Paper 204: Marxist Critique of Influencer Culture: Labor Alienation, Digital Commodification, and Neoliberal Self-Branding

This blog is a part of the assignment of Paper 204: Contemporary Western Theories and Film Studies

Marxist Critique of Influencer Culture: Labor Alienation, Digital Commodification, and Neoliberal Self-Branding

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Academic Details:

• Name: Rajdeep A. Bavaliya
• Roll No.: 21
• Enrollment No.: 5108240006
• Sem.: 3
• Batch: 2024-26
• E-mail: rajdeepbavaliya2@gmail.com

Assignment Details:

• Paper Name: Contemporary Western Theories and Film Studies
• Paper No.: 204
• Paper Code: 22409
• Unit: 2 - Queer Theory, Eco-Criticism, Feminism, Marxism
• Topic: Marxist Critique of Influencer Culture: Labor Alienation, Digital Commodification, and Neoliberal Self-Branding
• Submitted To: Smt. Sujata Binoy Gardi, Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
• Submitted Date: November 7, 2025

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• Sentences: 262
• Reading time: 14m 58s

Abstract:

Influencer culture exemplifies how digital labor under neoliberal capitalism deepens classic Marxist phenomena of alienation and commodification. In the age of social media, individuals monetize attention, identity, and lifestyle, blurring boundaries between work and leisure. This paper analyzes influencers as both producers and products of cultural capital, drawing on Marx’s concepts of commodity fetishism, alienated labor, and surplus value. Social media platforms transform personal expression into exchange-value, hiding the social relations of production behind user-friendly interfaces. Influencers project idealized selves to attract followers and brands, but their labor is governed by algorithms and market imperatives beyond their control, rendering them ever “poorer” as creators even as their content generates value. Case studies of Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube reveal how user attention and personal data become commodities sold to advertisers. This spectacle of curated self-branding normalizes capitalist relations: personal authenticity is subsumed under profit motives, just as Debord warned that “all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles”. The study thus illuminates the contradictions of modern celebrity – autonomy and creativity on the surface, exploitation and alienation underneath – and highlights how digital identity itself has become capital in late capitalism.

Keywords:

Influencer culture; digital labor; alienation; commodity fetishism; personal branding; platform capitalism; social media.

Research Question:

How does influencer culture embody Marxist critiques of alienated labor and commodity fetishism in the context of digital, neoliberal capitalism?

Hypothesis:

Influencer culture intensifies the dynamics of capitalist exploitation: influencers’ personal identities become commodified labor, leading to alienation of self and community even as the illusion of autonomy is promoted.

I. Introduction

Influencer culture refers to the phenomenon in which individuals leverage social media platforms to build personal brands and monetize their attention, lifestyle, and identity. In the social media era, becoming an “influencer” often means turning one’s personal life into a form of labor. Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube allow ordinary individuals to reach global audiences, blurring the line between work and leisure and creating the illusion of accessible celebrity. Yet this process must be understood in political-economic terms: influencers are producers of content whose products are their own images and personalities. They take on the role of entrepreneurs of the self, constantly performing and curating an “authentic” lifestyle for profit. As one analysis observes, “the products sold on social media are the influencers’ lifestyles, people are the commodities”. In Marxist terms, influencers literally sell their personhood and social relations as exchange-values.

This assignment argues that influencer culture exemplifies core Marxist concepts of labor alienation and commodification. According to Marx, capitalist wealth appears as a “gigantic collection of commodities” and human relations are mediated by things (commodities) rather than directly among people. Influencer content – from glossy travel photos to branded product placements – functions as such commodities. Under the neoliberal digital economy, creative and affective labor becomes systematically exploited. Influencers appear to enjoy autonomy and creative freedom, but in reality their content production is shaped by algorithmic governance and market logic, causing an estrangement (Entfremdung) of their labor and even of their identity. The thesis is that influencer culture, far from being an exception to labor theory, actually intensifies the exploitation Marx described: personal identity and social interaction themselves are harnessed for capitalist surplus value.

