As the weather cools and kids return to school, my social media feeds fill up with autumn trend forecasts:What cool clothes will girls wear this fall?” And “Ro Margo Dupe You Need,
Almost as prevalent in my feed are influencer-baiting videos. While influencers work to convince their audience to buy products they may or may not need, so they can earn a few cents in commission. De-influencers remind people Why they don’t need to spend their money. De-influencing content can range from explaining why individual viral products are not worth buying, to entire accounts created to remind viewers that shopping isn’t normal and to report unannounced ads or partnerships with brands. De-influencing is part of a larger populist turn I’ve seen in response to the ubiquitous commercialization of the social internet, but it’s also an example of one of the internet’s signal conundrums: is it possible to do anti-capitalist work on social media?
De-influencers have been around for a while. NPR wrote about them In March, the phenomenon was called a “backlash against advertising” that “can have surprising and real-world effects on the environment.” The concept has existed for so long that people have built solid, consistent brands on it.
Paige Pritchard is one of the first D-influencers to come onto my feed with her real-talk videos Reminding your followers that buying things won’t actually fill the emptiness in their hearts. Instagram And TikTok Her accounts have a combined total of over one million followers, and in addition to her social media content, she also publishes a podcast and offers up her favorite shows. a coaching program to help people stop impulse buying. According to her website, she has a life coaching certification The Life Coach SchoolBut there are no other obvious qualifications to give financial advice, except that she has gotten out of debt herself. Because she uses the same social media tools as influencers to spread her message, her accounts start to look a lot like the influencers she criticizes, except that she is selling her own digital products, not the Stanley Cup.
Pritchard isn’t alone. Chelsea Langenstam is a Canadian creator who posts about budgeting and personal finance—and yes, neutralize-Even more Sells Digital Budgeting Template and offers personalized calls to advise on budget, but also on content creation,
Then there are creators who don’t necessarily identify themselves as de-influencers, but Those who create content that has a negative impact Also promote the products by linking to your Amazon storefront which will earn them a commission. Even full-fledged influencers will post de-influencing content; when I was scrolling through the top de-influencing search results, I found this video This post by fitness and lifestyle influencer Sydney Adams King is with the message, “Don’t let me influence you.” Last week, she posted Lululemon commercial,
Not every de-influencer turns to entrepreneurship. Diana Wiebe, who posts de-influencing content to 200,000 followers on TikTok under the handle depression.gov (yes, of course), said in a video that Shein and Temu had approached her about partnering with them. Obviously this would have been a terrible fit for the content she creates, which mainly showcases the “trash” people buy in the Target halls, but I wonder which brands, if any, would meet the standard for a partnership.
While I question the ethics of offering financial advice without formal accreditation, I don’t think Pritchard or Langenstam are hypocrites with nefarious goals. In the most basic sense, they are reacting to, and hoping to disrupt, what social media has become for most users: a place to numb out and be sold to.
When social media began, these sites were places to hang out. Your accounts were avatars that represented you to the people in your world. Your friends were your friends, not followers. Brands barely existed online, and there was no such thing as sponsored posts. But as social media has evolved, the experience has become almost inextricably linked to commerce.
Attention on the internet — in the form of its metrics, followers, engagement, and reach — is almost entirely equated with power and money. Even de-influencers, who are primarily interested in disrupting capitalist patterns on these platforms, must live up to the algorithm’s terms. Once you have a million followers, would you be a fool not to try to make money from that in some way?
The populist sensibility of de-influencing has also been seen in other smaller movements recently. In August this “low consumption core,” a trend in which TikTok users show off their frugality, usually soundtracked to Norah Jones’ “Don’t Know Why.” In May, after the Met Gala, users collaborated Celebrity “Block Lists,” Celebrities and influencers who did not call for a ceasefire in Gaza were blocked en masse, under the idea that public figures not using their platforms to advocate for change should lose them. Also in May, users blocked TikTok’s monetization levers to “block” users from using their platforms.pay my debt“The trend: extremely straightforward videos that beg anyone who watches them to keep them going long enough for their creator to get paid.
The common theme is clear. More ordinary people – that is, people without hundreds of thousands of followers or relationships with formal management or brand PR teams – are feeling frustrated by the addictive, mind-ruining nature of these platforms and their relentless temptation to make strangers rich by spending money on things you neither need nor particularly want. In a sense, de-influencers are an expression of this frustration. But at the same time, in many specific cases, they also monetise it – and in this respect they could not be more different from influencers themselves.
In her essay “The Master’s Tools Will Never Destroy the Master’s House,” Audre Lorde argues that liberation cannot be achieved with the tools of oppression: the master’s tools “may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about real change.” For de-influencers who use social media platforms to sell life-coaching and personal finance guidance in the form of anti-capitalist juice cleanses, it’s a fair question to ask whether real change is really one of their goals, and what they would lose if it ever actually happened.