Are Influencers Trying Too Hard With The Pressures Of The Community?

Influencers love their holidays and travelling to new places. They fill our Instagram feeds with FOMO (fear of missing out) and images of food, places and outfits based on the cultures they're part of. However, what I want to investigate is whether they're feeling pressured into today's society to be someone on their channel that they're not in reality.

During my last week of teaching in Consumer Behaviour, we learnt about Culture Appropriation.

Culture Appropriation is:

"The unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas e.t.c of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society"

When I was learning about this, the ideas of pressures of social media Influencers and Youtubers came into my head and I started to jot things I had noticed.

From what we see on social media, Influencers do have a particular standard and lifestyle to follow and we can imagine that there must be a pressure to live up to that expectation. They have to even mark now what they're gifted and what is an Ad on social media for Brands and PR Packages. Even little things like that could cause pressure to these Influencers who look very happy on our phone screens.

The most recent example of this I can think of is Influencers 'Photo-shopping' themselves into photos and pretending to be somewhere they can't afford to go. Anastasia Kingsnorth (18 year old Youtuber) photo-shopped herself into photos from the USA's music festival Coachella and made her viewers believe she was enjoying the second weekend of music. She controlled all of her social media to make it look realistic.

Youtuber Roxxsaurus also did this but made her viewers believe she was in Bali for a luxury holiday. This included doing Instagram Stories showing her suitcase half packed. Despite their fantastic Photo editing skills, not all their viewers were falled. Some viewers even argued that these types of videos are now becoming incorrect especially to people who look up to these types of Influencers as role models and people who they can relate to.

I think however, it was done as part of creativity and maybe could've been produced because of the pressures of social media and how social media is seen for the positives and not for the negatives. Reality is hidden and in today's society people feel they have to show the good online all the time. I think about it when watching Youtube and looking through what videos are produced by the Youtubers. Again, this could be due to the pressure of having to reach deadlines for uploads and keeping all social media updated all the time.

However, there are Youtubers who produce some fantastic content and who feel they can be themselves over the camera. I really look up to Imogenation and her videos. She produces the most honest content I've seen. I've spoken about her and people think she's weird but she's just being Imogen and it's people like her who will change the Youtube community and make people feel it's okay to be original and themselves.

What is your views on Culture Appropriation? What do you think in terms of pressure on Youtubers?

References:

Oxford Dictionary Meaning of Culture Appropriation