The Downfall of the Influencer

It's been more than 20 years since MySpace first graced our world-wide-web browsers, and it's been a social media-fueled hellscape ever since. Well, not. Not really. But gone are the days of competing for your friend's Top 8, vying for more photo gallery space, and polite conversation over the latest news headlines.
We've talked about Social Media on this show before, but today we're taking on the Influencer, what it means to be paid for your "content", and why Nomi hates all of it...
...but still somehow finds time to mindlessly scroll through TikTok. Cause it's funny.

Download this and future episodes of our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcasts, and anywhere else to find your favorite shows. You can search MR & MRS and please be sure to subscribe, and/or write a review if possible to help build our show. Have an idea for a future episode, or want to join us for a conversation? Email us at hello@mrandmrs.show!

Download this and future episodes of our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcasts, and anywhere else to find your favorite shows. You can search Why Are We Like This? and please be sure to subscribe, and/or write a review if possible to help build our show.  Have an idea for a future episode, or want to join us for a conversation? Send us a message with the link above!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Hey guys, welcome back. It's been a minute, but we are here and ready to entertain you. Hi. Hi.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

We are back. It's been a very uh overwhelming last few months since we've last done a podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

It has. So this is season four for us now, and we were supposed to start back in March after taking a three-month break in between two seasons. That's what we told y'all. We're running two months late because we and I got pneumonia. Uh, and then when I got over pneumonia, we had to move. And then three weeks after we moved, we had to move again. And then we got COVID. And now I'm dealing with a sinus infection post-COVID.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

And now I sound like Barry White.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

And I still sound like Barry Manilo. So but we're finally on the mend, and we've gotten enough of our stuff unpacked after our second move that uh we decided it was time to start season four, no more procrastinating. So here we are, and to kick off season four, we are going to be discussing social media, the downfall of the social media influencer, as well as the copycat nature of social media and how damaging that is to individualization.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Yeah. I mean, we've talked about social media plenty of times, but this one is specifically about the influencers and why we don't like them very much. Actually, no, you know what, I it's not that I don't like them. Uh-huh. I just don't care for the inauthentic nature that a lot of the influencers take on when producing their content.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

A hundred percent.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

It's really frustrating to watch. And I don't give a shit if they're popular or if they have how many followers or whatever. I just it I don't know, the whole thing just feels inauthentic, but that's kind of the root of social media at this point, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 2:09

It's very inauthentic. There's um a lemming behavior behind it. It's about creating a quote unquote social norm that is the majority of perception, and anybody that lies outside of that is basically a loser and subject to attack and bullying. And I think what happened in the beginning stages is influencing to begin with. So, first we had people who were educating. Like my content online and on YouTube has always been more of an educational format. I'm here to just share my tips and techniques with makeup to help drag queens and trans women and biological women find what works for them. I'm not here to sell you something. I'm not here to collect a fee from a company for advertising their product on my channel. But most of the people that are quote unquote successful on social media are the influencers, the ones who get paid or compensated in some way by these manufacturers for their free advertising efforts. And it has become this sort of whirlwind that has taken over the social media broadcast scene.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

It is really overwhelming. And now you were uh a paid affiliate at one point. I guess someone could call you an influencer, but I don't consider you so. You actually were doing what you do authentically and what you were already doing to begin with. It's not like you just started, oh, I found this product, I'm gonna start selling it. You were already using a product and the creator said, Hey, you're doing great work. We'd love for you to continue to promote this product. So you just continue to do what you did and talked about the product. That feels authentic to me.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Correct. My goal when I started my YouTube channel was not to get a bunch of affiliate deals. My goal was to get enough viewers that appreciated the caliber and value of educational content that I was providing, that YouTube would monetize me for those efforts. Not that I would sell out to individual companies so I could get free product or I could get a couple thousand dollars whenever I mentioned their product.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

