'If you have a public account, you're asking for it': Decoding influencer fatigue

Are audiences tired of repetitive, staged (read: any) influencer content: of consuming this seemingly perfect, overly styled, one dimensional view of a pretty, narrow world?

We scoff at them (me included) — with their perfect clothes, flawlessly made up faces — looking into the distance, posting pictures with inspirational quotes and witty one liners — relatable, funny, fit, perfect. We don’t buy what they are really selling anyway, or so we say. It seems like Gen Z and the millennials are asking for more authenticity, more realism in the people they see as content creators.

On the other side of that screen, though, is a view that we are rarely exposed to. Influencers are fatigued too.

They are tired, emotionally drained and constantly facing mental health challenges. Challenges that they share only too often on their pages and stories as well.

Recently, an influencer said to me, “It is exhausting to have to think of new ideas every day. I think it, I shoot it, I upload it, but every day has to be new, and that is a lot.”

It seems to me like the ‘influencer’ is on a treadmill — constantly trying to keep up pace with an idea of what ‘the pace’ should be — and yet they wonder if they really are going anywhere. A writer spends years on a book, a filmmaker spends months crafting the final product — but the influencer is constantly churning material — 15 seconds at a time, copies of copies, rehashed songs on repeat, allowing little room for any idea to even germinate, let alone grow to being original or unique, before they feel the next pang of pressure to share.

I spoke to a few friends about this struggle. “There seems to be this idea,” said an influencer friend, “that if you have a public account, you are ‘asking for it’ — so whatever mean comments or trolling you receive, you best deal with it, because hey, you asked for it by making the choice of going public.”

Struggling with fame, the pressures of always keeping up, the idea that we are hooked to a validation drug are not new. Actors and actresses and TV stars have been facing it for years — but what concerns me about the fatigue that we, as people on social media, face is that a) We are ill-equipped and did not expect this when we joined the platform. b) We talk about the idea of a digital detox, getting off platforms but we fear that this will mean cutting off a potential stream of income and never being allowed back in again.

c) The line between famous, getting this attention, and what we do for a living is starting to blur.