Influencers Are Boring, Should We Trust Them?
Ask any Gen-Z who they follow on Instagram or TikTok, and chances are they will list at least one influencer. This isn’t a surprise, in fact 88% of Gen Z follows at least one influencer and 22% follow more than 50. Whether you follow them for fun “day in my life” videos or relevant political opinions, chances are you rely on an influencer for some type of information. According to an analysis from Morning Consult, Gen Z seeks advice and information from influencers more actively and at higher rates than any other generation. While this form of information seeking may seem normal to Gen-Z, it is important to recognize the reasons why influencers move to specific places and advertise certain lifestyles.
A 2023 survey of 1,000 Gen-Zers found that over half wanted to be influencers. The idea of free packages and invitations to the season’s most glamorous events sounds like a dream come true. Who doesn’t want free clothes and the chance to meet your celebrity crush?
History of Connectivity
Gen-Z is the first generation to grow up with smartphones, smaller, more portable laptops and tablets. 98% of Gen-Z owns a smartphone and over half of the generation believes their smartphone to be of extreme importance. The invention of easy portable devices allows for constant connectivity through texting and calling, but most of all through social media. It is easy to whip out our phones for a photo with friends, family or just of ourselves. Influencers have taken this easy access to another level, posting their day to day lives for millions to see. Generation-Z influencers have taken it one step further, relocating to major cities and creating content similar to those who already live in the area.
The first influencers could be found on YouTube. In a 2022 NPR interview, journalist Mark Bergen called YouTube “one of the planet’s most influential media businesses.” Bergen’s assessment was not far off: huge celebrities like Justin Bieber and the late Christina Grimmie found their start on YouTube. Some of YouTube’s earliest influencers, like PewDiePie (Felix Kjellberg), Jenna Marbles, and Liza Koshy, can be credited with creating challenges, influencing people’s 2010s purchases and fashion, and informing everything from film trends to travel destination trends. However, these YouTubers and others like them often started as comedy performers or streamed video games. Their massive popularity opened new doors for each of them, offering them money, fame and popularity previously only accessible for movie and television stars.
From an optimistic point of view, being an influencer is both easy and accomplishable. Most everyone has a smartphone and editing apps are often free or cost very little. However, as with any job, there is work required. A viral moment from a 30-second funny video you posted does not equate to instant influencer status. Content creation, in any capacity, demands thought and time. To capture an audience you must have attributes that people, most notably Gen-Z, can relate to. Gen-Z makes up a large portion of the audience, with 58% of TikTok users and 65% of Instagram users being Gen-Z.
Transplant Influencers and Gentrification
In 2023, it was estimated that there were 10.2 million influencers on Instagram from the U.S. alone. California leads in the number of U.S. influencers, with over two million, and New York follows with over a million. But most of these influencers are transplants: people who moved to New York and California either before their career or during it.
In a Threads post user @casacavaliere writes, “A ‘nyc influencer’ to me is a native New Yorker going to all the boroughs – weird warehouse parties in bushwick, getting Greek food in Astoria… There’s VARIETY and DIVERSITY. They wear color, and texture and are not afraid of being themselves.” Commenters on the thread staunchly agreed. New York Threads users claimed that they could easily spot a transplant influencer, given that they often lack local lingo and attend only the most popular events in order to film content. Many appear to skip the establishments that make New York City what it is, like long-running local theater or family owned restaurants.
California also runs into similar problems. Many transplants move to Los Angeles with rose-colored glasses. Other influencers who move to California at large complain about the state or the city they chose. In a different Threads post, user @jillyenfuego writes, “I’m convinced anyone who complains about California has never actually spent time anywhere but LA.”
As more and more influencers move to the “popular states” and their most popular cities, cost of living goes up and areas of the U.S.’s most infamous cities become a breeding ground for gentrification. In New York City, the average rent is $3,926, a 149% price increase from $1,576 only several months ago. This price increase makes NYC one of the most expensive cities in the U.S. The constant flow of people moving to the city allows for price jacking and influx of trendy restaurants, shops and one day only pop up events.
