Showing off your best assets: Rethinking commodification in the online creator economy

Journal title SOCIOLOGIA DEL LAVORO
Author/s Kylie Jarrett
Publishing Year 2022 Issue 2022/163 Language English
Pages 20 P. 90-109 File size 232 KB
DOI 10.3280/SL2022-163005
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This theoretical paper critically explores digital labour in the online creator econo-my using OnlyFans sex workers as its core example. It critiques the description of the exploitation of self and embodiment in this work as a process of commodifica-tion. By reframing this activity in terms of human capital appreciation and by contrasting the specific economic logic of commodities and assets, it proposes in-stead the framework of assetisation to explain the economics of labour in this sec-tor. It then places online creator labour in a wider economic context to explore the greater utility of this move away from understanding such work as commodifica-tion.

Keywords: Creator culture, Marxism, Economics, Digital labour

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Kylie Jarrett, Showing off your best assets: Rethinking commodification in the online creator economy in "SOCIOLOGIA DEL LAVORO " 163/2022, pp 90-109, DOI: 10.3280/SL2022-163005