When Being a Personal Brand Supersedes Being a Person

Do you ever feel that nobody that you know of has any idea who they are and who they wish to be. It is almost as if people have lost the plot of their own lives, sacrificing themselves to make offerings to the Gods of algorithm. It is now less about being an actual person, with real identities, idiosyncrasies, authentic style, original viewpoints, and more about being a brand.

Every influencer, youtuber, Instagram personality, TikToker, sounds, acts, thinks and commercializes themselves as a caricature and a mimic of the industry that of which they the poster child. When you’re willing to go to any lengths to acquire massive digital fortune, millions of views, brand deals, sponsorships, ad placements – you essentially sell yourself down the river.

You, very wittingly, become the puppet of the whole algorithmic song and dance. A faceless microscopic cog in the master plans of social media over lords. Out of touch and divorced from facts of human lives, people online are interested in being indoctrinated through passive internalization of cheap and low values, capitalist morals and hive-mind mentality that comes with selling out.

Everyone is an empath, an activist, a hardcore liberal, an environmentalist, philanthropist, what have you, until it no longer benefits their brand and all its sinister ulterior motives. The second that the culture shifts and having one kind of curated digital public identity isn’t serving one’s own self-centered motivations, it’ll call for a top to bottom rebrand.

Being a good and authentic person is only fun when it’s trending. Taking a liberal, left-wing political stand is cool until it’s not in fashion anymore. Advocating for the rights of the marginalized, underprivileged, disadvantaged and segregated minority communities is righteous up until doing so fails to keep you at the top of the charts and pay the bills.

Image source: Medium