Hello everyone! I’m trying something new on the blog this week. Since I read a bunch of books that were on the same thing pretty much one after the other (okay, I may have broken it up with some fiction reads), I decided to post them one after the other. On Friday, you’ll see an essay that I wrote after reading all the books, basically just me trying to see if the ideas in there would bounce off one another. I hope that we can have a good discussion throughout the week!

As someone who’s pretty online but not a fan of influencers in general, I was intrigued by Stephanie McNeal’s book. I’ve read a few accounts about influencers (The Accidental Influencer is probably the latest book), followed some of the drama (like the Caroline Calloway one), and I’ve even bought a course (The Instaretreat by Sara Tasker). Basically, I know about influencers, even if I don’t actively follow them.

Swipe Up For More is a largely positive account of influencers and why they matter. Stephanie McNeal follows three influencers:

• Mirna Valerio – Health and Fitness Influencer
• Caitlin Covington – Fashion Influencer
• Shannon Bird – Mommy Influencer

She takes us through part of their day, tells us about their lives, and also their challenges. Along the way, McNeal also engages in discussions about pay, race relations in the US, featuring your child online, and receiving hate while trying to be authentic. Generally, though, this is a positive book about influencers; while McNeal acknowledges there are problems in the industry, she generally thinks that they are/can be a force for good and she’s a fan of many influencers.

I am perhaps a bit more sceptical. There are really two areas where I’m not totally convinced about her arguments: one is that influencers deserve their large paychecks and should, in fact, earn more. While I can see how influencing is work in the sense that there is effort and time required to come up with the content to post, I also can’t stop thinking about how literally everyone on social media spends time and effort to come up with content, most of them doing it for free. The reason why influencers get paid isn’t really their effort, it’s their audience and I don’t really know how I feel about people getting paid because they are popular. Should they be getting paid more than teachers? than doctors?

Of course, this is really a personal issue for me, rather than an objective critique of the industry/society. I’m generally of the mindset that while pay disparities are reasonable when we consider time/effort/education needed to be in certain professions (e.g. doctor vs cleaner), I think we vastly overpay some sectors and underpay others because we overvalue and undervalue their work. And generally, actors, athletes, and influencers are in the category I already consider “overpaid”. I’m not saying they shouldn’t get paid – they should – but I don’t think they should be getting paid that much.

Apart from that, I think it’s important to note that this book only follows US influencers and doesn’t really talk about people in the UK, Europe, Africa, Asia, etc. I actually would have liked to see more non-US voices, especially in the discussion of race relations because, as usual, US voices tend to be the only voices/the voices that dominate in this topic and I think there will be value in looking at other countries to see if this is a US-only thing, or is it worldwide and if there’s anything we can be learning from one another.

By the way, I am reading Hit Makers right now and reading this made me think that influencers are a good example of how products don’t really go viral – they tend to get a boost from influencers with large accounts or from marketing campaigns where all the influencers are talking about it at the same time, thus giving it the appearance of virality. I’m definitely going to keep this book in mind as I continue reading Hit Makers.

Overall, I thought this was an interesting look. Although largely positive, it’s still a fairly intimate look into the lives of three American influencers. After reading this, I remembered that I have another book on “the dark side of Influencers” on my TBR so I shall read that next.