Casey Gilfillan

I’m sick of it, the infiltration of corporations into every niche corner of the internet. The abrupt herding of the capitalist shepherds as they try to flock us to purchase, with the force of our browsing history and personal data at their behest, is irksome as it is cringe. Every video is a moment to capitalize, every scroll an opportunity to influence and sell. 

Whether or not you believe in a ‘human nature’ is a personal belief. Whether or not it is ‘human nature’ for people to amass greedy amounts of wealth and thrive off of the financial exsanguination of others would be a great topic for debate. Regardless of the innateness or lack of to our humanity, when permitted and encouraged by the legal infrascturture of a society, this phenomena happens in parasitic proportions. Those who are allowed – by law and opportunity – consistantly seize, and then withhold, access to the means and rewards of labor from their peers. This effort of greed and monopoly bleeds into all walks of capitalist life, and has more recently realized the moving potential of internet personalities. And so unleashed is the hell of the perpetual shopping landscape.

It’s gross and has ruined the internet, in the capitalistic way of poisoning an authentic joy for profit, but I thought I was safe within my means. By that, I mean within the spaces I occupy, the accounts I follow – intentional choices made by me for my viewing, not those thrust to my eyes by the algorithmic data state. But I was wrong. I was still pandered to, peddled trinkets, tantalized with aesthetic garb. 

I was mistaken to think I had found community in various alternative, goth, DIY fashion, art, and political spaces online. Instead, I find myself the voyeur of personally-culivated ads by my ‘beloved’ creators – people I had once admired for their style, take, personal flair, or some other charming quality about their content. Brands seek out alternative-branded creators to nudge their way towards target demographics, and I’m disheartened to have seen so many submit to the will of influencing. 

Capitalistic and consumer values are inherently antithetical to goth, punk, and alternative philosophies. These subcultures were born in the subversive opposition to mainstream society and the dogma of consumerism, not aesthetic bullhorns to amplify product placement.

Consider this and imagine my disappointment when the vast majority of the alternative creators I follow start promoting the same luxury perfume company, when they sponsor-tag Killstar while indubitably knowing of the ethical allegations against the company, when they drop the “Linkme,” the ultimate marker of your cult followership and their brand partnership peak. Linkme is a platform used by creators to add the shopping (sponsored, often) links of each individual item of their outfit/post for ease of referral code and purchase for their audience. Luxury perfume is something nobody in the middle to low class is buying right now, and the ads for this are so out of socio-economic touch it’s laughable. The push links and referral codes and well-disguised ads do not ring through as authentic recommendations or organic partnerships based on shared values, at least not from this viewer’s perspective.

Everything is facilitated for ease of purchase, faster importation of credit card information, accessible payment breakdowns for purchases unwarranting of such. They yearn for the direct line to your routing number, but they’ll get it through the influencing personalities for now.

Hold accountable the companies, the individual actors, and the economic system that supports it all. I don’t care how equally you spread the blame between each of these contributing factors, they all rely on each other to perpetuate in the same way they rely on us to create the market. Work to stop the encouragement of these markets, and more over, the endless market.