Relating to the un-relatable Influencers experience harsh cycle of fame, criticism for lifestyle Emilia Citoler
T
citolemi000@hsestudents.org
he term “influencer” was first coined by the New York Times in 2018; the term was used to describe a group of people who post online to their respective platforms. Usually, these influencers have the power to sway their audience to do or buy a certain thing. While some influencers become popular enough to earn a celebrity status, influencers have their own sort of fame. On platforms like TikTok and Instagram, and in some cases YouTube, regular people have the ability to post videos that are considered “relatable.” These videos can go viral, reaching millions of views and high levels of engagement. These posts can be a fluke, but in some cases, they can start their creator down a troublesome trajectory. Becoming famous for being relatable will inevitably backfire; the phrase itself being contradictory. Fame is certainly not relatable, but is sought after by many members of Gen Z. With platforms like TikTok, which have the ability to blow up creators seemingly overnight, fame does not seem too far out of reach. In reality, gaining enough momentum on social media to be considered an influencer is a game of luck and chance. Younger consumers of social media, like those in the age
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range of 14 to 18, have grown up familiar with the idea of “going viral.” The lush lifestyle of influencers is tempting, but is not achievable for most. Here is where being “relatable” tends to go wrong: If an influencer’s audience initially followed for the relatable nature of the content and said influencer effectively gains a celebrity status, the content that follows is not relatable. That influencer then loses the very quality that attracted most of their audience. The best way to understand this phenomenon is to look at the real-life examples of this cycle. Emma Chamberlain, arguably one of the famous influencers to emerge from YouTube, began posting videos in 2017. A couple of years later, Chamberlain had over eight million subscribers. In 2022, Chamberlain founded her own coffee company, maintained a partnership with Louis Vuitton and gained a considerable amount of wealth. Chamberlain blew up for being relatable because she showed a raw and unfiltered look into her life as a regular high school student. Her videos were mostly vlogs that documented her everyday life, without click-bait or gimmicks. Today, the lifestyle Chamberlain leads is completely unattainable for the average viewer, from
her million dollar house to the grocery stores she shops at. The response from her audience to her newer projects reflects this shift into being un-relatable. Her once adoring fans that praised her being raw and unfiltered have turned on her, saying her content is “out of touch” and “disconnected from reality.” While Chamberlain’s transformation into being unrelatable spanned over a few years, other influencers have gone through the same process at a rapid rate. Victoria Paris, who found her fame on Tiktok, accumulated a large following for showing her life as a New York City resident. She, like Chamberlain, posted an unfiltered look into her life as a 20-something-year-old, showing content such as new drinks that she tried from a local Asian market or the subways she frequented. After her initial success, the grim reality of her situation set in: How do you create relatable content when you, yourself, are un-relatable? This is a question that is not unique to Paris, or Chamberlain. Many influencers must face this shift in their general perception and decide how to modify their content to appease their viewers. This cycle is not at the fault of the audience, rather a consequence of the influence of fame and fortune.
April 2022
