After reading Andrew Herman’s article “Production, Consumption and Labor in the Social Media Mode of Communication and Production” one my note that audiences have come to rely social media not only as means of display and purpose, but to serve as an outlet for personal expression. It seems that sites such as Youtube have found their success after encouraging users to “Broadcast yourself”. In the social media age, a person’s ‘brand’ is no longer a way to communicate one’s personal identity traits online, but have become a lucrative way to make money in the social media age. Today, Youtube ‘star’ or ‘vloggers" (video bloggers) can make upwards of 15 million dollars a year, and such is based off of how they use their personal ‘brand’ to sell an advertisers product.
For example, Youtube star Tyler Oakley went from a popular youtube blogger, to a star of Ellen Degeneres’ own Youtube platform Ellentube. Today Tyler Oakley has created his own accessory line and has made the Forbes list Highest-Earning YouTubers of 2016.
What could a Youtube personality tell us about how capitalist systems have come to seemingly ‘take over’ the identity which social media has allowed users to create?
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