Icon arbitrage

Exploiting the conflation between an icon and what that thing is an icon for. Frequently because the thing it’s an icon for doesn’t scale, and the icon does.

Influencers, musicians, and politicians - basically anyone who’s “famous” - exploit the parasocial relationships people have to them.

Very much a double-edged sword: Donald John Trump used “Donald Trump” to get elected as President of the United States, but then became the most hated man on Earth. Emory Andrew Tate III used “Andrew Tate” to get rich and then got thrown into Romanian jail. Streamers rely on their icon to form parasocial relationships and get money, but now have AI-generated porn of their icons.

Date

March 6, 2023

Up next

Icons Something that stands for something else, but isn’t the thing it stands for. E.g.: The term “Andrew Tate” stands, at this point in time, for two

Previously

Hyperstition A special instance of social reality where people come to believe something will happen, act in accordance to that belief, and their acting thus