Creationist Capitalism: You Are the Product
Tom Boellstorff is anthropologist at The University of California, Irvine. He has conducted extensive research in Indonesia as well as in virtual worlds, like Second Life. His research is focused on answering the question, “what does it mean to be human in emerging worlds, online and offline, where forms of selfhood, embodiment, community, and society are transforming in surprising ways that link back to deep histories and dynamics of inequality and belonging?” In 2008, Boellstorff published a book called Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human. In the book Boellstorff details his anthropological research within the virtual world, Second Life.
Second Life was developed by Linden Lab and was originally released in June 2003. In the world, users create avatars and move throughout the virtual world. Users can interact with other avatars, travel great distances within the world at the touch of a button, and build meaningful relationships with other users. One of the most exciting features of Second Life, however, is the ability for users to build objects within the world. Boellstorff describes how he owned land within the world and was able to build a house for his avatar to live in. He also depicts other avatars wearing clothing that they designed and created in the world. This ability for users to create and modify the world leads Boellstorff to discuss a theory called creationist capitalism and how it affects the virtual world.
According to Boellstorff, “A pivotal difference between virtual worlds and the actual world is that virtual worlds can be owned.” Second Life is technically owned by Linden Lab, they created the original platform and programming for the world. But what does that mean for the users who create new objects within the world?
Boellstorff describes ‘“[c]reationist capitalism” [as] a mode of capitalism in which labor is understood in terms of creativity, so that production is understood as creation.” When the users create new objects, like clothing within Second Life, they are participating in creationist capitalism “where embedding one’s creative self into (virtual) objects is the assumed means of turning labor into value.” Users are also able to earn real world money from the objects they make in Second Life which incentivizes people to create, paralleling how capitalism works in the outside world.
Another community that engages in creationist capitalism is Buzzfeed. Buzzfeed is a news media organization based in New York that touts itself as the “leading independent digital media company delivering news and entertainment to hundreds of millions of people around the world.” The company was founded by Jonah Peretti and John Johnson in 2006. There are numerous writers, editors, and video production staff that work at Buzzfeed, writing articles and creating multimedia content that is posted on their website. Users can open the website and read the content that is posted by the staff, but they also have the option to submit their own stories and multimedia content to be featured on the site.
This part of the website is called Buzzfeed Community. Users create a profile and then they can write articles and submit them to the Buzzfeed Community editors. If the editors approve the content, it is posted on the main content feed, along side articles written by the Buzzfeed staff. By encouraging “user created content,” Buzzfeed and its readers are engaging in creationist capitalism.
Although creationist capitalism is present on both platforms, Buzzfeed and Second Life have different relationships with the political economy. On Second Life, users can earn real world money from their creativity, but on Buzzfeed users are not paid for their work. Buzzfeed has its own compensation model, however, called Cat Power. Users can earn Cat Power by submitting articles and having them be featured. Once an article is accepted, the user’s Cat Power “will increase, giving you more opportunities to suggest posts for the Community page in addition to other cool perks and privileges.” Even though users are rewarded differently, both Buzzfeed and Second Life are important examples of how users are engaging in new forms of capitalism that will continue to challenge our traditional ideas of goods and services.
