In this episode of Internetting (watch above) we examine the fembots of the internet, real and imagined. The Siris and Alexas who help us Google stuff and buy things; the C.G.I. Instagram models and robotic YouTube stars who ply us with entertainment; and the real women like Kylie Jenner, who are starting to look more and more like cyborgs as they meld with the platforms we watch them on.
Congratulations to Kylie Jenner on being named an almost billionaire. Kylie earned the valuation thanks to the profits and potential of her Kylie Cosmetics makeup line, but she really made her money by expertly mapping her face and body to the demands of the Instagram platform, attracting its users to her feed, and then finding something to sell them. Her very flesh has been manipulated for peak marketability: When she was still a teenager, she inflated her lips with injectable fillers and then leveraged the spectacle to sell lip-related products to fellow teens. She gives whole new meaning to the term “self-made.”
