Whether we believe that “tilting the balance of our current politics in favor of those people who are struggling in this society” requires all of us to develop “a stronger sense of empathy” (Obama 2006, 67-68); that greater prosperity and wellbeing are not matters of consumer protection anymore but rather happen when consumers and companies remember that they are “wired to care,” “step outside of themselves,” and “walk in someone else’s shoes” (Patnaik with Mortensen 2009); or that student debt can best be resolved not through formal relief programs but by reaping “widespread empathy” in ways that unleash “opportunities for growth” (Nussbaum 2005) – the idea that we must become more empathetic or emotionally intelligent consumers is a defining – but understudied - phenomenon of contemporary consumer culture. When, as Karababa and Ger (2011, 738) argue, “more research is needed on the conceptualization of the consumer and the context in which such a subject is formed,” the empathetic consumer can be no exception. Prior consumer researchers have theorized a consumer’s empathy as a prosocial, involuntary, unself-conscious, and affective response that naturally happens with greater awareness of another person’s situation (Davis 1983, 1994; Escalas and Stern 2003; Bagozzi and Moore 1994). From this perspective, the capacity to grasp the content of other people’s minds is seen as an affective remedy to many of the ills of the capitalist marketplace. We draw on Carolyn Pedwell’s (2012 a,b, 2013, 2014) sociology of empathy to argue the opposite - that empathy may actually be instrumental to the functioning of the capitalist marketplace. Building on Povinelli’s (2011) analysis of neoliberal governance regimes, Pedwell accepts the liberal idea that empathic mindsets can promote cross-cultural understanding that leads to political action in the interests of transnational social justice. However, the identification of these social benefits is just the starting point for her critical analysis of the neoliberal mythology of empathetic care. Widely circulated through advertising, books, television shows, and the news media, this mythology imbues individual risk taking with existential and moral significance. As the above examples illustrate, it postulates that risks are most effectively managed not by displaying anger or frustration (about extant social conditions), but by showing understanding for another person’s situation. In doing so, it enables what Pedwell (2014) calls “a neutralizing politics of cultural recognition, whereby to care for ‘the other’ is to identify with ‘their’ culture, while ensuring that neocolonial and neoliberal modes of governmentality remain unimpeded.” Following Pedwell, we propose that, when institutional actors such as business leaders, policy makers, or journalists mobilize this mythology to cultivate empathetic mindsets in a market and to encourage an empathetic identification with its members – a process that we term consumer empathization – consumers not only perceive their own risks with greater optimism. They also feel compelled to take on the management of additional systemic risks. To examine this dynamic in greater depth, we conducted a longitudinal ethnography of empathetic consumption in Uber’s ride-hailing platform. Our analysis documents the creation of three types of empathetic consumer subjects (the guardian angel, the justice promoter, and the cosmopolitan) as well as four distinct but interrelated strategies that Uber’s leadership have used to individualize Uber’s physical, financial, and social risks: apathization, verification, prototyping, and naturalizing. Just like Uber’s leadership have heralded Uber as cleaner and more reliable than traditional taxis, so they have frequently constructed Uber riders to be more socially competent and emotionally mature than traditional consumers. Whereas traditional taxi riders are portrayed as passive, dependent, overwhelmed, immature, entitled, selfish, socially and environmentally uncaring, Uber riders are routinely rendered as more active, caring, mindful, tech-savvy, independent, socially and environmentally conscious, and in short, more empathetic. In closing, we develop the implications of our findings for previous scholarship on consumer risk socialization (e.g., Thompson 2005, 238; Celsi, Rose, and Leigh 1998; Tumbat and Belk 2010; Tumbat and Grayson 2016) and the sociology of emotions (Pedwell 2012; Hochschild 1979, 2003), and offer a critical discussion of the consumer welfare implications of empathetic consumption.