'Influencers': exploited or exploiters?

A woman makes a video about makeup products for her blog from her home. Artem Varnitsin / EyeEm (Getty Images/EyeEm)

In the communication between

and followers, which —despite the immense gap that exists between the economic situation of both parties— pretends to be equal to equal, lies the great difference with respect to the celebrities of past times: those of now are not they must give the impression of being above everything and everyone. If before the superstars of cinema and music were idolized figures, before whom the only thing that could be done was to look for their poster in the youth magazine of the day, cut it out and adore it, now the

do not address their followers as they would with lesser beings or admirers, but as if they were his friends. They ask for their advice and, in return, they offer (paid) product recommendations. This

strategy

which links authenticity with (seemingly) peer-to-peer communication, predates

themselves . In fact, we can already find precedents for this modality in the seventies, for example in advertising through the delivery of promotional gifts by hostesses, which Wolfgang Fritz Haug describes in his work

(Criticism of mercantile aesthetics, without translating into Spanish): “This 'you-to-you trick' means nothing more than that the stewardesses are paid, serve as packaging and show themselves as people with their own criteria, who trust others with their experiences and that they have a personal charm. Capital values ​​the humanity of these stewardesses as long as their appearance makes it easy to fall into the trap of advertising through promotional gifts. For the stewardesses, this means leasing their vital forces, both physical and intellectual, to capital, which seizes the external appearance of those forces, hides inside them and appears to the masses of buyers as something attractive, “at the same time intelligent”. , charming and able to adapt”.

Although followers rarely value their idols for their intelligence, the truth is that

have managed to perfect this one-on-one trick even to hide this small blemish. In fact, they aspire to appear as people with their own criteria and attractive in the most literal sense of the word: they have to drag users towards themselves (and towards the products they advertise). However, their role is ambiguous: while in Haug's example the stewardesses appear as people clearly subordinate to capital, it is not so clear to which class the

belong .

Due to their heterogeneity,

and

seem to escape from any classic categorization in this sense (at least from any categorization that is made by applying the criterion of the power of disposal over the means of production). Some of them are entrepreneurs and produce their own cosmetics,

or

but many others are nothing more than privileged freelancers.

In order to determine to which social class they belong, it is necessary to analyze the different relations of exploitation to which they are subordinated or from which they benefit. The term "exploitation" is not to be understood here in a moral sense (as is often done today), but in accordance with Marx's theory of surplus value, which uses this word to refer to those parts of the created wealth that are not end up in the hands of those who produce it, but of other actors in society.

How do

Often by leasing "their vital forces, both physical and intellectual, to capital." Therefore, their income cannot be very high: most of them sell their own labor power, so in this sense they are exploited. The (advertising) value they generate, consisting of improving the image of the partner they advertise (which, ideally, should translate into increased sales), is greater than their remuneration, and the added value obtained thanks to their labor goes to advertised companies.

However, not all

are in this situation of subordination with respect to capital: when they reach a certain level of professionalism and fame, they can become capitalists themselves. It is not uncommon for them to collaborate with large companies, for example in the cosmetics sector, to launch their own shampoos or make-up items. When that happens and they don't market their products themselves, they become exploiters at the same level as the others. Whether it's manuals or

the truth is that today

can make their articles reach their followers more easily than ever, through tools like Shopify.

This platform, which is the company with the highest value (on the Stock Exchange) in Canada and which has, among other collaborators, the Kardashians, was founded by Tobias Lütke, a businessman from the German city of Koblenz who began his career selling together with a partner for

through an online store that he had programmed himself. Then he came up with the great business idea: why not help any SME or self-employed person, that is, anyone, to have their own business on the internet? In 2006 he created this company, which today has 5,000 workers and is probably the one that has best taken advantage

of

.

Particularly

successful

can thus break away from their subservience to capital. The essence of its new business model - its own online store, its own event ticket store, self-published cookbooks, direct recruitment of advertisers - is what is known as "disintermediation", although in reality This business does not completely eliminate intermediaries, since it still needs the platform of the moment to appear on social networks, the corresponding computer program to manage electronic commerce and, above all -and absolutely decisively-, a series of digital payment services.

Thus,

are both exploited and exploited, since, on the one hand, they serve capital and, on the other hand, they employ workers to help them organize their agenda, retouch their photos and edit their videos. Many of the positions they create are so-called "shit jobs", which should not be understood in this case as hard, poorly paid and low-prestige activities, but absolutely necessary. Here we are referring to those jobs that the anthropologist David Graeber defines as follows: “[A] job so meaningless, so unnecessary, or so pernicious that not even the worker himself is able to justify its existence, despite the fact that, as part of of the conditions of employment, said worker feels compelled to pretend that this is not the case.

Wolfgang M. Schmitt

(Bendorf, 1987) is a consultant at the Institute for Contemporary Society (IFZ) and a journalist.

(Berlin, 1998) is a journalist.

Both host the podcast 'Wolhstand für alle' [prosperity for all].

This text is a preview of 'Influencers.

The ideology of the advertising bodies' (Peninsula), which is published on January 19.

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