The Good, the Bad, the Pregnant

The intimacy economy is about parlaying personality and perceived closeness into success and profit. Nowhere is this more visible than in the phenomenon of online stardom, especially so-called "YouTube Stars". To be successful as a creator on YouTube requires a distinctive sense of personality and approach-ability - many of the top YouTube stars are very close to their audience, or at least use language that positions them as close to their audience = "I love every one of you guys," "You're the best" etc. - whether any of these statements is actually insincere or not makes little difference, as they still play right in to the dynamic of the online intimacy economy.

Viewers of YouTube personalities, especially young viewers, are watching out of a desire for a connection - they may recognise themselves in the person they watch, or see the person as an object of aspiration or desire. It is exactly the same dynamic as the more parochial celebrity-watchers of everyday life, but magnified by the intrinsic intimacy and closeness of the online video space. YouTube fandom is intense and all-encompassing (as videos of crowds of screaming young women from this past year's VidCon will attest), because there is a sense in the viewer's mind that this is a person like you, that you can reach and interact with them in some meaningful way, that they could be your friend. Coupling this with the celebrity dynamic has proven profitable, if somewhat frightening (see again the hoards of screaming fans).

Many YouTube stars have become successful simply by sharing their lives in exquisite, terrifying, privacy-dissolving detail - pregnancies are popular, stage-managed or otherwise, ensuring baby has a media presence before they've even left the womb, and (somehow) delighting millions of viewers looking for vicarious Lifetime moments. These personality displays are cross-media in nature, with accounts not just on YouTube, but also on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc. People franchise their lives, spinning intimate glances of what would be their most private moments into cold, hard profit, taking the middle-man of leering tabloids out of the equation.

There is a more benign side to the intimacy economy - it means that, more often than not, nice, friendly people tend to become successful, at least in some small measure. People like sketch comedy troupe LoadingReadyRun, who's dedication to creating quality work and being highly connected to their audience seems to come from a genuine place, and has certainly lead to a certain degree of success. They're also very smart about not over-sharing or creating false impressions of themselves, beyond the normal, sane amount of obfuscation or omission that happens within a creator-audience dialogue - no-one needs to know everything, and people need their privacy. When there was a pregnancy in the crew, it was handled deftly and kept mostly private, with just a simple announcement to answer people's questions as to what crew member Kathleen was up to given her reduced "on-air" time. It probably helps that they're Canadian.

Article by Leigh Alexander / Dystopianism

While I was aware of this concept for a few years, the first time I was saw someone give it a name properly was when I read this recent article by freelance games journalist Leigh Alexander. The whole thing is well worth a read, and is forming the basis for how I'm thinking about this topic going forward, but here are some particularly important quotes:

... creating the impression of intimacy is becoming increasingly crucial to the content economy today, and it’s happening everywhere. As the bottom plummets out of the advertising model and the “stuff Facebook with clickbait” approach begins to run out of rope, content creators [...] are striking out on their own and funding their work through alternative means, from crowdfunding to patronage and subscriptions. In general, people seem more likely to pay for content when it’s “voiced.” In the era of YouTube stars, we expect to see faces. We want eye contact.

Anyone you admire starts to feel available to you via social media, and the more they cultivate that impression of a relationship, the better you, as a consumer, will perform.

... people are spending money because they like us, or some idea of us; they are spending in part because of the idea that they are engaged in a parasocial relationship with us.

Pretending at closeness is really the only way forward for anyone who wants to make money on the internet. As such, watch as organizations pretend, with increasing intensity, that they are individuals.

Your feelings are now professional currency. Everyone who makes anything digital is monitoring the exchange rate to survive. Every content creator is now a community manager.

As an aside, the idea of a sense of intimacy or social closeness on the part of a customer as being equal to (or sometimes more important than) more concrete or actual value is not a new one: it's been floating around for well over a decade now in science fiction, particular post-cyberpunk and transhuman sci-fi, like the world of Eclipse Phase in which an economy of reputation and social nicety has overtaken traditional capitalist forms. This certainly plays into the (half-joking) dystopian refrain of Leigh Alexander's article. It's maybe a little passé to keep comparing our modern situation, especially re: the internet, to Gibsonian cyberpunk, but it's certainly a useful reference point for talking about how sinister this sort of stuff can be.