The Inescapable Allure of Influencing

money money money money, money

With the recent gift guide discourse and a lot of questions directed my way about Lee Tilghman’s departure from, and then return to influencing, I am taking the paywall off this newsletter I wrote a year ago. What’s interesting to me is that so many people still don’t really understand how influencing works, what kind of money is involved, how much they get for free, and how insidious the ads are in their content (especially when much of the time they are not properly disclosed). But influencers love to claim that “everybody knows” how it works and I think this is a way to shirk responsibility and avoid any accountability for being part of the problem.

It’s something I’ve spent the last two years trying to reckon with, and the reason I started this newsletter in the first place. It’s not just about extricating myself from the influencer industry, but also pulling back the curtain for everyone impacted by it. You can read what I wrote last December below.

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Through an act of pure kismet, two things showed up right before I sat down to write this newsletter. One was a package from a brand I hadn’t worked with in years. It was a mini-fridge for skincare products (don’t even get me started). The second was an email from a brand offering me almost as much money as I made this entire year on Substack…let’s take a look at the numbers.

I am still somewhat surprised by the amount of paid partnerships that come my way. I am almost non-existent on social media (from an influencer perspective). I do not post on IG Stories except to send people to this newsletter. I post to my IG feed around 1-2x/month. I do not have TikTok, Threads or X, and I’ve made it abundantly clear I will not use this Substack for paid ads.

So when I get emails proposing, for example, a $15k partnership for 3 months, it’s still a bit of a shocker, and I loathe to admit, it can also feel a little hard to say no.

In a moral sense it’s not difficult to decline to spon-con. There’s plenty of reasons I left influencing behind. I don’t want to spend my life on social media nor do I want to encourage others to. I don’t want to push people to buy more things they don’t need. I don’t want to participate in over-consumption. I don’t want to be a voice for multi-billion dollar corporations exploiting the workers who make their products while destroying our planet, polluting the air we breath and the water we drink.

But also, I want to afford healthcare, food, housing, transportation, insurance, etc., etc. And so yeah, when a brand dangles a $15k carrot in my face, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit, sometimes, it gives me pause. In a recent conversation with someone as I was explaining my career pivot and how I was not getting paid by brands, and also writing about why we do not need to consume stuff all the time he replied with, “well it’s hard to make any money doing that.” Yeahhhh…

It’s true, ads are entirely unavoidable as a part of everyday life. Research suggests that we “are exposed to anywhere from 4,000 to 10,000 ads daily.” That number is astonishing, and surely our brains don’t actually process all that information, but just thinking about it makes my head hurt.

And so, the prevailing school of thought seems to be, when ads are so insidious to everyday life, what’s the harm in getting in on the action? After all, isn’t is a good thing if brands can subsidize our work instead of everyday people? This is the story I sold myself in justifying getting paid by brands, for a long time. And it was when I read this essay by Haley Nahman that flipped the narrative on its head…

In America, the pursuit of wealth has become a virtue in its own right. To work hard, to hustle, to get your bag—these ideas are increasingly divorced from achieving the means to live well and have instead become goals in themselves, regardless of what we actually need, and regardless of who’s exploited in the process.

During this holiday season alone I had offers from brands and affiliates that probably totaled close to $50k (I stopped keeping track). Every time I deleted one of those emails or responded with “I don’t do paid ads in my newsletter or on social media” there was a little piece of me that came alive. A feeling that money can not replace. To make decisions (albeit sometimes difficult ones) that aligned with my personal values gave me a sense of confidence no amount of money from a brand or likes on a photo could ever bring.

I don’t aim to romanticize struggle or deny the reality of the deeply flawed systems we live within, but rather provide a reminder that opting out, even in small ways, is a form of resistance.

The system is clearly flawed. The US lacks any sort of social safety net, and so, many people are forced to do things that may go against their own moral compass simply because they have basic needs like health insurance, housing, childcare, and food. But it’s just as important to see how we are forced to live under this system. As Haley goes on to write:

Just as selling out has become a prerequisite to fame, moral compromise has become a prerequisite to existing under capitalism. But we should acknowledge that part of our assimilation into this system is the way we become indoctrinated by it.

You can see how it’s a slippery slope. Amazon Prime memberships justified in the name of convenience (it’s also the number one online beauty retailer the US) even though Jeff Bezos is a union-busting billionaire and Amazon financially backs politicians who support abortion bans. Brand campaigns touting their support for women using influencers and celebrities to push their messages of inclusivity, self care, and social justice while funneling money to anti-abortion candidates at every level of government.

We may not be able to escape this flawed system entirely, but we can still choose how we show up within it. I’m grateful to have the privilege to show up here, and I’m thankful you’ve chosen that too. The decisions we make are a reflection of our values, and while that may be messy and complicated, I hope this newsletter leaves no doubt about where I stand.

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