Right.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

And then when Runway Rogue came to me after I had already started the channel and they said, Hey, would you be interested in being an affiliate? And I said, Well, not really, because this is what I think that entails. I don't want to sell things to the people that subscribe to my channel. I want to educate them. But if one of those videos happens to use your product, which I use a lot of, and they can get a deal, then I'm happy with that. And if I make a commission off of those sales, then I'm happy with that too. But I'm not gonna say what you want me to say. I'm going to say what I want to say and how I use the product, and if it sells, it sells. And it just so happened that it sold. But after a while, I was not happy with the process of being an affiliate and what was required of hitting certain markers. And then you would take people that would take the coupon codes, and then they would go and they would upload them to coupon code sites, which would then dilute the whole process and really bastardize this really simple process. And it was no longer about being an affiliate, it was then about protecting my codes, generating uh traffic flow, and that was not what my goal was to be on YouTube. I didn't feel I was getting paid enough for that. I would just wanted to go and share my information and have the platform that I shared it on find such value in it that they would then promote it and I would get paid through that.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Yeah. It's a lot, it feels overwhelming. I I don't really like going on Instagram anymore because so much of it is just all the same. Well, I guess everyone's posting the same content and pictures and videos, and a lot of that TikTok is bleeding over into Instagram. So I keep hearing the same songs over again. Yep. I keep seeing the same footage of the same person doing the same thing. Disney is a whole other beast, the adult Disney people who go to the parks just so that they can get video of the latest character or the latest food or the latest ride.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

Which is a very envy me because I got to see it and experience it before you did, kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

Yeah, except they're all showing it. Well, so why is your video special when 1,200 other people got the same exact video and they're posting it up?

SPEAKER_00 6:30

And that's a real thorn in my side is the copycat nature because once influencers became influencers and people understood what influencers were doing and how they were making their money, everyone decided that they were going to then be an influencer. And it oversaturated the market with people who were not delivering educational or original content. They would see one person do something, and then they would say, Well, I can do that too. And then they would go and do the same exact thing. And you have these like 20-something year olds talking as if they are these credentialed experts in their field, and the only thing that they're doing is copycatting exactly, almost word for word, source by source, what they've seen someone else do. That is not something that someone should be rewarded for because they're not bringing anything to the table. They're just trying to reinvent the wheel that can't be reinvented. They're just putting their name on it, and whatever tricks they have up their sleeves to garner the engagement, they utilize that to ramp up their engagement. And then all the tricks for engagement start coming along, like um people posting a picture saying, I bet you can't find this hidden image. And then people stay on there for like an hour trying to find the image, and the image isn't even on there. It's just so that you stay on their channel watching their content, helping to generate engagement views for them. And then at the very end, they say, Oh no, something's happened, someone's reported me, TikTok is shaking my live down. Sorry guys, I can't tell you where the hidden item is, and then it's done. And it is, once again, extremely inorganic, and to me, is not anything that I choose to want to pursue in the vein of creating any sort of social media success for myself. So here I am, the cheese stands alone, out here doing my educational videos and my podcast with you, trying to break down the truth of this blind leading the blind lemming culture that we've created on social media.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Do you think anyone cares? Like, do you think anyone cares to hear the truth or to know the truth? There's so many people on Instagram and Facebook and TikTok all consuming this vapid, boring content. Do you think they care? Or is it just something to fill time?

SPEAKER_00 8:52

It'd be hard for me to say, and I think that the right answer would be some do and some don't. But what people latch on to is what is popular. And social media has just become this global schoolyard. It is a popularity game, and it seems to me the people who are the most inorganic are the ones who are generating the most popularity, but the people who follow them don't want to admit that they're following someone inorganic because then they have to admit that they're being duped, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:21

Well, and then the people who are doing the things that everyone else are doing are being promoted as far as algorithm, right? Like if you're on TikTok and you post the running up the hill song back then, or whatever the new song is now, as long as you're posting the song that everyone else is posting, or you're posting a meme about Pedro Pascal or whatever is trending in the moment, your content is rewarded uh and then boosted up so more and more people can see more of the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

