1 – Sketching an Influencer Portrait
In the earlier days of YouTube, when it had reached mainstream usage but not mainstream consciousness (around 2010-2015), as anyone who watched much YouTube would know, a large section of the site was prodigiously dominated by video game footage. People would upload interesting gameplay videos, sometimes to music, sometimes with commentary. However, as time went by, they slowly pivoted away from gameplay as the main focus. They realised, in essence, that people had stopped coming for gaming tips and highlights of gameplay. Instead, they came and watched for them. The personality. That is, they were no longer anonymous, they had been ‘known’ and thus, influencers.
In the original sense of the word, all people are influencers, in that everyone in their life, even a baby that dies in childbirth, has an influence on somebody, and in nearly all lives, multiple people. In today’s globalised society, the amount of people an individual can influence as a possibility in their life has never been higher.
In history, the first ‘influencers’ were simply celebrities, kings and queens, tribal leaders, priests or anyone with enough public awareness of them and their actions. In the last decade the term influencer has taken on a more specialised meaning in reference to the online activity of people. This is where the largest amount of influence can be exerted, as over half of humanity the internet on a daily basis[i] for a wide variety of reasons. They will almost always be exposed to somebody who can be considered an ‘influencer’ each time they venture into the digital world.
A quick search on google scholar allows me to find an academic definition of the term ‘influencer’.
“Influencers are non-celebrity individuals who gain popularity on social media by posting visually attractive content (e.g. photos and videos) and by interacting with other users (i.e. followers) to create a sense of authenticity and friendship.”[ii]
Already at the beginning of this definition it shows its age. Provided a large enough following, influencers are by definition celebrities.
“Celebrities are well-known individuals who receive extensive public and media attention.”[iii]
An influencer becomes a celebrity when they begin to receive the attention of other influencers and media outlets. It is when they become interesting for not necessarily what they have done (this may be how they got their fame), but who they are.
Part of the essence of an influencer is the ability to exert power over the actions and thoughts of other people, which is the literal definition of the term ‘influence’. The issue with calling these people with large online followings influencers is that often they are not really ‘influencing’ their fans in any way that is more relevant than a friend influences the thoughts and actions of another friend. Particularly influencers without a claim to expertise, the ones that trend towards entertainment than trade in information, like the ones with a claim to expertise do, the entertainers are more like ‘online friends’ than true shapers of thought in a subculture.
1.5 – Our Judgement and Perception’s Limitations
Let me make a qualifying assumption. What we see of people online is a very narrow window. Like the prisoners chained to the wall viewing the shadowy outlines in Plato’s Cave, that is the extent to which we can know somebody based off the internet. Our identity is much more able to be defined in the physical world. An influencer online is the image of the image of a person, as in, they are the image of someone who exists in the ‘real’ world, which itself is the image of a person that exists in our minds. I am no philosopher or scientist, as much I as try to be, but essentially, I am saying that when viewing someone online, our judgement is very dependent on a superficial perception. It does not matter whether an influencer is ethical; it only matters if they are perceived as ethical or not, as nobody can know them truly as they are, for that requires one to not only know them in the physical world, but also to be inside their head at all times. The image that they portray online is a mirror of a mirror of a mirror of a shadowy figure. As Erving Goffman says in his 1956 book The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life, people are actors, and hardly anywhere do we find more acting than among influencers, whose relationship with their fans is largely symbolic and performative because what they fear most is ultimately rejection and irrelevancy.
2 – The Authenticity Paradox
Of primal importance for the maintenance of an influencing career is authenticity, or at the very least, the perception of it.
Followers demand of an influencer that they be ‘authentic’ and honest, and at the very least that they do not lie, willingly or unwillingly or by omission.
However, this ignores the very nature of the influencer-follower relationship, which is inherently parasocial; where an interpersonal relationship between a celebrity or character and an individual in their audience develops that is one-sided, offering the illusion of intimacy. The individual and the fanbase expects authenticity and honesty, but the very nature of their relationship with the influencer is based not in the physical world, but in the online world of fantasy. There can be no complete sincerity in the digital fantasy – only a poor imitation.
