Showing off your best assets: Rethinking commodification in the online creator economy

Abstract

This theoretical paper critically explores digital labour in the online creator econo-my using OnlyFans sex workers as its core example. It critiques the description of the exploitation of self and embodiment in this work as a process of commodifica-tion. By reframing this activity in terms of human capital appreciation and by contrasting the specific economic logic of commodities and assets, it proposes in-stead the framework of assetisation to explain the economics of labour in this sec-tor. It then places online creator labour in a wider economic context to explore the greater utility of this move away from understanding such work as commodifica-tion.