II. Theoretical Framework

Marx in 1875

A. Classical Marxism: Alienated Labor and Commodity Fetishism

Marx’s theory of alienation and commodity fetishism provides the baseline for this critique. In capitalist production, workers become estranged from the products of their labor, from the labor process, from their own human potential, and from other workers. As Marx wrote, “the worker sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes indeed the most wretched of commodities”. He further explains that “the worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces... [the worker] becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates”. In other words, even as an influencer’s popularity grows, the underlying person can feel impoverished: their identity and time are devalued in exchange for social media content.

Marx also described the commodity as “the elementary form of wealth” in capitalist society and analyzed its fetishism: social relations between producers appear as objective relations between things. He notes that “the mysticism of the commodity arises…from the fact that the social determinations of the private labours…appear to them as the social natural determinations of products of labour”. In influencer culture, this fetishism is evident when followers see only the polished product (an influencer’s post or video) without awareness of the labor behind it. The influencer’s personhood is turned into an object with value, obscuring the human work and exploitation behind it.

Classical concepts of surplus value apply as well: influencers generate value (in the form of attention and engagement) beyond what they receive back. The unpaid labor of likes, shares, and comments of ordinary users is captured by platforms and sold to advertisers, creating profit from free labor. This mirrors Marx’s observation that “labor produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity”. The influencer thus breeds not only content, but a commodified social identity subject to the market.

B. Marxist Media and Digital Studies

Recent Marxist theorists extend these ideas to digital media and platform capitalism. Nick Dyer-Witheford, in Cyber-Marx, examines how information technology intensifies class struggle and transforms workers into “cogs in global networks” of production. He emphasizes that digital labor is not immaterial or free, but deeply exploited. Similarly, Trebor Scholz’s Uberworked and Underpaid critiques platform labor regimes (Uber, Amazon Mechanical Turk, etc.) where workers are precarious and exploited. Scholz coins the term “platform capitalism” to describe how digital platforms extract labor in novel ways, often leaving workers isolated and underpaid.

Christian Fuchs provides a critical Marxist analysis of social media platforms. He argues that social media are “dominated by corporations” and the Internet is “predominantly capitalist in character”. In Social Media: A Critical Introduction, Fuchs traces how sites like Facebook and YouTube rely on users’ free labor (content production, data provision) to generate profit for shareholders. Drawing on Marx, he shows how social media serve as new sites of surplus-value extraction and ideological control. For example, Fuchs points out that platforms encourage endless engagement to harvest user attention and data, effectively converting social interaction into commodity form.

C. Neoliberal Self-Branding

Influencer culture is shaped by neoliberal ideology, which valorizes the entrepreneurial self. Influencers are taught to see themselves as independent brands and businesses, responsible for their own “success.” This ideology disguises labor as lifestyle: creating content is framed as a personal passion or hobby rather than wage labor. Yet like traditional laborers, influencers must perform tasks (filming, editing, self-promotion) that generate value for a capitalist system. As one commentator observes, platforms “work invertedly to regular commodity exchanges,” using the guise of social connection to hide profit motives. Personal creativity and affect become marketable assets. In this sense, influencers exemplify a neoliberal subject: the worker-as-marketer, juggling self-exploitation under the name of “authenticity.”

III. Influencer Labor and Alienation

In influencer labor, personal identity itself is commodified. Every selfie, life-hack video, or makeup tutorial is both an expression of self and a product of labor. The influencer sells an aura of authenticity or aspirational lifestyle. Followers invest emotionally in this persona, further inflating its value. But beneath the surface, content creation is rigorous labor. Influencers often spend countless unpaid hours planning, filming, and editing posts. As a result, the influencer-worker can experience the alienation Marx described: the labor feels “estranged from [their] own body”, part of a system beyond their control.

Algorithmic control intensifies this alienation. Social media platforms use opaque algorithms to determine which posts gain visibility. The influencer constantly contends with changing metrics: likes, views, and follower counts fluctuate unpredictably. Thus, the influencer’s effort to express creativity is mediated by algorithmic “machines.” In Marxist terms, the influencer’s “social movement [of creation]…possesses for [them] the form of a motion of objects under the control of which [they] lie”. The influencer is governed by screen-based metrics rather than direct human community. In practice, this means a video’s success often depends more on platform design and timing than the creator’s work. Many influencers describe this feeling of powerlessness: despite dedication, they feel like “cheap commodities” whose value is set by an impersonal market.

