on influencers and my disappointment
A few weeks ago, we had an ice breaker question at one of our morning huddles:
What’s a job you’d never do?
I was up first and my immediate thought was selling drugs. There’s not much thought in it, I don’t want to do anything illegal and I saw it as a profession that catered to the weaknesses of other people. Most of my colleagues answered jobs that concerned health and legality of the nature of work. I have always viewed employment as selling a part of yourself and some trade-offs are crossing the line, so, our answers were as expected.
Then, someone said they would never take a job as an influencer. So it’s been a thought I recalled a few times in the past weeks and here's me again talking about the Internet and my online activities.
Let me start this off by saying I’d never had strong feelings or opinions about influencers and their work before. That is, until I watched Black Mirror’s Common People and then a few days after that I saw something on the Internet that made me feel I’ve just lived through an episode of Black Mirror myself.
I personally take interest in videos of home cooks that also kind of come off as influencers sometimes, and all is well with me. I see it as them preparing these videos which takes a lot of work and promoting a product is the trade-off so I can keep consuming their content and I’d have a recipe to follow in one of our next meals, without a fee.
So, okay, back to the huddle, I thought the answer made perfect sense in a way that it was personal. A matter of preference and a reflection to their social persona. It’s a job I’d never imagine it’d be side by side with jobs that break the law, which in turn brings direct harm to other people.
I can’t say I’ve never entertained the idea of me being an influencer before. Though in defense of myself, I do know I won’t do much to actively seek this journey out. I like interacting with people, I like talking about my interests and I'm fairly good at public speaking. In this equation, it’s seeming like all I need is a phone with better camera quality, the patience and more skill to write scripts, edit my videos and a break - that is to say, a happenstance that would make me famous or viral enough to gain a following for companies to have me advertising their stuff. Then, I’m all set and ready to acquire my Influencer job title when I’ve done so.
(Please do forgive me for any diminishing effect this does to the job itself. I’m just telling it how I see it from a viewer's perspective.)
I mean, I wouldn’t mind being paid to do things that actually interests me, if I was so inclined to make videos about my interests like books or running. It’d be feeling like I was doing it to explore my hobbies more and more. For other influencers, that’s food or make up or fashion. So, it can’t be that bad, right? Right...
Moving on, I have to tell you now that I have a friend who is an influencer. I’ve been their friend way before they were famous. Way before TikTok or Dubsmash or Musical.ly was a thing, which my friend was, in all three, had already been quite good at at that time. It wasn’t at all surprising that they got their break some years ago and now they have a significant amount of following enough for brands to make appointments and reach out to her.
As a friend who has been a witness of this journey, despite my distance with social media in the past year, I was so proud of them and I am still. I just want to say that early on to this.
I have been spending far too much time on social media these past few weeks more than I would have liked. Amidst of our national elections happening a few weeks ago, playing Valorant again and watching reels related to that, etc. etc. Anyway, it’s not the subject of this post, but just a few days after watching Common People, one of my friend’s reels came to my feed. It was on Facebook and it was titled as a life update. Really, that was what it was. They told a story about a recent event in their life (which I’d already known before watching the video) and it came off as a sort of motivating lesson to their viewers, which literally just melted my heart. They were truly inspiring words, which really, is something like they’d say to me or the rest of our friends in real life. I was amazed - well, because I rarely get to see their content and immediately I got the impression that this is what they’ve been doing, then! I think about how come I don’t support them that much by actually subscribing to their content? Oh, how I swelled with pride. This is my friend! Making change and helping thousands and thousands of people love themselves!
Then I got to the latter part of the reel. After a long spiel about knowing your self-worth, chasing what you want, doing what it takes to get it, a switch flipped. Suddenly, they were talking about being aware of what you deserve and going after it - and you know that thing that you deserve? Well, it’s something that can be bought at this online shopping platform using their voucher code for 5% off!
The reel was apparently a fucking ad, and I think I glitched for a moment I realized it. I was so overcome with disappointment, I didn’t finish the video anymore. There was a little bit of anger in it, too. Because, uh, I felt played for a fool. Can you imagine reading one of a bear blogger’s week notes and life updates and now pages and then at the end of the page, when you’re truly hooked with their story and writing, they spring a voucher code on you with their name? Oh god, this is what they’ve been doing the whole time?
I may be overblowing my reaction here because despite this thing happening, I know this is exactly what influencers do. I later realized that. I don’t know how to approach talking to my friend about this because it’s literally their job! And I was just, so deeply affected because I knew them personally but I wasn’t the target audience at all. So I didn’t, and just accepted the shame of falling for an ad, hook, line and sinker. If you’ve watched Common People, it’s exactly like that scene with the kid. No, I’m not exaggerating.
It doesn’t erase the disappointment, but it is what it is. Now, my co-worker’s answer about never being an influencer makes sense to me in perhaps a whole new different meaning. This is how the world operates now. It’s the norm. It’s not anything new and it’s not like there’s going to be an Internet revolution or something and everyone else will just abide by our beliefs on this side of the web. There has to be a true toppling of capitalism for that to happen, maybe…
Let me just write a bit of a manifesto for my blog to wrap this all up. Ads will never have a place in this space. I do this with nothing but my thoughts, ideas and experiences, just for the sake of documenting my life. This is a personal blog that will never, ever be for profit.
Okay? Okay! I’m happy to have gotten that out of the way and I hope you’re reassured.
27 May, 2025