At some point, and most people who use social media often know exactly what that moment is, something about a post just doesn’t feel right. You must have practiced that smile. The caption looks like it was written by a group. There’s something hollow about the excitement for a protein shake or a trip that’s hard to explain but impossible to ignore. People aren’t making it up. That gut feeling is turning into one of the most accurate ways to read the media today.
The influencer economy made a big but quiet mistake somewhere along the way. It was thought that as long as the lighting and background were good enough, people would keep buying the illusion. That assumption is clearly breaking down now.
Being honest about what this world looks like on the inside is important. It wasn’t shocking; it was just plain. A lot of celebrity influencers deal with stress in their personal lives that you would never see in their carefully chosen feeds. There are many people who struggle with self-doubt, imposter syndrome, and the overwhelming need for approval from others. These things seem to be pretty normal for people who have a lot of followers. In the consulting and coaching world, there’s a saying that goes, “The bigger the persona, the heavier the weight behind it.” Seeing that happen over and over again makes it hard to ignore.
The financial picture is also less clear than the lifestyle content makes it seem. A lot of influencers who have hundreds of thousands of followers only make a small amount of money, about the same as a mid-level office worker’s salary or even less. To keep up the appearance of plenty, people often spend more than they earn. Some of the designer luggage, business class seats, and resort stays in the sun are gifts, some are paid for, and some are just debt that looks good. It’s not moral to say that. It’s just the economics, and more and more people know about it.
The difference between what people are seeing and what they know about how life works seems to be what they are responding to on a deep level. Now, people have seen enough. They’ve seen influencers talk about products they clearly don’t use, places they’ve only been to for a sponsored afternoon, and emotions that don’t quite hit them in the eyes. One amazing thing about the brain is that it can find inconsistencies even when they are hidden in a professionally edited reel with a popular audio track playing below it.
There’s also the problem of relatability, which is trickier than it seems at first. Influencer culture’s original appeal came from the fact that these people weren’t untouchable Hollywood stars, but rather real people whose lives seemed almost possible to emulate. But somewhere along the way, many of them stopped being relatable and started becoming more like performance art. The relationship changes slowly once people start watching your shows instead of seeing you live. It’s not possible to lose trust all at once. It slowly stops making new copies of itself.
That which fills the gap is interesting, and maybe even a little hopeful. People seem to like creators who are okay with mistakes, inconvenience, and giving their honest opinion. Right now, the influencers who are standing firm are usually the ones who said something bad about a product, said their trip wasn’t what they thought it would be like, or just looked tired on a Tuesday. That doesn’t change anything. It’s true. And it turns out that real is very hard to find.
It’s not cynicism to see through the illusion. You get smarter by being exposed to something over and over again. People have been studying the grammar of manufactured aspiration for about ten years now, and they’re pretty good at reading between the lines. The ones who still have a real connection with the people who follow them are the celebrities who know that and choose honesty over looks, even when it costs them.