Emotional and cognitive labor also feature prominently. Influencers must perform affective labor: they curate a persona, manage public relations, and even police their own emotions on camera. This mirrors Arlie Hochschild’s concept of emotional labor – commodifying personal feelings as work. Influencers smile, joke, and empathize as part of brand-building. Over time, this blurring of personal and professional roles can cause emotive dissonance and burnout. As one study notes, content creation is often a mix of work and play, validating Fuchs’s view that social media use has both use-value (social enjoyment) and exchange-value (it becomes commodity). Influencers “work for free” through their own audience interactions, with only a fraction receiving paid sponsorships. Most of their peer networking and content promotion happens unpaid, feeding the platform’s profit without direct compensation to the user.

For example, on Instagram, a typical user might spend an hour posting daily, tagging products, and replying to comments. This labor serves brands by generating word-of-mouth promotion (e.g. through tagged posts), yet the user receives no payment. Influencers with large followings formalize this with sponsored posts. In all cases, labor is alienated: the influencer often does not own the platform or the data it generates. As Yazdanipour et al. observe, “ordinary users work for free and are exploited… they do not own the money that they produce for others.” The platform extracts surplus value: likes and shares create community (use-value), while also being sold as commodity (exchange-value) to advertisers.

IV. Digital Commodification and the Spectacle

Influencer content operates as an exchangeable commodity in the cultural marketplace. Every post or video is created with an eye toward brand deals and monetization. The value of an influencer’s content is measured by engagement metrics and follower counts, which translate directly into economic value for themselves or partner brands. In effect, the influencer’s attention economy becomes a self-reinforcing capitalist circuit: “the attention of users, followers, and audiences is transformed into commodities that can be sold to brands”. Advertisers eagerly buy into this: a “remarkable share” of Instagram advertising is now circulated through celebrity and influencer endorsements.

Notably, the platform itself serves as the means of production. Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube provide the tools (cameras, editing apps, networks) and also control distribution. They are owned by corporate interests seeking constant growth. From a Marxist perspective, these platforms are akin to factories: they dictate work conditions (through policies and algorithms) and appropriate the profits. Users contribute content and data; the platform reaps the financial gains from ads and partnerships. This is primitive accumulation in a new form: digital data is collected and commodified. Zuboff characterizes this as “surveillance capitalism,” where personal data are “used by [companies] to predict our behaviour and influence and modify it”. In influencer culture, both the influencer’s data and their followers’ data are extracted in this way.

The spectacle, as Debord described, is crucial. Debord famously wrote that “all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles”: our social relations become mediated by images. Influencer posts are prime examples: they present a fetishized reality where commodities and lifestyles dominate. Teodoro and Machado argue that on social media, “the products sold…are the influencers’ lifestyles,” using “constant posts…showcasing common scenes from everyday life” to market a dream. Influencer feeds are carefully staged spectacles: every sunset photo or workout clip is an image curated for visual appeal, encouraging followers to equate consumption with happiness. In this spectacle, commodity fetishism is literal: the influencer’s body and experiences become vessels for brand commodities.

Media images build social identity. Teodoro and Machado note that in the spectacle, “the images transmitted by the media build people’s identities…it becomes necessary to transform life into a spectacle to reach the approval of others”. On Instagram, a lavish breakfast photo isn’t just a meal – it’s a sign of a lifestyle. A “like” or comment confers social value. Thus commodity logic invades even intimate spaces. Followers internalize the spectacle: everyday people measure their status against influencer images. The neoliberal ethos of the entrepreneurial self thrives here: if the influencers’ success comes from selling their lives, then anyone can too—provided they play by capitalist rules.

The platform’s design furthers the illusion. Social media interface “actively convinces” users that the purpose is free communication, while hiding the fact that “many platforms are set up in a way that favours constant product propaganda”. Users feel they are socializing, when in fact their interactions have been commoditized (e.g. via targeted ads). Debord wrote that the spectacle “is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people mediated by images”. Influencer culture epitomizes this: real social bonds are replaced by pseudo-relations of likes and follows, and our social worth is measured by digital markers.