Correct. And then what happens in a situation like with me is I will come to the stage with original content. I'll come up with an original song that's at a left field that no one has heard in a million years, and I'll do like a 10 little lip 10 second lip sync to it with a fresh makeup and a fresh hairdo. And then about a month later, I'll see it everywhere, even on a well-known fashion designer's advertising campaign that I happen to tag in my original post because I thought he might appreciate the artistic nature of the content. He did. But because I don't have a blue check mark, because I don't have a million followers or subscribers, I couldn't possibly be the one coming up with this original content that I see being duplicated by these other people left and right. And like, for example, everyone right now is talking about underpainting. Underpainting, underpainting, underpainting.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

What's that?

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Underpainting is where you do your highlighting and your contour work under your foundation instead of over your foundation. Now, this is nothing new. I learned how to do this back in the 90s. But I was the first person I saw when the trend was to put everything on top of your foundation and make it look as what's the word? Make it look as noticeable as possible. Like going back to everyone keeps referencing the 2016 makeup trend where everything was super harsh and really hard. And I was like, hey, well, what if we just start doing Instagram makeup with underpainting instead? Because I've always created a more natural-looking aesthetic, a less drag aesthetic to my makeup. And I do that by working with a slightly more subtle hand. But what if we take these really strong, hard-handed techniques and layer them under the foundation like we used to in the 90s? And it took about a year or so, and then all of a sudden you get all of these makeup artists that get like 20,000 views a video, and they're like, okay, so here we go, under painting, rule number one, ready? And it's like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. If I'm gonna do something that somebody else has done because I think it's such a great technique, and maybe my subscribers or followers aren't gonna get it from them, I'm gonna say, hey guys, this is what I've learned from this person. So if you haven't seen it yet, here's how it goes. But nobody wants to give anybody credit for anything that they're borrowing because they want the attention for being the ones that have come up with it themselves. But we're not dealing with actual makeup artists. Yeah, okay, you worked at the Mac counter for two months. That doesn't make you a professional makeup artist who has studied the artistry of makeup, who understands why you do what you do. You just see it done, you know that your hands can mimic that, so you go ahead and you do it anyway, but you don't know why you're doing it. You don't know even where it came from or how it was started or which makeup artist was the first one to come up with that. And so it bugs me when someone who really is a makeup artist has 25 years experience doing makeup, can see these techniques, combine them in different ways to create a different end result. And then someone else comes along with a blue check mark and gobbles it up for themselves without even so much as a shout-out.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

And this is all what before you could purchase the blue check mark. And this was now it doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Now, I mean, that's just that's just really kind of uh talk about inflation. I mean, that has really devalued any kind of marker system we have for credentials. But I also now believe that the blue check mark is not about recognizing someone who is an expert or a credential in the information that they are giving you. It's simply a way to make someone feel like they are at the celebrity threshold. Because those are the people that all the followers flock to. Because everyone wants to be a celebrity, and if you can't be a celebrity, then you're gonna follow the celebrity until you become the celebrity. To the point where you have people defending celebrities that they don't even know because someone has an opinion that they don't agree with. And that goes back to my originating comment about how this copycat nature of social media demoralizes the effects on individuality. People can no longer think for themselves. It's like the monsters for Lady Gaga, right? Like you have to be a part of a group that brings another person down in defense of someone that you don't even know so that you can feel better about yourself. Because social media is this huge global virulent sea of emotion. And we're and I kind of feel at this point in time, it just brings the worst of the worst to the table. It's so toxic, more toxic than I think it's ever been.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

I and it's pretty boring.

SPEAKER_00 14:37

Well, it's boring because you're just seeing the same thing over and over and over again.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

And as far as toxicity, from what you tell me about the things that you see on it, I yeah, it's just place. That's what I mean.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

I mean, there was this clip of this movie with Robin Tooney and uh who was Robin and Robin and Batman?

