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Can we agree this idea of a "personal brand" is both harmful and oxymoronic? You are a person, not a product. You have a reputation. This is like adding fuel to

Can we agree this idea of a "personal brand" is both harmful and oxymoronic? You are a person, not a product. You have a reputation. This is like adding fuel to the idea that management should look upon the people who work for them as "resources".

jonahbenton 6y ago
Can't agree, sorry. Hear the critique of the abstraction but there is a reason it exists, and to deny is to deny reality. "Personal brand" is just another way of saying "personality, but online." It is the nature of intelligence itself to distill and compress complex, messy stimulus/data/phenomena into shorthand. One must recognize that this is what people do when interacting with oneself, both f2f and online. This is especially important now, given that digitally intermediated interactions will dominate the landscape for the duration of the epidemic. People have all kinds of built-in ways of modulating their personality for f2f interactions. It is essential that they translate these to digital space.
- nickbauman 6y ago
  If this is all about online expression, why borrow something from advertising with this horrid neologism, then? We can use regular english, like "persona". We don't need this, and I think it's harmful.
  - jonahbenton 6y ago
    I hear you. "Brand" itself is a horrible term and the awful connotations of course go way beyond advertising. But if whatever this term should be were a horse, it left the barn ridden by "personal brand" a long time ago. I don't discount the success of terminological improvement movements- for pronouns, most notably- but a compelling story about disadvantage -> solution -> improvement to create an alternative remains to be told, at least from my perspective. "Persona" is not the solution. It's creepy, imprecise, and unownable. It needs to be able to become a term of art. "Profile" also unusable, is taken for dating. "Avatar" I think is successful, but incomplete. Part of the problem is that the "branding" platforms are themselves universally awful, both in being hard to use, and in failing to elevate their users. It is never more clear that one is working for the machine than when one is configuring one's "profile" in LinkedIn. It definitely seems like there is room to create a successful professional platform, with a named product- like "Highlights"- and that term could take over for "personal brand." If you have thoughts about it, please do it! We need it!
- ghaff 6y ago
  It's one of those terms that sounds like fingernails on a blackboard to me. Probably because many of the people who use the term a lot have other annoying characteristics. But, for many, their (online and otherwise) reputation/personality is a real and important thing.
  - jonahbenton 6y ago
    Agree completely, both wrt the grating-ness of the terminology and of its profiteers.

jonahbenton 6y ago

Can't agree, sorry. Hear the critique of the abstraction but there is a reason it exists, and to deny is to deny reality. "Personal brand" is just another way of saying "personality, but online." It is the nature of intelligence itself to distill and compress complex, messy stimulus/data/phenomena into shorthand. One must recognize that this is what people do when interacting with oneself, both f2f and online. This is especially important now, given that digitally intermediated interactions will dominate the landscape for the duration of the epidemic. People have all kinds of built-in ways of modulating their personality for f2f interactions. It is essential that they translate these to digital space.

nickbauman 6y ago
If this is all about online expression, why borrow something from advertising with this horrid neologism, then? We can use regular english, like "persona". We don't need this, and I think it's harmful.
- jonahbenton 6y ago
  I hear you. "Brand" itself is a horrible term and the awful connotations of course go way beyond advertising. But if whatever this term should be were a horse, it left the barn ridden by "personal brand" a long time ago. I don't discount the success of terminological improvement movements- for pronouns, most notably- but a compelling story about disadvantage -> solution -> improvement to create an alternative remains to be told, at least from my perspective. "Persona" is not the solution. It's creepy, imprecise, and unownable. It needs to be able to become a term of art. "Profile" also unusable, is taken for dating. "Avatar" I think is successful, but incomplete. Part of the problem is that the "branding" platforms are themselves universally awful, both in being hard to use, and in failing to elevate their users. It is never more clear that one is working for the machine than when one is configuring one's "profile" in LinkedIn. It definitely seems like there is room to create a successful professional platform, with a named product- like "Highlights"- and that term could take over for "personal brand." If you have thoughts about it, please do it! We need it!
ghaff 6y ago
It's one of those terms that sounds like fingernails on a blackboard to me. Probably because many of the people who use the term a lot have other annoying characteristics. But, for many, their (online and otherwise) reputation/personality is a real and important thing.
- jonahbenton 6y ago
  Agree completely, both wrt the grating-ness of the terminology and of its profiteers.