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!)
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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?

Thanks to the sponsors of today's episode!

Show Notes:

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

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

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