V. Case Studies

To illustrate these dynamics, consider three contemporary examples:

• Instagram Fashion Influencers: On Instagram, fashion and lifestyle influencers monetize their feeds through brand partnerships and sponsored content. For instance, a popular fashion influencer might post daily outfits tagged with designer labels. Each post is both self-expression and paid advertisement. The influencer’s image – a tall, stylish persona – is painstakingly crafted. Followers’ engagement (comments, likes) becomes a commodity; brands pay the influencer to reach that audience. Yet the influencer often faces precarious conditions: algorithm changes can cut visibility overnight, and public controversies can destroy income. Despite enormous investments of time (photo shoots, editing, audience management), the influencer does not own Instagram itself nor the underlying labor of their followers. In Marxist terms, the influencer’s creativity has been alienated: “the worker has turned into one of the free conditions of capitalist production,” producing content that capital then sells back to the public.
• TikTok Creators and Trends: TikTok’s short-form video culture promotes viral trends. Creators churn out dance routines, tutorials, or comedic skits to capture rapid engagement. These videos often feature product placements or sponsored challenges. The platform’s algorithm rewards a tiny fraction of content with exposure, encouraging relentless production. A TikTok influencer might appear spontaneously authentic, but their “authenticity” is manufactured in response to data: video length, popular songs, and hashtags that the algorithm boosts. The creative labor is intense (editing, scripting, performing), but much of it is unpaid. As with Instagram, the sociality of TikTok is commodified: the influencer’s followers are prime data and customer bases. For example, viral beauty trends on TikTok often lead to explosive sales for partnered brands. While the influencer may gain clout, the bulk of value flows to the platform (owned by ByteDance) and to the advertisers. The creator remains a “prosumer”: both consuming and producing capitalized content, yet under the thumb of profit-seeking algorithms.
• YouTube Content Series: On YouTube, long-form creators build content series (e.g. daily vlogs, gaming streams, tutorials). Monetization comes through ad revenue sharing and fan patronage (Patreon, merchandise). A YouTuber constructs an ongoing persona – for example, a gamer or educator – and fans invest time watching hours of content. This attention is then sold to advertisers. Many YouTubers emphasize “doing what they love,” but their labor is grueling: writing scripts, filming, editing, and engaging with fans. A Marxist reading sees the YouTube channel as the means of production, and the subscription as labor power. Even viewer comments contribute unpaid labor by boosting engagement metrics. Importantly, the sense of autonomy YouTubers claim can be illusory. They still rely on platform algorithms and ad policies. As one study notes, ordinary Instagram users (and by extension YouTubers) “completely work on [social media] for free,” exemplifying Karl Marx’s idea that “wages and private property are identical” and that system-wide change requires overthrowing both.
• Optional: Regional Context – Indian Influencers: India’s booming social media scene has given rise to influencers in fashion, comedy, and motivational speaking. Many navigate similar issues: the pressure to create viral content, reliance on brands for sponsorship, and controversies over authenticity. For example, Indian fashion influencers face criticism for promoting Western beauty standards, yet they attract large audiences for multinational brands. This indicates that even outside the West, influencer culture carries global capitalist imperatives. It blends globalized corporate interests with local cultural forms, reflecting Hardt and Negri’s idea that modern empire is a “network of networks” where labor and culture circulate across borders (Empire, 2000).

VI. Discussion

Influencer culture is marked by deep contradictions. Influencers portray themselves as free, creative entrepreneurs controlling their destinies. In reality, they operate within the constraints of market logic and corporate platforms. This is the classic Marxist contradiction of base and superstructure: the economic base (platform capitalism) shapes the ideological superstructure (the narrative of self-branding). As Fuchs emphasizes, the internet’s formal appearance of democratic participation hides a stratified, capitalist structure. Influencers may feel they’re building community, but they are ultimately serving capitalist ends.

The personal and the economic are inseparable. Influencers’ “authentic” selves are meticulously curated commodities. They commodify emotions, appearances, and social ties. This affects everyday users, too: as Teodoro and Machado note, images on social media lead to “social relations developed…by technology…changing people’s concept of public/private spaces, of labor and how it’s done”. Private life becomes public performance. The pressure to monetize every aspect of identity can alienate the influencer from their own human essence, just as Marx said alienated labor makes the worker feel foreign to their life.

