I want to follow people who wear the ‘wrong’ thing and stay out too late

A conversation has been brewing online. And when I say “online” I mean “on TikTok”. And when I say “been brewing” I really mean “happening recently enough that it’s still newsworthy but over a week ago, so the zeitgeist has mostly moved on to the next outrageous thing to react to with peak emotion”.

Call me outdated, but my mind is still locked into last week’s viral video in which a person aired her opinions about a crop of new arrivals to New York, declaring the city’s influencers to be “boring as f---”.

“They’re all carbon copies of each other … they all look like they shop at Revolve,” a user called @martinifeeny told her small circle of followers, referencing a fast-fashion brand known for shipping twenty-somethings to Coachella for the purpose of having their picture taken and not actually entering the festival. “They’re all basic – but they’re skinny and pretty, so stuff looks cute on them. But boring … no hate.”

Credit: Robin Cowcher

Her complaint might have been specific to a breed of Manhattan Pilates princesses whose schedules consist of taking photos of their morning matcha and attending product launches, but it could apply to any major city around the world. Including Melbourne.

Now, before you label me a geriatric Millennial shaking my fist at the cloud I pay $4.49 a month to store photos of my cat in, let me affirm that I’m upset at neither the concept nor the proliferation of influencers. A version of their work has always existed, and without the structures of traditional media walling their behaviour off with a facade of exclusivity, it’s become a lucrative and accessible business for many people drawn to it. If you can take the photos and build the audience and find a way to connect, all power to you! Get the bag. Personally, I sound like I’m going to cry when I have to talk into a camera, so it’s simply not on the cards for me.

But I’ve spent enough time working in advertising over the past 15 years and staring into the blue glow of my phone every night for approximately one to six hours to confidently say the criteria for succeeding as an online creator today is less about wielding any amount of genuine influence, and more to do with a person’s capacity to transform into an authentic-sounding billboard for whatever brand pays them to do so.

In the mid-2000s, I was a teenager as the first generation of social media stars were born. I watched as people wrote fashion blogs that transformed them into front-row fixtures at international couture shows on the strength of their ability to express themselves through writing and styling.

I saw party girls whose faces somehow looked better with streaks of mascara cascading down them go from knowing the right DJs to collaborating with designers on shoes I would have killed to afford. I saw Tumblr stars influence culture, open gallery shows and headline festivals. I saw the greatest blogging minds of my generation, eventually, migrate to one platform and slowly mould themselves to fit an algorithm determined by a dweeb king.

It’s painful to get all “back in my day” about these cultural shifts, but I can’t help it. I’m somehow old enough to have lined up for the secret parties thrown at cool clubs where beer brands were desperate to have their labels visible in the hands of underground nightlife characters, and young enough to witness contemporary liquor brands’ launch events, where they put up their logo in unused rooms, only invite people with more than 10,000 followers and call it a nightclub. It’s not cool or connected to anything besides campaign metrics. But being invited means today’s crop of influencers needs to declare that it is.

I fear our collective experience online – whether in New York or Melbourne or anywhere else there’s both a housing crisis and a proliferation of $23 sandwich shops – has not only morphed into something uniform and palatable and dictated by brands with major marketing budgets and minor creative aspirations, but it’s contributing to a fundamental absence of fun.

I want to follow people with opinions, even if I don’t agree. Ones who wear the “wrong” thing and stay out too late and can’t put a link for everything they own in their bio.

Last year, Charli XCX’s album Brat made her the patron saint of party girls. I’m petitioning for this year to be driven by the ideas underpinning her award-winning record: hedonism, individuality, talking out of the wrong side of your mouth, fobbing off palatability if it means dialling into something true and honest. Maybe then we’ll witness something worth following.