Budding influencers like the young woman I met that night often refer to me as a social media “star”. But really, I’m small fry. I have 35,000 followers on Instagram and 23,000 subscribers to my YouTube channel. I specialise in dreamy, fashion-adjacent images with long, thoughtful captions about life and love. I’ve made an entire career out of it with brand deals, books, a successful blog and now a Substack, The Simple Letter. Technically, I’m what the industry calls a micro-tier influencer. Creators at the top end with more than 1 million followers are referred to as mega influencers; those at the bottom end are called nano influencers and have follower numbers anywhere between 1,000 and 10,000.
All very reminiscient of the Model, Actress, Whatever, in LA or NYC. The true stars make fortunes and there an awful lot out there on the edges who might pick up a sugar daddy to make it work.
This particular example doesn’t do that – instead she’s following the those who can, do, those who can’t teach etc. She’s making her living writing about what it’s like to be an influencer.
Soon to be followed, no doubt, by someone writing books about the sociology of influencers – these things do always seem to go one stage further Meta over time.
The whole ‘influencer’ thing is just more proof that the internet is using women in a more destructive and disdainful manner than ever ‘the patriarchy’ did. Chewing them up and spitting them out, giving them maybe 5 minutes of positivity and a lifetime of regrets.
and all those vanity published books in days of yore such as Marjory Featherstone-Smith: The proper way to run your household. Chapter 4 how to solve the servant problem.
Reminds me of the classic retort: –
She: I’m an important social media influencer.
He: I’m an elite sniper on Call Of Duty.
Can’t be long before there are degree courses in influencing (if they don’t exist already).
On the scale of academic value and rigour, only one step up from a degree in Economics taught by Richard Murphy.
Social influencing certainly seems to work. I was going through my extensive contact list on Whatsap looking at the profile photos of women. And they all seem to have “that face”. It’s the result of slapping on half a pound of assorted cosmetics. The net result being all of the photos look like they’re variations of the same person. And none of them look like the person you actually know. You must have seen this when the papers or other media put up an image of the subject of some story. No doubt garnered from their social media presence. There it is again. “That face”. It’s a composite of Taylor Swift, Shakira, Kardashian & several other slebs stretched over under an underling structure that stretches from the anorexic to the grossly fat. And its “that face” that social influencers seem to all have. It extensively populates the streets. You go to a shopping centre on Saturday & it looks like the Invasion Of the Robot Women.
She: I’m an important social media influencer.
Oh, I’ve had those. There was a women here I met. Liverpudlian. I would have rated her well down in the munter category & mildly barking.. Seemed to obsessed with Greenery & healing crystals. She claimed to be one. She had about 1200 followers on some social media platform. Most of them likely the result of viewers hitting the wrong icon in the process of closing her page.
Weird how there are all these “influencers” and I don’t think I’ve never met anyone who admits to being influenced.
@BiS
Exactly, who knew that Janice from the Muppet Show would be the model for young women 50 years later?
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/7f/f6/aa/7ff6aa94b9b3073de5b9749da005621f–os-muppets-lifetime-movies.jpg
Oh, inevitably,she had “that face”. Although in this case it really wasn’t doing a lot for her. But maybe she could get a job as a circus clown.
she explained how she’d given up her medical studies in the south of France to move to Paris to make it as an influencer instead. She’d been at her office job all day, she explained, then rushed back to the apartment she shared with three other girls far out in the Parisian suburbs to change before arriving at the evening’s event.
Remember that when you’re told they should be allowed to vote and choose their own husbands.
The big hitters include the photographer Carin Olsson, whose longstanding @parisinfourmonths, with 792,000 followers, features snippets of her daily life in Paris in tiny romanticised details. Then there is ubercool German influencer Mirjam Flatau (@mija_mija), who shares her “I just threw this on” vibe with 1.3 million followers. And newcomer Franziska Nazarenus, @franziskanazarenus, who recently moved to Paris from Germany to pursue a career in fashion à la Emily in Paris and channels classic Brigitte Bardot vibes to her 1.3 million adherents.
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Give a young woman a smartphone, and she’ll whore herself out for the attention of complete strangers all day.
And the best city on earth from which to grab people’s attention? Paris.
Le Shithole du Afrique.
Which is how I’ve found myself aged 36, newly divorced and living in the influencer capital of the world.
Are ya winning, hon?
But as I hit my early thirties, my marriage started to wind down just as my ambition started to wind up.
“Keep doing what you’re doing, you’re perfect, lol” – cats.
Now I have my own flat near Père Lachaise cemetery in the 20th arrondissement. It’s a little one-bedroom apartment overlooking trees on a quiet street. I love it. The rent is £1,100 month, which I have to meet through my various platforms while working on a long-stay visa that needs to be renewed every year. My income varies month to month, which was terrifying to begin with, but now I’ve learnt to ride the wave like all self-employed creatives. Some months I can make £5,000, whereas some I can barely scratch £1,000.
If you work hard and do all the wrong things, you too can live in poverty as an anonymous foreigner in a disgusting slum while your biological clock winds down towards your lonely death.
No flowers!
Another prevalence is Whatsapp “updates” of “that face” lip-syncing & dancing to some recording. It might be better if they hadn’t chosen a male artist. It also doesn’t held if you’ve ever heard them trying to sing along with something in person. Flat doesn’t really do it justice.
But on the other hand, they’re probably not much worse than the actual artists themselves. Who’re the result of a great deal of “Perfect Pitch”. If you’ve ever heard what some of them sound like through a mike failure… But they do have “that face”.
20th arrondissement
Jeez! I’m not even sure where that is. Maybe it’s the one where it’s rumoured there’s lost tribes of pygmies.
Anybody lives in Paris these days must be barking (my cousin Diane was always short of a few brain cells). Hidalgo’s turned the place into a complete & utter shithole. I travel by the western route past Nantes to avoid going anywhere near it.
I’ve not noticed that. I have noticed that Gigi D’Agostino’s 1999 hit L’Amour Toujours seems quite popular among the Germans at the moment. Someone needs to give them a copy of the lyrics though, because I believe their German translation is a bit off.
Now I have my own flat near Père Lachaise cemetery in the 20th arrondissement
No you don’t actually “have” anything. Despite closing in on middle-age you are still renting a one-bed and by your own admission struggling to do so. Probably a lot to do with the absence of a husband or a proper job.
36 years old, one failed marriage and f-all to show for it all. The only mystery is why this wasn’t in the telegraph as they can’t ever seem to get enough abject failure-porn.
To what extent is the ex-husband and alimony payments helping fund this?
I once met someone who had a Youtube channel about Central American cooking, specifically “healthy” cooking. He was apparently doing ok with it, especially when combined with a day job handling the IT needs of small businesses. You have to cater to a unique niche that will appeal to a sufficiently large population base.
You don’t need to subscribe to these channels. I watch some fly fishing channels and some do it yourself repair videos, and I’ve noticed that once I’ve watched one they put others from the same or similar parties at the top of the screen if I go on to Youtube.
There’s a reason that starving artist isn’t a cliche.
I am grateful to the people here for many insights, and the latest is the term “That Face” .
I racked my brain for a long time to discover the best way to describe this foolishness, and now I have it.