Reproducing platform ideologies: Do what you like with Gary VEE

Influencers play a crucial role in the functioning of social media platforms and in socializing their audiences. One of the roles they perform is underreached. Influencers can also be analyzed as reproducers of platform ideologies. The influencer concept hides an enormous range of different categories of content producers on social media. We usually tend to see them as those who use their cultural status to sell products; from make-up artists, to fashionista’s. Other influencer categories would be those who produce entertainment, try to sell their services to their audiences, activists and politicians adopting the influencer tactics (Maly, 2020 & 2021) or intellectuals catering for a special audience. Considering the topic of this article, it makes sense to look at still another category: namely the influencer that gathers a following because they seem to understand digital media and give advice to people who dream to become influencers or at least use social media in service of their business, their dreams or passion. Gary VaynerChuk is one of those influencers. And it make sense to analyze him as a reproducer of platform ideologies: a digital ideological entrepreneur.