In 2016, the Urban Displacement Project tracked the rate at which gentrification impacted different boroughs of NYC, highlighting how those who had lived in many areas of New York ultimately could no longer afford to live there. The average median income in NYC in 2023 was $41,482 and the average household income was $79,713. Meanwhile, the average income of a TikTok influencer is $131,874 and, while this isn’t what all influencers are paid, it is still nearly $40,000 more than the household income. Many of TikTok’s biggest influencers will end up with paid partnerships from big brands like CerVa, MAC Cosmetics, ELF and Coach. The average pay for “mega influencers” from a deal such as this is over $5,000. Some of the partnerships last for months or years, resulting in a higher pay day each time.
With excess income to move, influencers are able to “take over” cities like New York City or Los Angeles. In a 2023 article for autostraddle, writer Lily Alvarado talks about being told she isn’t a real native New Yorker, simply because she had not bought the latest trendy coffee and couldn’t provide advice on navigating SoHo. Alvarado goes on to say that it is only cool to be a New York native if you hail from certain areas and fit in with the latest trends.
“If there’s anything I know about New Yorkers, those of us who have been here for all or most of our lives and lived in places that so many rich white people looked down upon before gentrifying our territories, I know that we’re incredibly resilient. When the world all around us was ending, we pulled each other up. We hustled, grinded, and did what we had to do to survive. That’s how we have always been,” Alvarado writes.
Alvarado also calls attention to “white flight,” when white Americans flee to the suburbs and how this phenomenon was particularly prevalent during the pandemic. For a time, the rent in NYC went down and native New Yorkers and those with lower income could live a little more comfortably in their city. However, Alvarado notes that the pandemic quickly exacerbated gentrification, allowing white, affluent transplants to take advantage of this increase in vacancy and decrease in rent, and move back into New York City. She notes that this disproportionately impacted people of color in New York, who disproportionately made up the population of essential workers and could not leave the city during the pandemic. Ultimately, the rise of TikTok and the end of the pandemic both brought the rich, often white, influencers back to the city and gentrification saw a resurgence.
Transplant Influencers are Boring.
A combination of gentrification and its effects, as well as an overabundance of carbon-copy transplant influencers, can create a boredom that Stephanie McNeal highlights in her Glamour article, NYC Influencers Are Boring Drama: What’s This Really About? McNeal notes that many smaller creators and other consumers of media are increasingly bored with influencers who seem to shop at the same places and behave as “mean girls”. While many transplant influencers are placed on a pedestal – and offered brand deals and exposure that could otherwise be offered to local talent – lack of representation when it comes to race, gender and sexuality, or socioeconomic status seems to fall to the wayside.
In her article, Alvarado points out, “Now, there are trendy ‘day-in-the-life’ vlogs of stylish transplants waking up in their fancy Bed-Stuy or East Harlem apartments, chronicling their adventures of finding vintage pieces at thrift stores or casually dropping a couple hundred on the hottest restaurant that everyone appears to be talking about. They make the city their playground.”
The truth of the matter is: the average person in any big city is not dropping thousands on a vintage piece or spending money on a fancy, far too small, latte. They are going to work, riding the bus or subway, hoping to bring home dinner for themselves, their family, their partner. Influencers often feel entitled to move to a city, but without really getting to know the people, the local spots and the history of the places they chose. This turns off many to the idea of entertaining the “influencer.”
We Need Artists, Not Influencers
Research shows that 40% of Gen-Z trusts influencers more than they did a year ago. From restaurant recommendations to recipes, an overwhelming amount of Gen-Z searches for information from a stranger on the internet. And there is some merit to sharing your life on the internet. For many users, seeing someone say “I can do that” is a driving force for themselves. However, with an oversaturation of influencers and the overload of content on most social media platforms, it is important to ask ourselves: How much of this is really necessary?
Quite honestly, we don’t need more influencers. We need more local artists, activists, writers and creators. We should invest in our local communities, before considering jumping to a new city and starting an influencing career. In a world of filming to prove we’re good people, we should make choices to do good and be good, even when no one is filming.