MILLENNIAL DIARY
‘Many have admitted to editing their pictures ’
THERE’S nothing millennials love more than a bit of internet drama. One of my greatest passions in life is trawling various social media platforms trying to find the spark that lit an online furore. So when I saw rumblings of an ‘Irish influencer scandal’ last week, I put on the glasses, filled up my reusable water bottle, and got to work.
What unfolded could tick all the boxes on a modern scandal bingo card. We had ‘calling out’, ‘trolls’, anonymous accounts, Snapchat apologies, pledges to change, dredging up historic posts, and of course ‘shaming’. It spanned sites from Reddit to Snapchat to Twitter: it was perfect.
It started off as a few people annoyed about excessive photo editing from some well-known (on the internet) fitness and beauty bloggers, but quickly snowballed into a larger argument about body image and the responsibility the internet-famous have to their followers.
These bloggers are what’s known in these anxious times as ‘influencers’. This is a real-life job title that refers to people who make their living looking good on Instagram and getting loads of ‘likes’. They often get paid to advertise products: this amounts to a picture of them looking gorgeous holding an eyeshadow, or whatever, and a gushing caption about how they looooooooove it soooo much, it’s just diviiiiiiiine. They might also get a cut of the profits from people who use their link to buy said eyeshadow, or whatever. Then there’s the murky waters of ‘gifts’ and ‘surprises’ from companies, which could be anything from handbags to holidays. Their lives look sweet.
Once they have a significant enough following, more money can be made running workshops, doing appearances or releasing their own line of products. It’s a bizarre state of affairs, but tiny Ireland is the perfect petri dish for these sort of people to grow and thrive, with our devotion to raising up Z-list celebrities for magazine fodder.
But something had to give eventually. Last weekend, an Instagram account popped up promising to unmask the Irish influencers whose faces and bodies were apparently fake news. The account uploaded side-by-side comparison shots of some Irish bloggers, purporting to show that their ‘real-life’ selves bore little resemblance to their Insta-selves.
The account quickly amassed thousands of followers. It seemed the appetite to take these influencers down a peg or two was strong. And I understand it — the cumulative effect of seeing these ‘perfect’ women every day on social media is a depressing wearing down of your self-worth, no matter how media savvy and clever you are. Being relentlessly exposed to cracking bods makes you feel crap about your own. It’s a very human thing to want to see a crack in the armour of perfection, to seek reassurance that you’re not especially imperfect yourself.
Other issues with some Irish influencers quickly came bubbling to the surface. It was claimed that some of them were buying products from cheap Chinese sites, wrapping them up in tissue paper and selling them on to their followers at eyewatering mark ups; that they were not being transparent about their sponsorship deals; that they were buying fake followers to boost their social-media numbers. People were angry.
A few bloggers then put together an anti-bullying ‘campaign’, to hit back against the ‘bullies’ and ‘trolls’ who had ‘shamed’ them. 2018, eh?
Helping those affected by bullying is a worthy goal, but what they were actually going to do to help was unclear, and that ‘those affected’ would include anyone other than beautiful, successful, white, female influencers remains uncertain.
Many bloggers have admitted to using editing software in the past. This row is far from over, but the way I see it, anyone is well within their rights to edit their pictures in whatever way they choose. If I want to make myself a size 8 on Instagram, that’s nobody’s business but my own. The problem comes if I start hawking make-up, fitness and nutrition products that one could reasonably assume helped me to look like that.
I think if your body is your brand, and your brand is being used to sell fitness gear, your body does become the business of your followers.
If people are spending their money in an effort to look like something that doesn’t exist in the first place, you can understand why they’d be upset.
If you’re selling make-up, but all your photos have gone through a ‘Facetune’ app to make your skin smoother, lashes longer, lips fuller and cheeks higher, that’s false advertising. Make-up brands are no longer allowed to do that without making it clear that their images have been digitally altered.
If you’re charging money for ‘confidence’ workshops but your photos appear to be heavily edited, betraying someone who’s far from confident in their body, that feels disingenuous to me.
I know what you’re thinking — what kind of ninnyhammer would actually believe that these people actually look like they do online?
And yet, as I scroll through Instagram, I suffer those familiar pangs of not being good enough. It might not be rational, but it is human. And I’m lucky — women have come forward in recent days telling how this impossible beauty standard contributed to their depression, eating disorders and body dysmorphia.
Some smarter influencers recognised that they were on the wrong side of history. The hoo-ha offered an opportunity for what millennials call ‘being a good person’ and what our parents call ‘virtue signalling’, with a few bloggers pledging to be more transparent with their posts, and to cool it on Facetune.
Whatever the outcome, the past week should give some among the cohort of Irish influencers pause for thought. Even if they aren’t convinced that they have a responsibility to their young and vulnerable followers, the furore has galvanised many women into unfollowing influencers who take them for fools and make them feel ugly. In these thoroughly modern outrages, playing the victim is bad for business. No one’s buying it.