Influencing goes deeper than we think

What do you think of when you think of influencing? In my mind, it generally looks like this. The most beautiful person you’ve ever seen smiles at you and tells you about a teeth-whitening strip. Because of the sheer divine beauty of this person, you buy the teeth-whitening strip. You scroll on. Life continues.

Really, it’s simplified down to seeing the thing, liking the thing (or the person promoting the thing), buying the thing. That does happen – this January, just to give one of many examples, I bought a pair of trainers because a runner I liked wore the same ones. It’s influencing 101.

More often than that though, it’s more insidious, more covert, more pervasive. Influencing isn’t just buy-like-see. It’s being taught to like a certain type of clothes, certain ways of looking and certain ways of being, even when we don’t realise that it’s happening. It’s not only the teeth-whitening strip you’re being sold, but the furniture in the back of the shot, or the clothes that person’s wearing.

Think, for example, about the last time you bought a Diet Coke. I would say that there’s almost no chance it’s because of any one advert that you’ve seen. But think how many adverts you have seen. Next time you’re on the bus back from university, count quite how many adverts you see for it. It doesn’t change how you feel about the product, but there are so many images imprinted on your brain that the next time you go to buy one, that’s what you reach for instinctively.

To return to the topic at hand. This is, after all, the Fashion and Beauty Section. Maybe, if you’re an avid reader of the section, you buy products based on carefully curated reviews. Conversely, I know I buy a moisturiser if I’ve seen it a lot, in the background of shots, or in a repetitive stream of adverts. These don’t actively convince me that it’s the best choice, but through a completely overwhelming number of images take away any feeling that I have a choice.

The big thing this summer in men’s fashion (by which I mean Instagram Reels of men getting dressed) was an ‘old money aesthetic’. I saw it, and I laughed at it. I still maintain that you can’t call your style ‘old money’ if you’re clad head to toe in Boohoo. But while I never openly embraced the idea that this is how I should dress – I never clicked on an affiliate link and bought an item –  I own more linen shirts (4) than I used to (0). I’m writing this looking at a cashmere overcoat hung up on my door. Maybe it’s just part of growing up – just a coincidence that I dress slightly more smartly than I used to. But maybe it’s something more disturbing, that at every moment, we’re getting sucked into marketing, even when we are trying not to, even openly rejecting what we’re being sold.

I’ll leave you with one more example, perhaps more concerning than the last. About two years ago, I picked up running in the place of lifting weights. It was about at that moment that I really noticed a shift in what we were being told was the ideal male body. 15-inch biceps were out, and slimmer physiques were in. I never made the connection at the time. But that I swapped a sport that made you bigger for one that made you smaller at almost exactly the moment that I noticed that’s what everyone on Twitter thought looked good – that doesn’t feel like a coincidence.

This then is the burden that we bear, as the subjects of late capitalism. You can’t turn a corner without being sold something – this much we know. What concerns me, though, is that we can’t even escape being sold things. Influencing will get you – whether you like it or not.