TikTok Shop: Eliminating influence doesn't mean the end of consumerist influencer culture

A few months ago, for about five minutes, people seemed to genuinely believe that our culture was entering an era of “declining influence.” “Influencers please stand aside,” CNN wrote. “A new breed of 'de-influencer' has emerged who is saying that materialism and overpriced trends are no longer in vogue.” The idea of ​​a 'de-influencer' is that an influencer encourages you to buy something. Instead, the idea was to encourage people not to buy things.

Initially, many videos tagged as “lowering influence” were genuine appeals against influencer culture. People talk about how overspending and viral videos are part of an unsustainable and unethical capitalist system that moves at the speed of TikTok trends, and how their videos contribute to that system. It often included serious accusations about what had happened. People who make a living selling other people's products publicly reflect on what their work means for their mental health, spending habits, and ethics, both for themselves and their audience. It was honestly very interesting to hear.

What started out as a rare glimpse into what professional salespeople really feel and believe, quickly became a pretty original sales pitch once the hashtag became popular. Instead of influencing people to buy a product, influencers who tagged their posts as “influencing” were simply posting negatively. Reviews of products that we don't think are worth your money, and often tell you what to buy instead (some say “Introducing products that may help with overconsumption'') (It had a caption saying “!”).

Did anyone seriously think that TikTok trends were the beginning of the end of capitalism? Probably not. In the months since “influence decline” disappeared from discourse, TikTok has made consumption on the platform even more inevitable with the launch of his TikTok Shop. TikTok Shop is a feature that allows viewers to purchase products shown in videos without leaving the app. TikTok Shop videos (identified by the orange shopping cart tag next to the description) are ubiquitous and are “disrupting” people's TikTok feeds. TikTok is always full of product promotions, many of which are rather sleazy. If you watch a video of someone putting on makeup, you might just happen to mention the brand of mascara they're wearing, or a lifestyle influencer might show off a new look of themselves. Suddenly all the commenters in the living room demanded to know where she bought the lamp. (If she says no, that's a gatekeeper! The language of the platform itself encourages consumption!) There were a lot of products out there, but TikTok Shop is making it even easier for people to buy them. It is much more profitable to sell them.

Still, stories about “influence being over” have proliferated ever since influencers have existed. That's when the FTC sent influencers a warning letter requiring them to include advertising disclosures in all sponsored posts, and mainstream media predicted this would make influencers less relatable and trustworthy. It happened (the result was the opposite). It's when influencers are called out to promote disastrous music festivals, when Instagram adds an option to hide the number of likes on photos, and when a pandemic keeps everyone indoors. It happened when I was exposed.

But so far, nothing has come even remotely close to slowing down the influencer economy. By every metric, the industry is growing. According to Goldman Sachs, the number of content creators is expected to grow at a compound rate of 10 to 20 percent over the next five years. The market is expected to grow from $16.4 billion in 2022 to $21 billion in 2023, and advertisers are encouraged to do so as younger consumers tend to trust influencers more than brands and social media more than national news. They are spending less on traditional media and more on influencers. The definition of “impact” continues to expand, not shrink. What began as the domain of consumer categories such as fashion, beauty, travel, food, and fitness now includes political activism, literature, music, art, corporate life, dating, mental health, and more. If it exists, there are people who have influence over it.

As a result, the Internet now feels like a place whose only purpose is to sell you something. And that won't change — in fact, it will get worse. This is both due to the logic of growth-at-all-costs capitalism and to Michael Serazio, a journalist and communications professor at Boston University and author of a new book. The Authenticity Industry: Maintaining the “authentic” in media, culture, and politics It will be released in November of this year. In it, he explores the commodification of identity, why “selling out” no longer means anything, and why amateurs, ordinary people on social media, can become some of the most effective salespeople. There is.

“The majority of the content we consume on social media comes from amateurs rather than professionals. This is a dramatic change given the way we have been getting our media content for years,” he said. says. “The idea of ​​amateurs is that they don't do it for money, they do it for love. They enjoy creative expression and have no ulterior motives. So to the audience, these guys are trustworthy. That expectation is created, and that's exactly what makes them valuable to marketers and to selling on behalf of businesses.”

