Interestingly, Peters was roundly mocked for this at the time; the magazine even published a mea culpa, disavowing the article and its dystopic vision of a world in which office mates compete with one another over brand-name recognition. Would it not be insufferable? The end of collegiality? There was also a more practical problem: it was one thing for world-famous celebrities and entrepreneurs like Jordan and Oprah and Richard Branson to position themselves as their own brands—and quite another for a university student or a middle manager or a laid-off factory worker to do it. Peters had written that individuals now had the same need for visibility as major corporations, which are able to purchase "a full flight of TV and print ads designed to get billions of 'impressions' … If you're brand You, you've got the same need for visibility—but no budget to buy it."

XREF: Runs against contemporary commonplace that personal branding was always celebrated; connects to the trajectory of self-promotion culture.

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, loc. 157