‘Aspirational mundanity’: Inside the new TikTok trend with 150 billion views

It was 2023 when I noticed a new vein of video content appearing in my social media feed. Influencers, largely women, had begun placing their phone somewhere innocuous (a bookshelf, a desk, a dresser), only to document their daily routine beneath the imposed catchphrase, “Get Ready With Me.”

Often of a morning, with sleep still in my eyes, I’d gaze blankly at my phone screen while a woman “got ready”, be it by rubbing her cheeks vigorously with tinted moisturiser, delicately placing a handful of berries in her smoothie bowl, or sitting demurely at a tram-stop, waiting for her ride to arrive. GRWM videos, as they’re commonly known, kicked off on TikTok last year, with The Associated Press reporting the trend amassed “over 150 billion views” in 2023 alone.

Influencer Alix Earle has amassed a following of millions on TikTok and Instagram, largely by documenting her routines.Credit: Instagram

“With me” content has become increasingly popular over the past decade and social media users have long documented themselves engaging in a mixed bag of monotonous rituals and activities. If you know where to look, and you know what you’re after, you can study, cook, eat, clean, meditate, bathe, paint, dance or read “with” someone in a single click. And millions do.

Deliberately understated by design, the original “with me” format postured itself as a computerised tool to create a kind of faux intimacy between the poster and the follower, and as a way to combat isolation – or procrastination – making late-night cramming before an exam a little bit more agreeable, or that dreaded end-of-lease clean a little less daunting.

GRWM videos echo a format that feels eerily reminiscent of American Psycho.

But the newest iteration of GRWM videos are savvier, hastier and significantly more polished than their predecessors. Instead of centring the monotonous chore or activity, they are the central focus; their video content echoing a format that feels eerily reminiscent of American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman famously peeling a branded face-mask from his skin and delivering a deadpan but earnest monologue of his morning drill.

GRWM videos are unique in that they bank on two contradictory principles: relatability, and – of course – not being relatable in the slightest. Alix Earle, an American influencer, has amassed a following of 6.4 million people through her regular use of the GRWM format. She is just like us in that she has her own, unique struggles (hers being acne), or as TODAY describes, the struggle of “getting mascara all over her eyelids as she applies makeup and recounts the previous night’s misadventures.” The relatability, though, can’t be found in the format itself. How relatable is it, really, to be traversing through your house while perpetually filmed? Or for a 23-year-old to earn over $7.5 million in a single year, as Earle reportedly does.

Professor Crystal Abidin, a digital anthropologist and founder of the TikTok Cultures Research Network, says the appeal is that the “GRWM genre communicates relatability. But the production of the content may not be at all relatable. There’s a lot of work, knowledge and money the more professionalised the production becomes, and the higher up the [influencer] ladder you go.”

All of which begs the question, what is the merit for influencers to seem “normal” online, particularly when millions of followers usually comes with millions of dollars in sponsorships, endorsements, ambassadorships, gifted holidays and an endless supply of free products – all of which is, for the 99 per cent, entirely abnormal?

“The more we juxtapose the shiny person on camera with the same person who is scripted – or off-screen – the more we feel we have contributed to their journey,” Abidin says, explaining why the success of an influencer can feel rewarding for those who invest in the journey.

In a bid to seem relatable, Abidin notes she has seen influencers go to subtle but great lengths to appear authentic, such as “mispronouncing a word intentionally, so people flock to the comments to spread, duet and mock the video.”

The precondition for influencers to make “authentic” content is concerning, though, largely because the onus to appear “real” and unfiltered seems to fall largely on the shoulders of female influencers.

They can, and do, cushion their relatability in the trivial gesture of documenting the daily drudges of a woman’s routine: pencilling in their eyebrows, buttering their child’s sandwich, navigating how best to stay hydrated all day (as facilitated by a $79.00 water bottle). Yet, when feminine labour has long been taken for granted and ushered far from public viewing, its shiny re-packaging seems particularly spurious.

To imagine how far an influencer’s quest for intimacy will go, you have to wonder what other parts of our intimate lives can be mined? What other intimate or private routines are yet to be monetised and broadcast? And how far will influencers go to seem authentic?

Madison Griffiths is a freelance writer based in Melbourne.

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