Influencer Creep: How Optimization, Authenticity and Self-Branding Transform Creative Culture

In this uneven debut treatise, media studies scholar Bishop analyzes how social media influencer culture impacts the art world. Artists, she asserts, have been pressured into “optimization,” or the pursuit of algorithmic success. Frequently facing failure in this pursuit, artists are often simply exhorted to “make better art” that is more likely to go viral, but even this glib advice to sell out, Bishop writes, is made difficult by the lack of transparency about how algorithms function. She turns to analyzing the content of successful influencers to argue that their virality stems from their performance of “authenticity” like stumbling over a word or making a mistake. These “strategically built amateur aesthetics” evoke the “emotional vulnerability” that is currently key to achieving algorithmic optimization. Certain kinds of political and cultural production can’t be made to fit into this optimized space, Bishop argues; but more art is being tailored to this aesthetic, in a process she calls “platformization.” While at times illuminating, especially when it comes to the proliferation of “get rich quick” advice for artists, Bishop’s argument feels somewhat oblique, fluctuating between merely comparing influencers to artists because they both use social media for self-promotion, and asserting that influencer culture is impacting the art world directly (examples include the much-maligned bloggers who swarm fashion shows). Still, those in the art world will find plenty to chew on. (Oct.)