Why you probably shouldn't quit your job to become an influencer
According to Madeline Howard and Allie Rowbottom
Hello, again! So bit of an announcement, but I’ve decided I’m going to make Get Rec’d a bi-monthly thing. At the very onset of starting this newsletter, I was really aware of making sure I didn’t get burnt out on it and that reading (which is past time I inherently love) didn’t turn into a chore. Switching to bi-monthly will help that, and will also help me ensure I’m actually putting out good work. So, without further ado, here’s this month’s recommendation. Thanks for waiting, babes ;) As always, spoilers to Aesthetica ahead, so beware.
Book: Aesthetica by Allie Rowbottom
Story: The Influencers Are Not Alright by Madeline Howard
Confession: I only know about this book because of Caroline Calloway. I had gone to the Aesthetica book launch last fall, although my reason for attending had little to do with the book itself (or even the pay-what-you-want Botox) and everything to do with the fact that Calloway would also be in attendance.
Reader, Calloway was not there. However, I did get to hear the first few pages of Rowbottom’s novel (a book I had admittedly never heard of until that night) and I found myself intrigued by the premise of Aesthetica. Set in the far-off year of 2032, Aesthetica presents a scathing investigation on the facades of the Internet as told through the story of a 35-year-old former-Instagram influencer, Anna Wrey. Anna’s about to receive the fictitious high-risk, elective Aesthetica™ procedure to undo all the plastic surgery she’s done to herself since she first started building her Internet brand at 19. As she waits in anticipation for the surgery she’s come to view as her salvation, Anna reflects on her time as an Internet celebrity and all the decisions she’s made that have led her to the Aesthetica™ operating table. I mean, with a plot like that, what very-online phone-addicted Gen Zer worth their salt wouldn’t feel a little curious?
“On Instagram I was @annawrey, neither myself, nor someone else, a fantasy worth 60,000 followers,” says Anna.
Throughout the book, Anna often reflects on her Instagram celebrity days in this semi-detached way—viewing her younger self like some alien invader acting on her behalf. Her perception of these days is shadowed in doom and gloom, which seems extraordinarily contradictory to how we often perceive influencerdom. Because let’s face it, to us 9-to-5 plebians, the job of an influencer seems like a glitzy, laidback, lavish cop-out of a career that anyone with a smartphone could achieve. And no matter how much we might look down our noses at it, there’s still part of us all that deeply desires and even covets it. It represents the democratization of celebrity, and what average person wouldn’t jump at the chance to transform into someone to be known?
But, as Madeline Howard illustrates in a Women’s Health feature, “The Influencers Are Not Alright,” many current influencers can attest to a very different experience of Internet fame. That being an influencer actually proves incredibly emotionally draining and mentally taxing.
“The work of being an influencer is extremely fraught,” Emily Hund PhD and influencer culture expert tells Howard. “Everyone I’ve spoken with has reported some kind of mental toll,” Hund continues.
For starters, there’s the hate that targets every aspect of an influencer, from their looks to their personality. The feeling that they have to be constantly “on”—in the sense of working to make new and interesting content that’ll attract just as much attention as the last post or the post before that. The sacrificing and commodifying parts of their personal lives for views and content. Changing aspects of themselves so people online will like them more—the way they dress, speak, or look, as Anna does in Aesthetica by getting fillers and breast work done.
Anna’s decision to seek bigger breasts isn’t a display of radical feminism. (If it was, Rowbottom would have had less to write about. The author never presses judgment on those who decide to get plastic surgery or Botox, instead critiquing the power that ever-changing beauty standards have over people.) Rather, Anna is pressured to by her manager/boyfriend, Jake. Jake tells her that if she gets a boob job, then the big-name cannabis company Blaze will invite her to one of their promotional parties, where she can solidify a brand deal. It works. Anna gets the procedure, gets invited to the party, is featured on the Blaze account, and gains hundreds of followers.
One TikToker Howard spoke to, comedian Christian Vierling, performed a similar alteration of himself to appease his followers—although instead of changing his body, he heightened and altered his personality for more views. Vierling got his fame on TikTok by filming himself while drinking and showcasing the antics that ensued. People online quickly found joy in Vierling’s content, which helped his Internet fame while simultaneously feeding a beast of burgeoning alcoholism.
Howard explains that, as Vierling’s fame grew, he’d find himself pushing himself to say something “a little crazier.” He continued to epitomize this image of himself as a “carefree, goofy guy with a little bit of a drinking problem” in his content until one day, he realized he was unable to make a TikTok without drinking first.
