Marwick, A. E. (2015). Instafame: Luxury Selfies in the Attention Economy.

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Article Review:

Marwick, A. E. (2015). Instafame: Luxury Selfies in the Attention Economy. Public Culture, 27(1-75), 137-160. Retrieved from: [1]

By: Natalie Treude

When one thinks about a celebrity they may think of someone who is in films, on TV shows, creates albums; someone who ultimately is in the public eye due to basic forms of media. Nowadays, when one thinks of a celebrity they can picture many types due to the development of the Internet. With the rise of social media, our regular definition of a celebrity has drastically changed and the notion that everybody and anybody can become a star is on the rise.

Where has this new DIY celebrity status come from? How do these people reach celebrity status by only using social media platforms? Marwick’s article, “Instafame: Luxury Selfies in the Attention Economy” examines public Instagram accounts from 2013 who have over ten thousand followers each. She uses a textual and visual analysis to determine why these people and their accounts are so “popular.” This popularity is measured by their number of followers; the more followers they have the more popular they are. Since Instagram is the media that is being analyzed, Marwick decided to look into the visuals as a way of determining the “reasons” for their fame. She used the idea of Veblen’s (1899) Conspicuous Consumption and how the use of glamorous visuals are used to show a glamorous lifestyle, ultimately showing off their celebrity status. Conspicuous consumption focuses on how the leisure class consumes products and services lavishly in order to prove and flaunt their status and wealth (Veblen, 1899). Photos of people who seem to be living lavishly could be seen as a reason for micro-celebrity status. These people simply post photos on Instagram in order to proclaim their wealth that must come from their newly found fame. They are showing their followers that they do not have to work to consume expensive products, they just need followers and Instafame in order to live their luxurious lifestyle.

In this analysis, social media, micro-celebrity, selfie culture and Instagram were discussed in order to discover how micro-celebrities come to be. In 2015, when this article was written, online celebrities and micro-celebrities were still establishing themselves in mainstream media and therefore not a lot of people knew who or what they were. This article goes into depth on explaining this new type of celebrity in a world of social media. Most importantly it focuses on the selfie culture and how posting aesthetic selfies on one’s account have a huge impact on their following and popularity. Instagram was the focus as it was and still is the most popular social media site and because it focuses on picture themselves rather than words like Twitter. Instagram simply represents cultural forces because it produces and generates digital documentation, celebrity and micro-celebrity culture, and conspicuous consumption. Warwick (2015) then went into discussing three different types of Instafame: The one who attracts attention, the pseudo-celebrity, and the luxury enthusiast. She used real examples for each and discussed the reasons why they became famous. Self-presentation techniques seem to be the reason for this scale of success and fame. Without one’s physical presence on social media, they would not make it by, proving our world, especially our social world, to be superficial and judgmental of ideal views of beauty, attractiveness, and lifestyle.

This analysis was extremely in-depth and had the strong theory of conspicuous consumptions behind it. One of its biggest strength was the fact that it seemed to be one of the first textual analysis’ on the issue that went that far in-depth and gave that much detail. This was important as micro-celebrities were a new concept and majority of people did not understand what they were at the time. However, a weakness it has is that is is now outdated and another analysis or further research needs to be conducted in order to make it as valid in 2018. Nowadays Cayla Friesz, the Instafamous high school sophomore, would not be considered famous with only 31,496 followers. People like Tammy Hembrow who has 8.1 million followers on Instagram should be looked into. Also, another weakness in this analysis would be the fact that sometimes followers should not be considered when it comes to Instafame because a lot of people nowadays buy their followers or have completely fake ones. I believe popularity should be measured by the average amount of likes these people get on their photos.

In the new digital age, Marwick did a great job at explaining how micro-celebrities are coming to be, but further research needs to be conducted in order to get more up-to-date facts and definitions. This is where this article strives as it is the stepping stones for future research in the field of online celebrity, a topic that will soon, in the next couple of years, hopefully become a topic that has extensive amounts of research behind it to truly be knowledgeable of our social worlds that exists online and how this newfound fame interacts with our world offline.

Reference

Veblen, Thorstein. “Conspicuous Consumption” in The Theory of the Leisure Class. (London: Routledge, 1899), 187-204.

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