Written and lived by Binwe Adebayo
I get it. There’s nothing better than people understanding you, your work and responding with (virtual applause). And in the world of social media, where we are all jostling to hear our voice above the crowd, carving out your own space in the WWW is a win. But – in the era of ‘personal branding’ – it’s easy to get lost in the sauce. As Jia Tolentine examines in her incredible book, ‘Trick Mirror’, it’s easy to get into the habit of performing yourself, especially when the URL version is acknowledged far more than your IRL self. But when you’re playing the personal brand game 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, who are you afterwards? What is left when the personal brand performance is over?
As a chronically online ‘screenager’, the allure of a personal brand is not lost on me. I was given my ‘internet name’ by a university friend, who after a couple of drinks, got into the (wonderful) habit of yelling ‘Biiiiinwinning!’ and so when it came to starting up an Instagram page, it just stuck. And while I like to believe I am too edgy to be associated with an internet persona, living as this brand makes it hard to snap back to reality, even when I am very much NOT winning.
A personal brand is defined by the Harvard Business Review as “intentional..it is how you want people to see you”. This is a powerful concept, and one which I think is important, especially for young creative and cultural workers, going against the grain of generic representations. And in this moment, of infinite platforms for different approaches to personal branding, the freedom and platforms to create and communicate yourself are super gratifying and powerful. In Cultural Studies research, we would understand this as – to steal from the iconic Stuart Hall – the journey of choosing and communicating your own symbolic markers. You’re stamping what you’re about, how you show up, but also which labels you reject just in the way that your speak, and what you speak about. Slang says you are an everyday person, technical terms show your intellectual prowess, and sharing ideas and lessons positions you as personable. In this way, the idea of a personal brand allows for a mega inflation of the self, one which isn’t bound by race, class, gender or any other rigid classification. And because technology is not an invisible hand (sorry Adam Smith!), it is the way towards finding the social in technosocial, a way to reimagine hands on a computer as a platform to speak your truth.
But that is, assuming, the brand is your truth. As a friend and colleague of many internet famous people, I am often giggling and kicking my feet and the ultra-real, ultra authentic presentations of a personal brand, as seen in something as simple as an Instagram story or a Tiktok fit check, but, in the spirit of keeping it real, I’m often I’m melting under the second hand embarrassment of watching people ‘perform’ in ways that do not align with who they are in everyday life. I am reminded of an interview with Lionel Richie, where he asks what I think is the key question: You can have it all, but can you survive it?
My former boss and forever fave, Mike Sharman, often uses the expression “what comes first, the chicken or the egg?” and that’s really the question. Has the brand got so big that this weird, untouchable ‘person’ decides who you are, or are you still crafting this online self?
Certainly, I think there are a huge number of people who get this right. They adopt a sort of alter ego who can do the things that they can’t, and say the things on their mind, but it’s a slippery slope. If you’re using words you’d never use, constantly posting to butter up the business people you want to take you seriously, or just squashing your entire self into a palatable people-facing version, there’s an opportunity cost. You have to maintain the brand, reflect the brand, and use that brand to align with other people and projects – all the time. You’ve also got to carry that personality everywhere, and for those of us who are official creatives by day and culture nightcrawlers by night, that’s a tall order. When does the make up come off? When does the internet brand self get put in a box so you can just be your regular self? Is it working for you, or is it more work than just being you?
I think the idea of a personal brand is useful as a tool, not a destination, after which you will have ‘made it’ when everyone gets you and adores you.. More obviously, I believe that a personal brand should serve the best of who you are, not the inauthentic version of you who gets hyped up on clicks. Your personality, your talent and your fallible creativity should not be left behind as you polish up for the public. That’s not to say that I think everybody should be some kind of social media renegade, but the personal brand has to serve a purpose, it isn’t a purpose on its own.
There are creatives and businesspeople in the creative industry who get this right; and there’s nothing better than reading a post and knowing how it’d sound in that person’s voice, or along with that person’s facial expressions. There is no loss in bringing your whole self to the person you are on the internet. No one is suggesting you swear like a sailor like you would on a Friday night, but to reinvent yourself into a timid church mouse isn’t just taxing for you, it’s just not compelling. I would invite you to think about yourself – and selves – and ask yourself whether you are driving the personal brand bus, or if you’ve just become a passenger to a person you created along with your Instagram profile. It’s never too late to switch up, it’s never too late to be yourself.