At what point does individuality online become feigned and formulaic? It’s not new for influencers to start an advertisement with a personal story, hooking you into their eventful, quirky life before telling you how a product saved the day. It’s been a few years since celebrities started to let down their glamorous composure for a more fun-loving personality, not without a reaction from the public eye. Maybe it’s too pessimistic to be critiquing their personalities, but when the majority of online audiences begin to scroll past anyone with an “influencer accent,” or publicly drag performers for their openness, it’s apparent to me that relatability is out — and I can’t figure out what might take its place in the media’s encomium of ‘who it’s trendy to be.’
Starting with celebrities, I find it appalling when famous people are “cancelled” for being a person. That does not apply to real moral and ethical concerns; people who promote inhumanity should not be given a platform or continue to promote prejudiced ideals as a public figure — as that’s a different discussion entirely. The incident I have in mind is the controversy surrounding Chappell Roan and her feelings towards the paparazzi, as well as the toxic ‘immunity’ culture that has been upheld for years. Is it not strange that people have been choosing to prioritize their own mental wellbeing from a multitude of reasons for stress, but will slam a celebrity who asks their fans to respect their personal lives? Yes, celebrities live very different lives than the majority and fame is fame, but should popularity automatically imply a higher social tolerance? I believe it would have been more reasonable to hear communal support of anyone’s boundaries in favor of preserving one’s wellbeing, seeing as it’s an issue that’s relatable to many, rather than the creation of an odd double-standard where the desires of fans outweighs the needs of a singular person.
We can see the public’s expectations in the rise of YouTube creators and podcasts, and the simultaneous fall of live television. If you were to take a celebrity interview from Brittany Broski’s channel Royal Court, for example, and compare it to a session on Jimmy Fallon, most people will find that the latter is more stale compared to the former (I say that with love, Jimmy). It’s not that there’s anything wrong with sitting on the late-night television couch, but when Harry Styles sits on a throne and shares his excessive love of yogurt while wearing elf ears, the entertainment factor is definitely amplified. It holds that concept of relatability; I couldn’t tell you what it’s like to be on a movie set like an actor on a press tour could, but I do vividly remember eating yogurt every day for lunch in high school. It’s a weird fact that no one was ever going to know about Styles unless he was given a weird prompt, and quirkiness has its own place in successful content. A small boundary has been broken for the sake of relatability, and it looks like a lack of boundaries is the quickest way to popularity.
You’d think that this would go against my argument that audiences are tired of resonance, but when those content creators and online interviewers begin to step out of the channels that gave them a platform and, hypothetically, onto red carpets, reactions are mixed. It raises the question of whether or not influencers are their own kind of celebrities, or if they should stay online where interaction and communication are less personal — through likes, comments, or reposts, but somehow become more relatable.
If I scroll on TikTok for a few minutes, I’m bound to hear at least one of these phrases:
“Come with me to try…” “Get ready with me to…” “You guys know…” “Trust me when I tell you…” “Wait, why am I scared…” “You guys don’t understand, I’m obsessed…” Every product has become viral and you have to run, not walk, to find it. Every restaurant or coffee shop is a hidden gem. Every clothing microtrend can be found in the link in bio. An influencer’s job is to get you hooked on their lives just enough that they can convince you to add to your own. The word “overconsumption” has been circulating online a lot recently, and it’s the effect of influencers being good at influencing. I don’t hate that people create content for a living: what I disagree with is the ways in which they’re doing it.
Say you run into a stranger, and you notice their shoes — you love them. They’re your favorite color, a cool style, something you automatically know you would wear. You compliment the stranger on them, and they respond by telling you where they got them, and maybe if they were on sale. Influencers today are trying to be that stranger. They give you a small, specific detail to connect them to you, their audience, even though the majority of people seeing that video will be unfamiliar with the creator. Social media users know that content is fleeting, and it’s easy enough to scroll and forget what was said. The differences between the stranger and the influencer are convenience and desire. If you really loved that stranger’s pair of shoes, you’ll take the time to find the store they mentioned, try on the shoes, and purchase them, or you’ll scour the internet for that brand and try to find where they’re sold at the lowest price. With an influencer, you don’t have to love the shoes that much when the link to where they’re being sold is right in front of you, with the red, negative percentage next to the price indicating they won’t be this cheap for that long — hint: items on TikTok Shop are never not on sale. Bonus points if the video starts with some iteration of the person saying, “I promise you that you’ll love these as much as I do,” or one of the other catchphrases from above.
It’s not an advanced psychology trick, and it’s not some evil ploy. Even though I tell myself I’m aware of why these products are actually catching my attention, I will at least add them to my cart to consider buying them later. Plenty of users have recognized this pattern, and plenty of them are tired of it. @amandacardinal17, a self proclaimed “content creator” on TikTok, posted this video earlier in the year expressing her hatred of the influencer voice. While I agree with her, I scrolled through a few of her videos and found she used a very similar tone in the majority of her content, but she wasn’t trying to sell anyone anything, she was inviting the audience into scenes of her personal life.
That life, though, like everyone’s life on social media, is curated. Instagram photos must be Pinterest-worthy, and Pinterest inspo will likely be TikTok trends from the week before. Hardly anything online is truly original anymore, and what is original is considered ‘cringe.’ We see Vines from over ten years ago and still laugh, but to make those kinds of videos today would be embarrassing — ironically, I would argue that it was the most innovative form of content, and it stands as the last of its kind. Cringiness is nostalgic, so when influencers and audiences alike today are even embarrassed by the things they do for content, I wouldn’t call it cringe. Maybe it would be best to call it an “ick,” for lack of a better term.
Creators like @sophiacuerquis and @lauragalebe have both posted videos exposing what recording is like for a DIML or GRWM video, and I find it funny, but not relatable. What’s interesting to me is how much the algorithm has played into what we like, because these videos are not the most popular on the creator’s pages. Relatability should be synonymous with reality, but it isn’t that way online, and the process of being relatable does not hold up as successful content because of that “out of touch” feeling we get. The masses are not setting up a camera in the morning and filming their routine, grabbing a bottle multiple times until they get a clip they can use in a post later on.
I have a feeling that our expectations of digital culture are going to shift very soon, much like they did in the late 1990s and early 2000s when it was no longer desirable to be unobtainable. We see that today in the curated lives of influencers who try to appear as ‘one of us’ in a world where we see through quirky perfection, where we once saw through the luxury of fame. Maybe that lack of value in fame pushed us to hold influencers to unreasonable expectations of reality, and made us ask celebrities to embrace a falsified, harsh reality that fans have created. If this confusing dichotomy really is just another trend, I hope “relatability” is never trendy again.