I redownloaded TikTok and started spiraling about influencers

I’ve had TikTok deleted from my phone on and off for two years now, and the other day I started scrolling for the first time in a while. In the days that have passed since, I’ve been thinking a lot about the role of influencers within our consumer-driven society.

Online influencers emerged years ago because people connected with them, enjoyed their content, and liked seeing the lives they lived. While paid ads and promotions have long been a thing, going back to the YouTube glory days, the rise of Reels and TikToks led to an explosion in the influencer-promoting world. Nowadays, influencers can barely mention or show a product without the assumption that they’re being paid to do so. From a corporate standpoint, the rise of influencer marketing and its importance is apparent through the endless LinkedIn posts explaining how to do influencer marketing right and job postings that increasingly call for influencer experience and influencer marketing roles.

I started thinking about this role that influencers have as marketers. Companies look at someone trending online and see an opportunity. They see a space to increase sales and to capitalize on the likability of the internet personality. For them, influencers are essentially a canvas to put an ad upon, not so different from a billboard or a Facebook ad. But while people can’t trust a billboard that can’t talk or a commercial with a celebrity reciting memorized lines, they can trust the influencer, whom they began following for their personality. Influencer marketing capitalizes upon the trust built from influencers being human and showing (what appears to be) their raw personality online. Because of that automatic layer of trust, influencers speaking on a product seem much more valuable than just displaying an ad on the street.

But it felt dirty the more I thought about it. Are influencers just another form of advertising space? It’s known that they make a good portion of income strictly from brand deals and promos, and in that way, they basically make a living serving as a living, breathing advertisement. Even just by wearing free PR sent by a company in a short video, influencers exude their influence over the viewers, who then comment asking where the pieces are from, share links, and go browsing for similar pieces. It makes you wonder how much of the backdrop, outfits, and words are intentional when you watch a simple video.

Obviously, there are lots of influencers who don’t focus much on brand deals or talking about the clothes, products, food, etc that they consume daily. But just by simply existing online as a likable figure makes people interested in how they live their lives day by day. So even if the online personality is not intentionally promoting products and ideas to their audiences, are they still a sort of walking, talking advertisement?

This is not to discount the real likability and personality of online figures, but rather a curiosity into the evolving role that they play in our lives, and the role they play for brands. While it feels rude and a bit extreme to compare influencers to a billboard, it’s hard to ignore just how persuasive they are in their audience’s lives, whether on purpose or not. Hallie Batchelder sits down in a video with a pair of sunglasses and a hoodie on, and suddenly, everyone in the comments is asking where everything’s from and sending links to buy. You scroll to the next, and someone else is making their morning yogurt bowl, and then there’s a discreet discount code in the caption for you to get your discounted organic yogurt.

I noticed that the ads on TikTok had also evolved a fair amount since I’d last been on, with so many fake scrolling ads coming across my feed (I admittedly tried to swipe through them and was sent to the website link on multiple occasions). All of these ads basically pretend to be influencers talking about things that they naturally enjoy/wear/eat, but are actually just links to websites selling whatever’s in the photo. Besides being super annoying to fall for accidentally, I think it also greatly takes away from the credibility of real creators and makes their posts feel more like these fake ads. Beyond that, it makes the whole scrolling experience feel more curated towards driving sales and brand awareness. And that’s not even touching on the entire TikTok Shop phenomenon.

The more I thought about it, the grosser I felt, as if I was just scrolling through videos ultimately curated by influencer marketing teams, for the purpose of driving site traffic and converting sales and other marketing buzzwords. Is TikTok just a land of talking ads??? Maybe not all of it, but definitely a portion of it. A sizable portion. All I know is, I deleted the app again.