There are two points of view about how this came about. The first perspective, the technologically determinist view, implies that the technology itself dictates this type of self-presentation. It suggests some inherent property of contemporary social media technologies that promotes this enterprise view of the self. This view ignores the context in which technology is used; it is also empirically false since early social media like IRC (internet relay chat), MUDs (multi-user dungeons), and Usenet allowed for similar interactions, but marketable self-presentations were largely absent. Instead, a sense of play and identity experimentation abounded in pre-Web internet spaces—something that is in short supply on sites like Facebook and strongly discouraged by self-branding.

Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, loc. 493