In the online parasocial fantasy, the influencer constructs a narrative of imagery where they feature as the central protagonist. When an influencer is perceived of doing something inauthentic, or worse, being inauthentic, audience often vehemently disapproves and judges them, much like a book or movie or tv show is criticised if it is unrealistic. On social media, their authenticity is subject to constant scrutiny by the online ‘public’, not just their followers. It may be necessary, as Chen (2022)[iv] theorises, that because of the increased ability of the audience to communicate to the influencer on social media, the tradition concept of the parasocial (based on one-way communication) is outdated and therefore online it should be updated to a trans-parasocial relationship. She is just arguing what anyone who spends any time on social media knows by observation – the influencer-fan relationship is more interactive and co-created than in the pre-online-saturation-of-society days. However, while the trans-parasocial may give a higher degree of authenticity than the traditional parasocial concept, the paradox remains as almost all of the social interaction takes place online through media. Enough of the traditional parasocial-ness is retained that ultimately the audience’s desire for complete authenticity can never be fulfilled.
Authenticity becomes challenging for influencers as they grow – they often get accused of selling out – and continually they fight to be seen as authentic and relatable, despite the fact that the paradox of authenticity increases as they get more famous and by extension, wealthier. They do, at least, always try.
3 – Competition, Cooperation and Conflict
Following from authenticity, it is evident that influencers often cooperate and compete based on morality and values in the marketplace of the internet and social media, which dominates the internet. Who can provide the best, truest information? Who can share a universal, honest experience the audience can identify with? Who can be the best online ‘friend’ to millions of people?
Cooperation between influencers is mainly done through collaborating on content is always mutually beneficial, although often one party benefits more than the other. Each influencer uses the opportunity to advertise themselves to the other’s captive audience and expand their audience as a consequence. Often, they will collaborate explicitly for the point of selling something – people used to go on TV talk shows to promote their book – now they go on the podcast circuit to do so. Even if they aren’t selling a product, they are still selling themselves – it provides content in their story.
3.5 – Self-Formed Narratives and Conflict
All stories and narratives need conflict through problems. Influencers are primarily advertising a self-centred narrative, by this I do not mean selfishness per se, but instead the creation of a story that revolves around themselves. A YouTube video, an Instagram post, a podcast episode, all can be seen as new chapters in the story of them. Even if the focus on is something or someone else, on some level it is still about them. It is their reaction video to a viral thing or person, their social commentary, their opinion about politics. A YouTube account is the TV channel of You – it is literally in the name of the company.
Conflict helps influencers because it makes their narrative more interesting to their audience and attracts new people into their orbit of followers. There is nothing the audience likes more than some moments of drama with the perception of moral stakes, and the most interesting stories are the most controversial because there is the most conflict. It allows the audience to have their heroes and villains, to pick a side or be on a ‘team’ like in sport, another variety of narrative forming. The influencer can utilise conflict as part of narrative formation, particular in defining themselves to be in opposition to something, which in itself is a common human way of identification in the offline physical world.
Often, influencers direct their followers ressentiment, or dissatisfaction with their own individual inferiority, towards some enemy as a form of catharsis. There is always an enemy, an Emmanuel Goldstein, whether it be a person, a group, an institution or even a system.
4 – Moral Expectations of Fans/Followers/Audience
It is easily observed if you spend enough time on social media that influencers of any degree, their audience has certain moral and value-based expectations of them. It differs slightly for each influencer, for each influencer is always at least slightly different from others in their area. This subjectivity of uniqueness is why one influencer can do something that draws extreme outrage while another can do the same thing but it will be glossed over by their audience. Everything is subjective, nothing is consistent – with many people come many contradictions in standards.
A more outwardly immoral influencer may say, well I never pretended to be a good person. This is simultaneously true and false. They are not a good person per se, but they also do, like all people, pretend to be good at times for the sake of their own interest.
The golden virtue that all influencers must abide by, the one virtue that is consistent across all people who have any online fame at all, is perceived authenticity. As I have already established, there cannot be true authenticity, but there must at least be a perception of some level of it. The audience will accept nearly any transgression, excluding some obvious ones, if the influencer is perceived as being honest and sincere about them.
5 – The Influencer and their Community
As an influencer can be thought of as a brand through their commodification of the public component of their identity, it’s relevant to view their fandom through the lens of brand community theory. Muniz and O’Guinn (2001) provide a definition of brand community:
“specialized, non-geographically bounded community based on a structured set of social relationships among brand admirers.”[v]
The authors also provide three main components of a community: consciousness of kind, rituals and traditions, and a sense of moral responsibility. Consciousness of kind refers to the extent of which the individual self-identifies with the influencer themselves, and to a lesser extent the person’s community, for this is also what individuals’ base friendship on: commonality. Language also provides a mechanism for members to signal consciousness of kind to each other. It is a way of identifying with their community and excluding those unfamiliar with the jargon.