He said technology platforms have long profited from the idea that users are just there to have fun. Technology company marketers argue that social media is a more democratic alternative to traditional media, with its gatekeepers and top-down approaches to information and culture (while they It ignores the fact that we've just replaced human gatekeepers with black boxes (algorithms that no one understands yet that govern everything we see). High-profile and successful influencers complicate that image. This is part of the reason why, paradoxically, platforms and influencers have always been at odds with each other. But marketers prefer influencers who have that “just-for-a-hobby” glow, even if they're making money doing it. And every time there's a cultural backlash against an influencer's “too sophisticated” aesthetic or cynical money-making, the entire industry doesn't collapse, but rather shifts to suit whatever aesthetic replaces it. Only. Attention and ad dollars may go to another creator or another platform, but wherever people appear to be “authentic” on the internet, the money will follow.

“Advertising is geographically imperialistic,” Serazio says. “It's always looking for new spaces that it hasn't colonized yet. There's always a hunger among users for something authentic and pure, not something that's trying to sell you something. But if you find it Everywhere it ends up being buried and products are being inserted into it.”

It's a never-ending cycle, he says, which has led to a sense of disillusionment among audiences in recent years. “The internet isn't fun anymore,'' says Kyle Chayka These days, what's going on with Google searches cluttered with advertising and SEO bait, Facebook's mysterious quest to capitalize on the latest tech boom, and Elon's mess? He pointed out this and declared it in the New Yorker. Mr. Musk's acquisition of “X” (formerly Twitter). “Social Media Web” [sic, lol] “The place where we consume our fellow citizens' posts and post in return, as we knew it, seems to be over,” he wrote. Instead, it uses “anonymous trolls, auto-recommendations, [and] A monetization scheme gone wild. ”

It's almost shocking that an internet space that once felt more free and fun has deteriorated so much that there hasn't been any widespread backlash. Sure, a lot of people are venting their frustrations about social media and bad experiences online, but they're doing so on social media because in the current version of the internet, where else can they go and actually This is because I want to be heard. Similarly, even if Millennials and Gen Z claim to distrust capitalism, be interested in anti-labor ideology, and support socialist policies, they still have significant privileges in a brutally individualistic economy. Those who don't have one cannot realistically opt out. “It's privileged to complain about 'selling out,'” Serazio says. “Once the music industry's revenue model completely collapsed, you didn't hear anyone complaining about selling out anymore.” The same is true for the labor economy as a whole. For Gen Z college students, the concept of selling out just doesn't make sense, Serazio says.the goal Sell ​​out, even if you criticize the system they support.

Young men know that if there is money, people will find a way to earn it, and if it's not you, it's someone else. Watch one of the million YouTube videos “Passive Income”). Few young people would say no if given the chance to buy a potentially useless product from a random company for thousands of dollars. After all, this is the surest way to become a professional influencer, and even now he is one of the most popular jobs among children. 70% of content creators say brand sponsorships are the best way to earn money, followed by ad revenue sharing with technology platforms, affiliate links, and starting your own brand, all of which help sell products to consumers. The respondents answered that they depend on sales.

As long as this system exists, advertising and marketing will continue to fill in the gaps like weeds. And if you think the internet is now colonized by advertising, things aren't going to get any better. “We've been studying this for about 20 years, and we know that whatever we think of as actually being commercialized today will be far less commercialized in five, 10, 20 years. “They will look back fondly on it as something much purer and more like the Garden of Eden,” says Serazio. “I know it's crazy, but this is a constant truth we've seen over the years.” They are not the ones lighting the way for an online anti-capitalist backlash. Instead, it pops up like a wildflower in the weeds, in private group chats, niche newsletters, or carefully moderated forums. An Internet where everything is built on a grand scale, where every pixel of digital real estate is up for grabs by the highest bidder, is an Internet where only influencers, billionaires, and scammers survive. It's the internet you keep using until it's no longer worth using.

This column first appeared in the Vox Culture newsletter. Please register here Not only will you never miss the next news story, you'll also receive exclusive newsletter information.