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Uh Chris O'Donnell.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Chris O'Donnell and their dad, and they were rock climbing with these two guys, and the the thing came loose, and the two guys were spinning around, and they broke off, and the rock anchors were coming undone, and it was this whole big scene, right? These fictitious people, these fictional people in this fictional environment and this fictional depiction of reality. And in that moment, my comment is I don't have sympathy for people who put themselves in these positions. You want to go rock climbing 500 feet up off the ground and fight gravity with nothing but a rope. I don't have sympathy for you when something goes wrong. Doesn't mean I think you're a bad person. It doesn't mean I think you deserve to die. But when we increase the odds of hurting or killing ourselves in a world that's already so dangerous just with the things that we have to do to get by, no, you don't get the sympathy. So now I am being attacked. I'm being called cruel, I'm being called heartless, I'm being told that I'm fucked up and that it's a dumbass way to think about things and that my process, my thinking process is fucked up. I'm like, it's not my thinking process. The thinking process is what led me to my opinion, and that's what you're attacking me on. This is a fictional movie, this is a fictional event that I had an opinion on, and you want to attack an actual person for having an opinion. And six, seven hundred people have liked my comment, so I don't understand why people think this is so controversial that they need to come and attack me for an opinion over a fictionalized version of an event from a movie with actors portraying that to solely elicit an emotion that I'm saying I'm not allowing myself to feel because they did this to themselves.

SPEAKER_01 16:47

Yeah, the whole thing is pretty stupid.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

I would say that it is pretty stupid. And then to be told that I'm a drag queen and that you don't have sympathy for me because I indoctrinate children into drag. Well, sir, you don't know anything about me. I don't perform in bars, I don't do drag queen reading groups. All of the drag that I do is online or for an agency or for a magazine or for a runway show where children are not present. So go peddle your ignorant argument someplace else. It's like if you want to come at me with something legitimate, fine. But I don't feel like showing up to debate class as an honor student, looking across the podium and seeing that my opponent isn't special ed.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

What makes you feel the need to post a comment in the first place?

SPEAKER_00 17:33

Because I'm not sure who the poster is, but my comment isn't for everybody to read and then retaliate against. My comment is to the person who posted the content because they're posting the content to get the engagement. All these other people need to put their focus on the poster, not other people that they see commenting in regard to the post. So if I post something, I'm posting it for people to respond to that. I'm not creating an environment where schoolyard bullies can come and start attacking people who have innocuously left an opinion about my post. But people love to go to from zero to 60. They're constantly looking for tits on ants, and it's just a bunch of schoolyard bullies, Karen's, cunts, whatever you want to call them, trying to puff up their chest and get a reaction so that they don't feel so muted in this life. But it's not my job. It's not your job, it's not the original poster's job to validate these other people who think that social media is the market to go to to make themselves feel better in a toxic manner.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

Yeah, it's it's sad when to think that these people are validating through these platforms.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

I agree.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

This is what you've got.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

I agree. This is what you're doing with your well, this is what they've been told. This is, you know, and then I think that social media is a devious tool, and you have people on it who post, who never comment, they never respond. But then it's like, well, where's the social aspect of that? And you're just sort of poking the bear in the zoo, but then tapping out to not stick around for whatever post or comment you've placed out there into the ether, elicits reactions because that's your opportunity to give attention to the positive reactions while ignoring the negative reactions. Otherwise, it's just negative responding to negative responding to negative. And most of the time I don't respond because it's so out of context and off base from what my comment might be. But then there's moments like this where I just inherently do not like being bullied out of a legitimate opinion over a fictional scenario that was meant to elicit an emotion from me that I'm clearly saying missed its mark.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

Deal with it. Get a grip. It's that fucking movie.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

Yeah. I I um I just don't engage at all.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

I know.

