This is, but not really, a reply to the post “De-brand”, written by Simone Silvestroni. Actually, it made me want to share some thoughts on this subject.
This “brand ourselves” situation has become a trend for the past couple of years due to many aspects. The way I picture the world, I would name three as the most relevant: the financial disparity between the regular people and the super-rich; the excess of technology development, e.g. artificial intelligence, that urge people to abruptly change their formation and jobs to survive; and the big tech role to promote social media addiction, beside of being the scene for dissemination of the, somewhat misleading, digital marketing and personal branding content, of which I consider an abomination.
What’s the matter with the super-rich people?
Well, basically it is the accumulation of capital that could be better distributed and the excess of power that it brings. Just see the soft power that characters like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, or maybe the king of some Arabic country you want to name have.
Although it may look otherwise, I don’t advocate against capitalism. I just see that this system should be rethought and studied deeply, if what we want is a sustainable and less unequal planet.
We need to reflect as a society whether we want to evolve technologically so fast and whom this “evolution” benefits, that is, only the great businessmen and shareholders of some large company or the people who indeed use it.
Long story short, there are a set of factors that lead us to such personal branding. Many people need to reinvent themselves to survive and some of them end up “prostituting” themselves on social media platforms, being explored by big techs and the so-called gurus, life coaches or some other unscrupulous marketer, as well as by the super rich people who speak in the name of a supposed liberalism (without at least knowing what liberalism is about).
De-branding is a movement of courage. It’s giving up a supposed visibility, it’s removing the mask, it’s being who we want to be.