Parasocial demand and celebrity politics

If you don't make your living creating content online, you probably think of yourself as the furthest thing from an influencer — a designation that has developed the same slightly dirty connotation as being a celebrity, especially a celebrity like Paris Hilton, back in the 1990s. But influencers have cultivated and refined a mode of existing online that has filtered down into the way so many of us navigate online spaces: in the way you craft your profile on LinkedIn, in your font choice for a pic of your houseplant on IG, in the TikTok your coworker cajoles you into making on a slow day at work. The subtle way that influencer vernacular has entered our lives.....that's INFLUENCER CREEP.

Sophie Bishop coined the term to talk about the ways that influencer behaviors (specifically: self-branding, performance of authenticity, constant optimization) were codifying and re-setting online norms, and joins me to answer all your typically excellent (and complicated) questions about the performance of self and work online.

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Show Notes:

• Find out more about Dr. Sophie Bishop's work here

• Buy Influencer Creep: How Optimization, Authenticity, and Self-Branding Transform Creative Culture here

• Just another example of a weird workplace tok where everyone's awkward

• The Atlantic piece about getting bullied for adopting dogs online

• Sophie references Brooke Erin Duffy's work on authenticity

• Sophie references Jodie Dean's work on communicative capitalism

• In case you don't know who Bama Morgan is (and here's her TikTok)

• Silly Pink Shoes on Instagram!

We're currently looking for your questions for future episodes about:

• New trends you've noticed in the world of MOMFLUENCERS

• For our next Culture Of Place: Puerto Rico!

• How to process all the STUFF accumulated from relatives (we have a really helpful organizer with a bunch of mental health training for this one!)

• The State of The CHAIN RESTAURANT — and chain restaurant supply chain!!! (I'm so excited for this one)

• What would LIFE AFTER CARS look like?? (With the hosts of the War on Cars pod!)

• Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment. You can ask about anything, it’s literally the name of the segment

• As always, you can submit your questions (and ideas for future eps) here

  For this week’s discussion: What sort of influencer creep have you noticed in your feeds... or in your own behavior?