Rituals and traditions for an influencer’s community generally involve consuming their content, which essentially becomes a ritual. Youtubers often proclaim a new video will be released on a certain day each week, or multiple times a week. Many TikTokers post every day, even multiple times a day. The consumption of the content form is generally consistent and habitual over time for established fans. The habitual nature of it serves to entrench belonging and strengthens the bond between the influencer and the individual that consumes their content online.
The sense of moral responsibility is closely related to the moral expectations the audience has of the influencer, who influencers his own fanbase’s moral values and beliefs. The morality underpins the community much like a tree which has roots underground: without the roots, the tree would collapse and without shared moral values with the influencer, the community also. Thus when an influencer violates some moral tenet of their community, for example deceiving them about a sponsorship, this alienates their community from them and they face negative rebuke for doing so.
6 – Attention and Relevancy
Gaining and maintaining attention of an individual and their established audience Attention, attention accumulated enough, leads to increasing influence, which leads to financial benefit.
influencers compete on attention, in the form of what in economics in called monopolistic competition. Because no two people are exactly the same, it follows that no two influencers are the same. They engage in monopolistic competition for attention from the viewing audience.
Their need to be noticed ties into their core being – an influencer without an audience can’t ‘influence’ anyone. They are completely dependent on public recognition, support and opinion. From this, they draw their money and their power, which is why they offer suffer from mental health issues – they rely upon something that is as uncertain as the wind and subject to constant change.
As their core motivation is attention, this seeps into everything they do. Every post, every comment, every video, every tweet, all are, at least to various degrees, calculated in some way to contribute to the maintenance of the attention of their following:
The only ideology they are loyal to is the ideology of what is interesting.
7 – The Pursuit of what is ‘Interesting’
How is attention and relevancy gained online? By being sufficiently interesting.
There is so much interesting things competing for our attention. The influencer, if they are to have any lasting success, must be adept at captivating and holding the attention of their followers, there must be enough of an impulse to return after each viewing of the influencer’s content. They must turn themselves, if they are not already, into an appropriately interesting spectacle. They act in certain ways ‘for content’, they react excessively ‘for content’, they organise their lives ‘for the sake of content’. What is ‘true’ is distorted for the sake of entertainment. However, since this is indispersed with precious moments of authenticity, a blurred line is created between what is performance and what is sincere. The audience no longer knows how much of the content is true and how much is being performed. Not even the influencer may know. The binary opposition between reality and illusion is disrupted. Hyperreality[vi], where reality is no longer distinguishable from the simulation of reality, is therefore achieved. Hyperreality is strived for because it is more interesting than reality and is a consequence of the need for attention.
As previously mentioned, influencers create a narrative around themselves. Now there are two basic forms of narrative – comedy and tragedy/drama. So there are two basic ways an influencer can make themselves interesting – through comedy or through seriousness – often both are used. In comedy, everything turns into caricature, a method of simplifying complex situations and people in a funny way. In drama, they usually make a claim to authenticity through expertise on something – they become interesting through a claim to truth.
The central authenticity paradox raises its head again, everything online aims at truth, but finding complete truth from others online is fundamentally impossible.
8 – Concluding Message
This essay is by no means even scratching the surface of the influencer paradigm, but is more of a set of initial judgements and speculations. Who even knows if any word of what I have said is true! It is for stimulation of new thoughts and will hopefully lead to some knowledge that is more definitive. Analyse your own behaviour in regards to influencers. Think for yourself.
[i] Internet usage worldwide – statistics & facts | Statista
[ii] Argyris, Y. A., Wang, Z., Kim, Y., & Yin, Z. (2020). ‘The effects of visual congruence on increasing consumers’ brand engagement: An empirical investigation of influencer marketing on Instagram using deep-learning algorithms for automatic image classification’. Computers in Human Behavior, 112, 106443
[iii] Brown, Z. & Tiggerman, M. (2022). ‘Celebrity Influence on Eating Disorders and Body Image: A Review.’ Journal of Health Psychology. Vol 27 (5). 1233-1251.
[iv] Chen, L. (2021). ‘Social Media Influencers and Followers: Theorisation of a Trans-Parasocial Relation and Explication of its Implications for Influencer Advertising’. Journal of Advertising, Vol 51 2022, pages 4-21.
[v] Muniz, A. M., & O’Guinn, T. C. (2001). ‘Brand Community’. Journal of consumer research, 27(4), 412-432.
[vi] Baudrillard, J. (1994). ‘Simulacra and Simulation’. University of Michigan press.
