{"id":1732,"date":"2026-07-31T17:43:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T17:43:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1732"},"modified":"2026-07-31T17:43:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T17:43:18","slug":"the-weird-state-of-the-influencer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1732","title":{"rendered":"The Weird State of the Influencer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Less than a decade ago, when I was working on technology stories, my colleagues and I ran into an issue that I\u2019m pretty sure had not occurred to the people who founded this magazine in 1857: how to style the word influencer<\/em>, which was an occupation and cultural force, but one just emerging. We weren\u2019t sure that all of our readers would know what they were, and we also didn\u2019t know how exactly we would define the word ourselves. I spent the fall of 2018 sending a lot of emails about whether we needed to encase the word in scare quotes.<\/p>\n

Read more Galaxy Brain: Behind the Curtain at Google<\/a><\/p>\n

Quaint! Many\u2014but not all that many\u2014years later, influencer is very much a real job, no explanation required. As of 2023, 27 million Americans were paid to make online content in one form or another, at least according to one marketing consultant company. Enthusiasm from influencers can turn a random business into a sensation, while their ire can do the opposite. Donald Trump\u2019s White House is full of influencers, but Joe Biden\u2019s courted them too, in apparent recognition of their power. This week, Arizona State University announced that it would begin offering a bachelor\u2019s degree in content creation\u2014influencing by another name\u2014through its journalism school.<\/p>\n

In some ways, the influencer industry is more legitimate than it\u2019s ever been. But it has always been precarious, and more than a decade into its existence, it is neither novel enough to be exciting nor established enough to have a real professional code. In an oversaturated market, ragebait is the last sure way to get attention, despite the way it alienates people over the long term. AI is swiftly becoming the dominant way many people get personal-seeming advice about how to live their life, which makes the usefulness of aspirational online content even less apparent than it ever was. And so, although influencers\u2014especially lifestyle influencers\u2014have never been universally respected, they lately seem to be openly reviled.<\/p>\n

Naturally, much of the influencer backlash lives online. A few months ago, someone asked on Reddit, \u201cWhat\u2019s an industry that provides zero value to society but makes billions of dollars?\u201d Among the 5,300-plus responses: Ticketmaster, sports-betting companies, multilevel marketing schemes, private prisons, and\u2014several times over\u2014influencers. A hilarious number of people have found internet fame by making content about how much they hate other people who are internet-famous for making content. (\u201cEveryone Is Finally Turning on TONE DEAF Influencers\u201d is the title of one recent video, made by an Australian YouTuber with nearly 300,000 subscribers and a clothing line.)<\/p>\n

But the juiciest fights play out in the physical world, which is where influencers very literally bump up against the people who can\u2019t stand them. A few years ago, a coffee shop in Brooklyn banned photography after too many influencers clogged the caf\u00e9 with tripods and handheld lights; earlier this month, Indonesia indicated that it would crack down on people creating content for pay while on tourist visas.<\/p>\n

Last week, the scene of the debate was a gift shop in Nantucket, an island that has recently been overrun by vacationing influencers, just like Bali, Iceland, and Santorini before it. The store\u2019s operators, evidently fed up with the stream of people filming inside, had a sign made that read No Influencers<\/span>, hung it up in the store, and posted a picture of it on Instagram. There, it drew the attention of thousands of people, including Paige Paul, who has about 2 million followers across platforms, is married to a famous tennis player, and has been spending time on the island since she was a child. Paul, previously known as Paige Lorenze, declared the sign a misogynistic slight against an industry that is overwhelmingly female. The store\u2019s owner, John Sylvia, said it was meant as a joke for locals, but the sentiment clearly came from an earnest annoyance: \u201cA lot of people are tired of feeling like extras in someone else\u2019s video,\u201d he told New York<\/em> magazine.<\/p>\n

Read more This May Be Trump\u2019s Biggest Error in the Iran War<\/a><\/p>\n

The fight felt freighted. Influencers today are a bit like plastic surgeons, or plumbers: On a societal level, many people sure seem to like what they do\u2014they just don\u2019t necessarily want to be right next to them while they\u2019re doing it.<\/p>\n

But influencers are unique in how they seem to be everywhere, particularly in places where people are trying to do things other than be on their phone to watch influencers. Of course we love the game and hate the player: It\u2019s much easier to be annoyed by individuals than by concepts, especially when those individuals are, often, pretty annoying.<\/p>\n

You\u2019d need to be pretty clueless to not feel a little weird about the online attention economy and all it entails\u2014the vanity; the grift; the slop; the desperation; the calculated intimacy; the endless consumption; the creeping sense that everything and everyone is actually just there to make you feel kind of bad about yourself and then sell you something. Social media can, of course, unite like-minded people, but it can also reward the kind of tribalist reactionaryism that can conflate disliking some women with disliking all women, or make an anti-consumerist folk hero out of a store that sells $2,750 baskets. The industry that Paul and her cohort belong to is unquestionably grim\u2014but the industry isn\u2019t walking around town with a selfie stick. There\u2019s a reason that the sign doesn\u2019t say no influencing<\/span>, but rather no influencers<\/span>.<\/p>\n

As for the sign: Sylvia\u2019s post was liked more than 10,000 times before it was removed (by Instagram, according to the store); a second one has now been liked even more. \u201cThey couldn\u2019t have predicted it would get the traction that it ultimately did,\u201d People<\/em> magazine wrote of the store in one of many articles about the sign that have popped up online over the past few days.<\/p>\n

Sure. I will grant that the future is inherently unpredictable. But it is undeniable that posting the sign online is its own kind of influencing, insofar as it involved leveraging the internet\u2019s focus and wrath for one\u2019s own benefit. (\u201cCame for the friendship baskets, stayed for the shade,\u201d the original post\u2019s caption trolled.) The sign is handsome, and crucially, it is inside the store\u2014if you want to see it up close, you need to go in, past the baskets. Visitors have already started posting the sign on social media, and the store\u2019s Instagram account has added about 8,000 followers, according to an interview that Sylvia\u2019s partner, Jessica Jenkins, did with The New York Times<\/em>. \u201cIt\u2019s come with a lot of drama,\u201d she told the paper. \u201cBut it also brings in business.\u201d Any influencer would understand that.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump Is Choosing His Slush Fund Over Todd Blanche<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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