The ideological function of influencer culture is to naturalize these conditions. By celebrating “living your passion,” the influencer narrative obscures exploitation. Followers learn to equate worth with visibility and consumption. Debord warned that the spectacle “is the heart of the unrealism of the real society”. In other words, the spectacle (images of effortless success) justifies the system. Social media spreads “capitalist illusions in a timeline with no end”, making inequality appear normal and personal branding seem like heroic self-improvement rather than labor exploitation. When creators like MrBeast or Kayla Hoover (just examples) script their videos entirely for clicks and views, it evidences that even creative art is subsumed under “surplus-value” logic: “media, not just on the corporate side, but on the artist’s side, is fetishized”. The “creator economy” thus feeds the attention economy, tying creative labor to financial accumulation.

Moreover, influencer culture reenacts the worker-consumer dichotomy: followers are consumers of content but also create value through their attention. Both creators and consumers become data. As one commentator starkly puts it, on these platforms “the creator has their information turned into data…to the platform… users are data and nothing more.”. This is data-centric fetishism: human relationships are reduced to datapoints traded for profit. Marx famously said that capitalism degrades human being into a commodity. Today, digital capitalism has extended this degradation: both content creators and audiences are objectified as sources of data and value.

Agreeing or disagreeing with these Marxist insights largely depends on perspective. I concur that influencer culture has strong Marxian features: the economy of attention and self-branding undeniably fits the logic of commodification and alienation. However, one might counter that influencers often benefit from the system (some earn substantial incomes) and that some find genuine community and empowerment online. Nonetheless, from a critical standpoint, these benefits do not negate the underlying labor relations. As Marx noted, capitalism binds one part of society’s wealth (i.e. “the world of things”) above all else, causing real human needs and creativity to serve accumulation. Influencer culture provides examples of both the charm and the trap: it attracts millions with the promise of self-determination while channeling that desire into the structure of capital.

VII. Conclusion

This Marxist critique reveals that influencer culture is not a realm apart from capitalist exploitation but rather a novel expression of it. Personal identity itself has become a form of capital: followers, likes, and personal style are the new commodities. Every selfie or vlog is embedded in a cycle of surplus-value extraction and commodity fetishism. Yet, as Marx taught, revealing these hidden relations is the first step toward awareness. Understanding influencers as workers and consumers in a capitalist spectacle can inform ethical reflection. It raises questions about digital labor rights, the concentration of platform power, and the ways we value creative work.

In sum, influencer culture demonstrates that the late capitalist system continuously adapts: the factory has become “floorless,” dispersed across endless timelines of content, but the underlying logic of exploitation remains. The digital age may make alienation feel less visible, even pleasurable, but the specter of Marx’s analysis persists. Recognizing how “social relations become the relations between images” in social media is crucial for critiquing the ideology of digital capitalism. As society grapples with issues like data privacy and labor precarity, the Marxist perspective highlighted here underscores that the personal has political economy—highlighting the need for collective understanding and potentially collective organizing in digital spaces.

References:

Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Black & Red, 1977.

Fuchs, Christian. Digital Labour and Karl Marx. Routledge, 2014.

Fuchs, Christian. Social Media: A Critical Introduction. 3rd ed., Sage, 2021.

Marx, Karl. Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 1. Translated by Ben Fowkes, Penguin Classics, 1992.

Marx, Karl. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Edited by Friedrich Engels, Progress Publishers, 1964.

Teodoro, Maria Cecília Máximo, and Mariana M. A. Machado. “From Factory Floor to Floorless Factories: Influencers and the Spectacle of Hidden Labor.” Open Access Journal of Science, vol. 8, no. 1, 2025, pp. 59–66, doi:10.15406/oajs.2025.08.00245.

Yazdanipour, Forouzan, et al. “Digital Labour and the Generation of Surplus Value on Instagram.” tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique, vol. 20, no. 2, 2022, pp. 179–94.

Zuboff, Shoshana. “Shoshana Zuboff: ‘Surveillance capitalism is an assault on human autonomy.’” The Guardian, 4 Oct. 2019.