YouTube personalities as infrastructure: assets, attention choreographies and cohortification processes

YouTube, the world’s most popular online video sharing and social media platform, is filled with personalities. Lifestyle bloggers, hobbyists, self-styled newscasters exercise instructors add flair to what they share, carving out a niche in crowded field. Typically, personality understood as something that belongs its bearer. But how might it be possible analyze starting from opposite proposition: ‘YouTube personality’ not so much property of persons featured, platform itself? This article argues on personalities become estranged their ostensible bearers, becoming infrastructure. YouTube only broadcasts personalities; renders operational. act assetization infrastructure, continually compensate for poor terms offered advertising revenue, producing links within ecosystems opportunities extend beyond platform. They also cohortification infrastructures, transforming platform’s surveillance-marketing logic – continuous placement users into cohorts similar participatory process.