SPEAKER_01 19:57

Um, I I had a similar situation where I was really excited about Birdo being brought onto Mario Kart finally, because Birdo's one of my favorite characters from Super Mario World and uh is in canon a trans character, which sounds really weird for a video game pink dinosaur to be trans.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

It's grooming. Nintendo's grooming.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

And it sounds weird because it doesn't matter. Right? It's doesn't matter. It's fiction and it's fun, and if I take pleasure in it, great, because it doesn't hurt anyone else. So I did post on Nintendo's official page letting them know, hey, thank you for bringing back our trans queen Birdo. This is really cool. And then I got all the same negative feedback that you did. But I just ignored it all. Um and let everyone else fight about it and let them do their thing. Knowing that in my heart of hearts, soul of soul shits of shits, I just posted something up because I'm excited about having done something because I wanted to thank Nintendo, other than just buying the content, be like, hey, this is really cool. Thanks for doing this. I know they didn't do it because she's trans or they're trans. I know they didn't do it because Birdo is a queer representative of the community and the world at large. It's none of that bullshit because they don't care either. They really don't.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

And no one really should care. I mean, these are not people, these are cartoons meant to serve a purpose within a video game. Yeah. So why can you not have representation for everyone? Maybe there's a trans person out there who's excited that they can play a trans character in a video game because it's so rare. It's there's something inherently wrong with the person that wants to take something away from someone else when giving it to them takes absolutely nothing from them.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

Well, and and the fact that the character is trans in this situation has nothing to do with anything. It doesn't affect the gameplay, it doesn't affect the story, it doesn't affect character selection or the price of the game or how long the game is. It's nothing. Yep. It's I read something the other day that was really interesting where I don't remember who said it, and I wish that it did, because I want to give them credit for it. But it was essentially I completely support a parent deciding that. A child cannot read a certain book. But I do not support that same parent deciding that all children cannot read that same book. Because we shouldn't be making decisions for other people.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

No, but when we make a decision that we're insecure about, we have to force other people to share that opinion to validate that opinion of ours so we don't feel so insecure. And that's what's going on. You are ignorant, you don't understand the trans process, you don't want to be a part of the trans process in any way, shape, or form. Fine. But it doesn't give you the right to go out into the world and start spreading that or pushing that off on other people. And this is not a religious argument because we do have separation of church and state. And your religion does not dictate how I live my life. That is not what laws are set by. You can believe whatever you want to believe until your belief infringes on my belief. Me believing in trans does not infringe on you because it's not forcing you to become trans. Your belief in not wanting trans to be a part of our society does affect people because you are trying to push laws to keep them from being trans. We all need to learn to keep our eyes on our own fucking paper. And if you're too insecure about the life that you're living and the decisions that you make for yourself, well, too bad for you. Go to therapy and figure it out because it is not the rest of the world's job to validate your thought process.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

No, it's social media's job.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

Well, and again, going back to the inorganic nature, I mean, people are constantly being sold a damaged bill of goods that they're running along with, but then they don't want to say this isn't right because then they will have supported something that's inorganic or a lie. For example, a lot of people that listen to our podcast might be familiar with the makeup artist Michaela. She's the one that has that really heavy-duty Bastin accent. And on TikTok, it's the Kim Kardashian thing that's happening right now.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

That'll teach you.

SPEAKER_00 24:16

That'll teach me to talk like a mass hole. So, anyway, she's got this heavy, heavy, heavy Boston accent. It's part of her shtick. I get it. But lo and behold, I saw this clip of her working at some sort of aquarium, and she was like, hello everybody, I'm Michaela, and welcome to the Monterey Bay Peninsula Aquarium. Like the accent is completely fabricated. It is a character. It is a character that she pretends is not the character. So it's like Dandy, that other guy on TikTok who dresses up like the aristocrat.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

And Paris Hilton. It's the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 24:53

