Why I don’t want to be Insta-famous
New Zealand journalist Verity Johnson explains why she got fed up with being an influencer on Instagram
IT SOUNDS like a dream job. You work for yourself, have millions of followers who hang on your every word and scrutinise every picture you post, companies send you seriously cool stuff and you rake in cash for promoting their goods. Online influencers – who thrive mainly on Instagram and YouTube – have mushroomed in recent years. Scroll through your social media feed and chances are you’ll come across posts by mega-influencers such as fitness fanatic Kayla Itsines or small-fry players like that weird guy in your class at school who these days is raking in the dough by posting clownish vids.
Even kids are hooked. Ask any parent and they’re likely to tell you how baffled they are by their children being addicted to watching YouTubers playing video games or opening gifts.
And it’s big business. Even people with smaller followings, known as nanoinfluencers, can make up to R900 000 a year, according to Joe Gagliese, co-founder of influencer agency Viral Nation.
Micro-influencers, those with 10 000 to 50 000 followers, can make up to R1,5 million a year. Influencers with up to a million followers can get R150 000 a post, depending on the platform, and if you have a million followers or more, you can charge upwards of R1,5m a post.
Some can even get R3,7m for a single post, Joe says. Gamers on YouTube, especially, can rake in that kind of big bucks.
Then you get into the stratospheric celeb league – think Cristiano Ronaldo (182 million Insta followers) and Kylie Jenner (145m followers). They can make way more. Last year Kylie was thought to be
earning around R15m for a single post.
But is it all as glamorous as it seems? Not according to New Zealand journalist and TV presenter Verity Johnson, who says becoming a sought-after influencer ended up being a nightmare.
Here she recounts how she became disillusioned with social media fame.
NOTHING messes you up quite so royally as becoming Insta-famous. It’s just as bad as genuine fame, only without the public fawning or free Fendi sports bras to soften your descent into self-obsession, insecurity and casual bitchiness.
Of course, you don’t realise it. You’re busy preaching love, harmony and laxative tea. Plus you’re distracted by every brick wall or passing dog that you could drag into your #candidshots of you laughing maniacally while holding a conveniently placed (and delicious!) protein shake.
I used to be Insta-famous and it was one of the worst things to happen in my twenties. While I did gain a photogenic
selection of free protein powder, it was probably one of the most gruelling, confusing and miserable times of my life.
It happened almost accidentally. A few years ago, I had freshly graduated from university in Australia and was bumming around my student flat when I got a call asking me to move to New Zealand and present on the flagship daily breakfast TV show.
I was 21, it was my first real job, and I didn’t even have an Instagram account then let alone any aspirations of pastel-filtered fame. So I said yes, moved countries and started an account with a vague idea it would be good to have “for my brand”. And by virtue of being on national TV every morning, I went from nothing to having more than 8 000 combined followers across my “channels”.
I became a bona fide influencer, getting sent everything from fancy undies to cellphones, and curating every moment of my peachy life with painstakingly casual captions. It was awful. Primarily because I was awful.
Insta-fame has a phenomenal, if unsurprising, capacity to turn you into a dick.
We all know that real fame is dangerous. It showers you with attention, making you feel as though you’re incredibly important and interesting because all these people are paying attention to you.
Insta-fame does all of this too.
IBECAME convinced I was so fascinating. If I was the centre of attention on my phone, that should translate into being the centre of attention in real life. It makes you the worst kind of dick: entitled, self-obsessed, and incredibly dull because the only thing you think about is yourself. And it wasn’t helped by being in my twenties and so naturally inclined to think the world revolves around me anyway.
But it’s also a particularly vicious type of fame because it’s so insecure. Instafame is right at the bottom of the glitter hierarchy, widely acknowledged by the genuinely famous as the most fickle and unearned glory. You can see where they’re coming from. Most real-world famous people earn fame by doing their job really well. But for influencers, your butt shots are your business.
So we’re constantly aware of the tenuousness of our fame, which makes us even more desperate to hold onto it.
It’s also the most numbly exhausting job I’ve ever done. Normally it takes at least five hours to do a professional photoshoot. When you’re an influencer, you need this level of quality but don’t have a team behind you, so it becomes incredibly time-consuming.
You get trapped in your own triviality, in the mind-numbing packaging and distribution of the minutiae of your day. It’s a real joy killer. Normally you take a photo because you want to capture a great moment, right? But as an influencer you have to manufacture those moments, strip-mining the fun out of coffee dates because you’re managing the scene like [legendary photographer] Annie Leibovitz – if Annie was a basic bitch with a passion for latte art.
But the worst, most dangerous part of Insta-fame in your twenties is it totally messes up your character development.
Not only did it make me self-obsessed, it indulged my worst qualities.
Social media feeds those darkest parts of every personality, encouraging you to rant on Twitter, brag on Facebook or be vain on Insta.
Vanity sells on the ’Gram. The hotter the pic, the better it does, so the more time you spend in front of the mirror creating them. Staying Insta-famous relies on you mining the depths of your own narcissism.
The problem is when you’re in your twenties you’re busy working out who you want to be. A big part of that process is managing and squashing down dark parts of yourself to make more room for your better parts. But Insta-fame fed my vanity and insecurity until it became almost impossible to control them and make space for my better self.
So I stopped. I’ve still got Instagram, but I’m officially an ex-influencer. I stopped posting as much and lost a lot of followers, and I deleted most of my classic influencer shots in a fit of self-disgust.
I realised in order to stay Insta-famous I’d have had to nurture the most pathetic parts of my own psyche. And honestly, no amount of free ombre activewear is worth that.
‘Nothing messes you up quite so royally as becoming Insta-famous’