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“Alcohol problems were a part of my brand for a long time,” Vierling tells Howard. “It was fun making the videos with alcohol—until it wasn’t [...] When I’m drinking, I’m not a happy person. I was angry that I couldn’t get myself out of that drinking stage, couldn’t take myself away from it. The only coping mechanism I had was to drink more.”
This ushers in another dark side of Internet stardom: the subservience you feel toward the same people causing you distress, whether that’s because of the hate they inundate you with or their deafening cries for more, more content. Because love or hate, influencers still need the views. They still need the content. Like I said, influencers are always “on” and they’re constantly trying to outdo the people around them and themselves. Hund even tells Howards that this never-sated cottage industry of content creation proves taxing to a person.
Despite all of that, influencerdom remains one of the most covetable jobs out there for the average person. According to a report from Morning Consult that Howard cites, 86% of Gen Z and Millennials state they’d post sponsored content they’d then get paid for and 54% say they would be an influencer.
“For many, creating content feels like an appealing way to achieve financial freedom in an increasingly online world,” Howard writes. “Plus, it’s a way to make money from something they’re already doing: spending time on social media. Not to mention, in the beginning, it’s often fun and can be profitable.”
Influencerdom is a more attainable version of fame. You just need to act as yourself—or at least the version of yourself viewers want to see—for the average very-online person, and you too can achieve the recognition and experience of people fawning over you.
In the beginning of the book, Anna similarly enjoys the glamor of her life as a burgeoning Internet personality, even though she seems keenly aware of the facade of it all. She goes to parties, relishes in every positive comment, and relishes in being tangential to anyone more famous than her.
Shortly after Anna attends the Blaze party, her mother passes away. In the aftermath of her mother’s death, Anna becomes detached. She attends a few more Blaze parties, gains more followers and sponsorships, before becoming apathetic. She stops attending Blaze parties, causing the brand and Jake to become angry with her and blacklist her. After getting blacklisted, several of Anna’s sponsors and followers abandon her, with those that remain “shackled to the ghost of the girl they thought they loved,” Anna narrates.
Long after she’s been excommunicated from the world of Internet celebrity and undergoes the Aesthetica™ procedure, Anna still finds herself missing exposure of any kind—both on the Internet and off.
“I suspect I’ll recover, return, and sometimes the wanting will, too: to be beautiful, to be seen, to be loved and never left,” she narrates. “Desire like that isn’t a failure, or a girlhood flight of fancy. It’s a fact of every life.”
She’s not the only influencer to feel this way, and there’s science to back that up—a fact Howard highlights when speaking with Jaime Zuckerman, PhD, a clinical psychologist based in Pennsylvania. Zuckerman tells Howards that, from a “neurological standpoint,” creating and posting content offers these “intermittent hits of dopamine” that are almost like a drug in and of itself.
“When influencers aren’t using social media, they’re (probably) experiencing dopamine withdrawal after being online for hours at a time,” Howard writes. “This puts them at an even higher risk for anxiety and depression than those who don’t make a living on the Internet, who can also fall victim to the dopamine rush of social media,” Zuckerman says. “Add money and fame into the mix and the combination becomes particularly harmful.”
As both Rowbottom and Howard illustrate, the world of content creation—not just the actual creation, but also the consumption of it—can prove incredibly dangerous to a person’s well-being. Because at the end of the day, whatever you’re creating often becomes an extension of (if not part of) yourself, and it can sometimes prove difficult to separate the two. Take this very newsletter for instance. Get Rec’d is built on my love for reading. Yet, a constant struggle I experience with maintaining this newsletter is figuring out how to keep building off this passion and love without climbing so high that it turns it into manual labor (which it admittedly sometimes can). Rowbottom and Howard both impress that whether we’re creating content or consuming it, we all need to unwind ourselves from the Internet a bit at some point.
At the end of the book, after she’s received the Aesthetica™ procedure, Anna finds herself wandering around. She spots a woman and her daughter, who is holding a toy wand. As she watches the mother-daughter duo, Anna thinks about her own relationship with her mother and the things she wishes she could tell this little girl. It’s a reflection on the notion of power and how we can get it, a consideration of the facades we all wear at any given time (with the Internet or without), and an encouragement to think more about how we decide to use those facades.
“Not my child. But if she was, I would tell her to hold fast to her wand, her power,” Anna says. “Not my child, but I can still act in service of her future. I can share a story to help make the boundaries between reality and illusion easier for her to consider and choose.”
Wondering what Aesthetica might’ve been like if it was set 50 years ago?
Try reading (or watching) Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls. Fun fact: it was the last film Sharon Tate was in.