But they admit that that's not how they talk in everyday life. They're doing it for a character, for a role to entertain people. Michaela is using it as an affectation of her character and personality to help her sell something that has nothing to do with what she's selling. And it just pisses me off because there are a lot of people out there, I will say myself included, that have something legitimate and useful to offer that we're not getting paid to. We just want to share the information because we're natural-born sharers and educators. And we don't get the opportunity to do that because these people come and they create these inorganic experiences that that just brainwash everybody. And then once they get to that level or that echelon within social media and marketing, they lock the door behind them. There's so much gatekeeping and door locking going on. And then you have someone like Jeffree Starr, who was almost at the beginning of it, created and cultivated this personality. It came back and it bit him in the ass. He went to the Midwest, lived this life, zapped some tattoos off his face, and then decided to come back like he's a whole new person and he's just gonna tell it straight. Like he was the problem. He was a big part of the problem. And now, because he couldn't fulfill his engagements, he couldn't fulfill his duties and what he was getting paid to do, he got too big for his britches and wanted to do something else. The true powers that be said, nope, you're done. Then he threatens to call out the Illuminati. Like, I'm sorry, like the Illuminati is involved with Jeffree Starr. I don't think so. And and then uses this as some sort of weird platform to get back in the spotlight. And now that he's back in the spotlight, he's not saying word one about the Illuminati. So can people just give what they have to offer? And if what you have to offer isn't enough, stop creating these situations to catapult yourself into these audiences only to let them down a couple months later. Because now it seems like the only thing that sells anything, whether it's hair care, makeup, clothing, shoes, dogs, accessories, a way of life, it's drama and it's like idiocracy. Like we are headed down a very dangerous road. If you watch the movie Idiocracy, like we're there, it's happening, and it's scary because it doesn't have to be that way. But we continue to choose to support these inorganic characters that are putting themselves out there because it's entertaining under the guise of being educational.

SPEAKER_01 27:33

Yeah. You're on it a lot. Is there anything that you like about social media?

SPEAKER_00 27:38

The funny stuff. The funny, it's hilarious. And people say, oh, well, if you're seeing this, it's because the algorithm knows that this is what you like. But I don't. I'm constantly blocking people, I'm constantly hitting the not interested button, and then I'm liking, pardon me, liking and commenting on the stuff that I do like to try to ramp up the algorithm to show me more of that. But when I first got on TikTok, I thought this is hilarious. Oh my god, this is human. Everybody hit everybody experiences tripping like this. Everybody experiences running into a screen door like this. And then some people would take it and turn it uh slightly satirical. And I thought it was very smart and witty and it was fun. And then once that started catching on, then you had all the idiots who were like, who is that over there? Well, I can do that too. And then they just started stealing everything that was good about that platform and they bastardized it and they turned it into something that it wasn't meant to be. And that's where we're at now. And so, yes, I scroll, but I get frustrated, and it's probably the only reason why I even comment now because I'm just like, oh Jesus Christ, really, fucking really.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

I was on it once uh and then turned it off pretty quickly after because all I was getting was pimple popping videos.

SPEAKER_00 28:56

Yeah, I'm getting I'm getting ready to close down the TikTok account because I I'm I'm holding on. You know, it's like a drug addict. You're holding on in the hopes that this next line is gonna be like that first line that she did, and it's never going to be that way, especially when the powers that be have decided that they're not even giving you what you originally had, they're giving you some cheap, bad knockoff shit that makes you grind your teeth and just leaves you with a headache the next day.

SPEAKER_01 29:24

Chasing the TikTok dragon.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

Chasing the chick chock chak dragon.

SPEAKER_01 29:27

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 29:29

I'm over it. So um, yeah, I think social media is in a downward spiral. I think quote unquote influencers are um a huge part of that because they were what drove it up so high, and what goes up must inevitably come down.

SPEAKER_01 29:44

Well, they know they're a problem because they're not called influencers anymore, they're called content creators.

SPEAKER_00 29:49

What are you doing or creators? Whatever. Over it. So, yeah, that's my two cents. Um, and I hope you enjoyed our first episode back. Welcome to season four of the Mr. and Mrs. Show.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

Welcome, we hate social media.

SPEAKER_00 30:04

Bye. Bye.