i've always been a sellout

not having to self-promote is a privilege

In Everyone’s a sellout now, Rebecca Jennings laments the modern reality that musicians, authors, and creatives have to be entrepreneurs. No longer can the lone creative geniuses of yesteryear toil steadily and singularly at their art. They must also master the art of selling—themselves.

I’m not just a human—I’m a brand!

Before, we had Artists; now, we have Artists+.¹ The + denotes the marketing that was formerly provided by record labels, publishers, and other corporate gatekeepers of art, which have now pushed marketing responsibilities onto the creatives themselves. And it’s not just the creative class who are subject to these ever-increasing demands to sell thyself:

The internet has made it so that no matter who you are or what you do — from nine-to-five middle managers to astronauts to house cleaners — you cannot escape the tyranny of the personal brand. For some, it looks like updating your LinkedIn connections whenever you get promoted; for others, it’s asking customers to give you five stars on Google Reviews; for still more, it’s crafting an engaging-but-authentic persona on Instagram. And for people who hope to publish a bestseller or release a hit record, it’s “building a platform” so that execs can use your existing audience to justify the costs of signing a new artist.

Jennings speaks of this shift from Artists to Artists+ with understandable exasperation. No one told us excellence in multiple domains was required! Moreover, Jennings argues that self-promotion is “uncomfortable for most artists, who by definition concern themselves with what it means to be a person in the world, not what it means to be a brand.”² (Never mind that according to William Deresiewicz (whom Jennings interviews), the first “artists” were actually craftsmen: men (of course) who studied under traditions who were more concerned with mastering a preexisting craft than creating something anew. The conception of artists as those concerned about what it means to be a person in the world, then, has not always held fast.)

A musician who parlayed a viral moment on TikTok into a record deal further complains of the Artists+ paradigm: “Next thing you know, it’s been three years and you’ve spent almost no time on your art. You’re getting worse at it, but you’re becoming a great marketer for a product which is less and less good.”³

This is, of course, unfortunate. Who among us would not love to be able to spend our entirety contemplating what it means to be a person and toiling endlessly at our art without the need to contemplate trade-offs between art and survival? It sounds like a great life. An economically infeasible one, sure, but great nonetheless. Should we all be so lucky.

I’m not saying that social media is great (it’s not) nor that the imperative to brand yourself is beneficial (it’s not). My own public digital existence was christened in the frenetic energy of shortform content; I therefore have a complicated relationship with social media. And to be quite honest, I dislike shortform content—how it incentivizes ragebait, hinders nuance, encourages short-term rewards over longer-term planning—but at the same time, I know that shortform content is likely a large part of why my publisher signed me in the first place. I can’t abandon TikTok. I can’t abandon any social media, really.

Nor would I dare to—in a world where the commercial success of my debut will have an outsize impact on whether I even receive the opportunity to write again, I would kick myself if I didn’t do everything I could to increase my chances. Even if “everything I could” involves a bunch of things that I hate: putting on a full face of make-up; subjecting myself to trolls and outright racist or misogynistic messages; continually flattening myself into bite-size clips for mass audience consumption. When speaking with my therapist about social media, I summarized it as: “It’s like taking SAT prep classes. I didn’t enjoy them, but I had to take them for a greater goal.”

In many ways, the conversation reminds me of the mid-2000s “white flight” from Bay Area high schools which were increasingly attended by Asian American students (a topic which has been popping up again lately). Some parents worried about how the changing racial composition of the school would impact test score expectations and competition:

[A parent, Ms. Doherty,] attended a Monta Vista parents' night and came away worrying about the school's focus on test scores and the big-name colleges its graduates attend.

"My sense is that at Monta Vista you're competing against the child beside you," she says. Ms. Doherty says she believes the issue stems more from recent immigrants than Asians as a whole. "Obviously, the concentration of Asian students is really high, and it does flavor the school," she says.⁴

Of course, self-promotion online isn’t the same as enrolling in prep classes for standardized tests. And white students aren’t the same as “past artists” (although creative fields in the U.S. are predominantly white and male). But the overall gestalts of the tensions are similar: Times are a-changin’ and I don’t like it.

Therein lies my problem with Everyone’s a sellout now: all of these double standards and social media savvy and performative packaging of art that Jennings complains about? For POC, these ills preceded the rise of personal branding. For POC, there was never a time when simply being an Artist was good enough; POC have always had to be an Artist+ if they wished to make art their livelihood.⁵ When a system’s gatekeepers are subconsciously skeptical of your art on the basis of your race, gender, or other minority characteristic, it doesn’t matter how good your art is—you’re not getting through the door on the basis of your art alone.

This additional labor of + isn’t solely reserved for artistic careers, either. Even as a Biglaw junior associate, I couldn’t simply hit my billable hours, do good work, and expect to succeed. I had to take advantage of the halo effect of good grooming and dress; I had to perform competence as much as I had to be competent. (For additional tips on how to perform competence, head over to my Biglaw Survival Guide video.) For the first few years, I put on a full face of make-up, bit my tongue whenever I heard racist or misogynistic comments, and fashioned myself to act the part of “perfect associate” to partners and clients.

Wait a damn second. Doesn’t this sound a lot like what curating a personal brand on social media entails?

Maybe this is why I had an admittedly Miranda Priestly response to Everyone’s a sellout now. Having to worry simultaneously about a substantive task and promoting your skills at said substantive task?

The Devil Wears Prada

Now, I’m not saying that this double labor is good. It’s not. It’s unfair, and it sucks that simply doing a good job is not enough to get you recognized for doing a good job. This double labor requirement stems from systemic problems. Our society’s lack of labor organizing, affordable access to healthcare and childcare, and concern for non-megastar artists (to whom we owe our very culture!) greatly pressure us to perform on both the artistic level and the marketing level.

If profiting from one’s art weren’t such a life-or-death endeavor, then maybe we’d all relax a little on personal branding, on selling ourselves. But that’s not the world we live in. And it’s not a world that POC have ever lived in. We’ve always had to navigate this double bind. The only difference now is that everyone else has to confront it, too. ◆

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1. For an excellent analysis of how the role of “artist” has changed in both popular conception and the economy over the years, William Deresiewicz’s “The Death of the Artist” is an incisive read.

2. Rebecca Jennings, “Everyone’s a sellout now,” Vox (Feb. 1, 2024).

3. Id.

4. Can we just take a second and think about how this quote has aged in 2024? Or maybe hasn’t aged? Oof.

5. “Black films don’t travel” is such a longstanding Hollywood myth, I couldn’t even pinpoint its origin while researching.