Reputation Capital/Reputation Warfare: Two Versions of the Optimal

How is it possible to optimize influence, credit or power by harnessing the logics of online reputation? This paper argues that there has been a recent shift between two conceptions of the optimal in online reputation, which enact opposing attitudes about the relation between reputation and the calculable. Prior to 2016, and made particularly visible with the advent of the so-called ‘sharing economy,’ the predominant online rep- utation-logic was firmly tied to histories of optimizing private credit. In the lead-up to Donald Trump’s election as President of the United States, however, a more indirect form of reputation-optimization emerged, which capitalized on the systemic uncertainty produced by ubiquitous reputation-calculation. Reflecting on the shift between these two versions of the optimal can tell us much about the new political alignments of online reputation, as politics moves away from what Tariq Ali referred to the ‘extreme centre,’ which pervasively and directly claimed to align the interests of social democracy with those of Wall Street.