really want to sell. Maybe it will be your beauty, maybe it will be where you live, or, if you’re anything like my peers, maybe it will be the fact that you go to fashion school.
Begin to document your life and experiences, but only in a carefully curated way that will best satisfy your chosen niche.
Build a loyal following of devotees who desperately want to emulate (steal) one or several aspects of your online life.
Sell products to these devotees with the underlying implication that these products will help them look or act like or be more like you. Preferably on an Amazon Storefront.
Rinse and repeat until any sense of yourself as a person is gone, and only an optimized product is left in its place.

Bake at about 350 degrees and let cool and there you have it! You’ve escaped from the dredges of modern capitalism! And I’ll disclaim now that this is not a targeted dig at those who do participate in the influencer economy, late-stage capitalism isn’t their fault. I’m simply attempting to point out how plainly odd the concept of selling yourself as a product in an attempt to escape a 9 to 5 is.

But what does this mean for those who do not wish to participate? Or those who tried it and realized it isn’t for them? When the expectation that you are constantly optimizing and commodifying yourself is all around you, how do you escape that? The flat answer is simple: just ignore it. However, as is the case with most solutions to most problems, this is much easier in theory than in practice. It is a laborious practice, this one. It is consciously and constantly having to remind yourself that despite what every external force is telling you, that you are a person before you are a product. We were not created in the cosmos or wherever simply to sell ourselves to an anonymous audience on the Internet, trust me. Additionally, it’s no small feat to unlearn the ideas that the bugs of TikTok and Instagram have put into our brains, so be gracious with yourself, this will not happen overnight. Again running a risk by saying this, but should you desire, try your best to focus on being a better version of yourself for yourself, rather than with the end goal of profiting from it or pandering it to an audience. And this is not an attempt to discourage you from documenting your life, I am hugely in support of documenting your life, but try to do it simply because you want to, not because it would look good on your page.