Episode 01: Welcome to A World of Influence

Welcome to A World of Influence where we analyze all things internet and influencer culture! 

I’m your host Cameron Kira, and I feel like I need to introduce myself. Outside of being a full-time content creator I’m also a masters student focusing on consumer behavior and how social media not only influences our purchasing decisions but how they have also influenced our overall behavior outside of the things we buy. The parasocial relationships consumers have built with influencers are as interesting and telling as they are dangerous and concerning.

Now I’ve been working in the influencer marketing space since 2017 as a college brand ambassador and it’s just grown from there, but at that time I think collectively we were all mindlessly consuming influencer content by then. Yea we were aware of influencers, you probably had your favorite influencer, but we weren’t largely aware of the inner musings of influencer culture as we are now. There also wasn’t a prevalent love to hate them community as there is now.

Yes, there was a disdain for it but not as loudly as there is today and that is due in large part to the pulling back of the curtain that is happening on TikTok with creators showing how much they make, how to get brand deals, the logistics of brand deals, behind the scenes of filming content etc.

When consumers are aware of how the things they consume are being made, and all the fine nitty gritty details that they otherwise wouldn’t have known, it opens the door for more scrutiny, and rightfully so. We should be analyzing the media we consume, and while some may say we already do that too much - I mean you’ve heard it “it’s not that deep” “you’re doing too much” “let people enjoy things” I would say that we don’t analyze it enough, actually. I don’t think we analyze things to the extent that they should be analyzed when it comes to the internet and influencer culture. 

And considering all my years on the internet, all the research I’ve done, all the years spent in the influencer marketing profession the number one comment I hate hearing on the internet, or just anywhere in general, is “it’s not that deep” because that statement is never true. Our actions don’t exist in a vacuum, they never have, and as much as people would love to have that be true everything we’ve ever said, thought, and done has been influenced by something. And don’t you want to know why, how? What it is exactly that did it for you?

There’s this comment people like to leave on TikTok when someone says or does something extremely relatable and it’s “I’ve never had an original experience or thought” and the thing is …. Yea. You never have. None of us have. Which is why it’s incredibly important to analyze how you got there. How you came to that conclusion.

Like most things, I think we analyze them to the extent that confirms our world view and then we stop. We don’t go any further because going further would quite frankly be too much work and analyzing internet culture further would mean at some point we as consumers would have to realize we are part of the problem too.

As you can imagine, I do a lot of research when it comes to writing about this for my papers in school but also because I just love the topic! I’m 25 years old. I was raised on the internet and have had the unique position of being the consumer, the creator, and the brand (or at least a representative of the brand) so I’ve touched most if not all of the intersections concerning this and to date, my favorite quote from all my readings is this one from The Atlantic in an essay written by Shirley Li titled “The Horrors of Being Extremely Online” where she says 

“ Perhaps the ones who incessantly post about themselves aren’t the only problem; the ones who look - and can’t stop looking- at such feeds could use just as much scrutiny”

And I think that is so powerful because the complaint is always lodged at the creator but as spectators, we almost never have any comments for ourselves. 

During NYFW I saw what can only be explained as good ol’ fashion high school bullying on TikTok. Tearing people down for how they looked, making fun of people for simply being excited to go to NYFW. And the discussion surrounding creators getting into the fashion industry solely to be bullies is coming soon I promise you, but what I want to focus on for now is what happens when you ask these commentators “what is your point” “what is your point in solely seeking to tear people down” they’ll tell you something along the lines of “I just hate influencers and they need to be humbled” Now we’re going to disregard the fact that you can humble someone without being elitist, misogynistic, and fatphobic and focus on the “ I hate influencers part” because following NYFW and all the commentary I posted a TikTok asking “if ya’ll hate influencers so much, why don’t you block them?” 

Why do you continue to consume the content of people you hate just to upset yourself so you feel justified in talking about them further. If something truly upsets you, remove yourself, or at the very least, remove the thing that is upsetting you. 

I have a friend whose entire fyp is just dogs. All kinds of dogs sometimes he’ll even get a cat in there once and a while, but the point is is he’s carved out a little corner of the internet for himself that he loves and brings him peace. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know a single influencer and if this man who truly wants nothing to do with influencers can curate a feed free of influencers you can too you just don’t actually want to.

I mean these influencers that we hate so much, supposedly, are popular because of us. We engage in and promote the behaviors online that we are tired of seeing, we almost never block or mute the topics or people we are tired of hearing from, and the age-old question “how is this person famous”? Well by leaving that comment you are engaging with their content and boosting them in the algorithm so before asking your peers should you not first ask yourself that question?

In this day and age of what I like to call hyper moralization, I see a lot of people wanting everything to be black and white. They want everything to fit in this perfect box so you can tie it up with a bow set it aside and get rid of it. Ridding it of any nuance. The internet has to be either good or bad. Social media is either all the way toxic or it's only a tool for good. We are actively seeking to take the nuance out of everything so it’s easier to make sense in our heads, but this podcast is for the grey area, it’s the things that no one wants to say out loud for whatever reason.

I want to make this clear, this podcast isn’t pro-influencer, anti-influencer, pro-consumer, or anti-consumer. It is simply an analysis of the media we consume every single day and its results. We encounter up to 10,000 advertisements a day and spend about 8 hours a day consuming media. That is a whole full-time job just consuming. That’s unbelievable, but it’s even more unbelievable to not take a deeper look into something that consumes us just as much as we consume it. 

So welcome to the corner of the internet that essentially eats itself. I hope you stick around. Check us out on instagram @aworldofinfluence and if there’s anything in the world of influencing you want analyzed on the pod feel free to DM us! For a more indepth analysis of each episode that includes any and all links to articles and studies talked about on the podcast head on over to aworldofinfluence.com