Who are they? Where did they come from? And more importantly, who decided we needed their advice?
Years ago, if you wanted to know something, you asked someone who had actually done it. If the car was making a noise, you asked a mechanic. If the roof was leaking, you asked a builder. If you wanted advice on your health, you asked a doctor, or at least someone in the family who had once watched a medical programme and now considered themselves qualified.
Now we have influencers.
They appear on your phone from nowhere, standing in spotless kitchens, bedrooms, bathrooms and hotel balconies, telling you how to live your life. They know about skincare, diets, mental health, exercise, fashion, relationships, air fryers, protein powder, holidays, pensions, parenting and, somehow, gut health. There is no subject too large or too complicated for a person in a tracksuit holding an iced coffee.
They all start the same way.
“A lot of you have been asking me…”
Have they? Have they really? Who are these people asking? I have never met one. I have never heard anyone in a shop say, “I must ask that young woman on Instagram what shampoo she uses.” Yet apparently thousands are desperate to know.
Their homes are suspicious too. Every influencer seems to live in a house with white walls, beige furniture, a candle burning, and a bowl of lemons sitting on the kitchen island. Nobody owns that many lemons. In a normal house, the kitchen island has bills, keys, a packet of biscuits, reading glasses, and something that needs to go upstairs but has been sitting there for three weeks.
Influencer kitchens are different. No clutter. No crumbs. No tea towel hanging from the oven door. No one has ever shouted, “Where’s the good scissors?” in that house.
Then there are the food influencers. They tell you they have a “quick and easy midweek meal” for busy families. It has twenty-three ingredients, three pans, a blender, fresh herbs, toasted seeds and something called miso paste. That is not a quick meal. It’s a cookery project.
They say things like, “Just add some fresh coriander.”
There is no “just” about fresh coriander. You either don’t have it, or you bought it last week and it has turned into green soup at the back of the fridge.
Fitness influencers are another crowd altogether. They are up at five in the morning, smiling, stretching, drinking green liquid and telling us there are no excuses.
I have excuses. Plenty of them. Age. Knees. Weather. A deep personal commitment to sitting down. Also, I do not trust anyone who is cheerful before nine o’clock in the morning.
Fashion influencers are perhaps the most mysterious. They put on a plain jumper and tell you it is a “timeless piece.” It costs €180 and looks exactly like something your uncle wore while painting a gate in 1982. But apparently it is “elevated.” That is another influencer word. Everything is elevated now. Coats are elevated. Sandwiches are elevated. Beige trousers are elevated. In my day, if your trousers were elevated, you had pulled them up too far.
Travel influencers are always “discovering hidden gems.” The hidden gem usually has a queue outside it, a gift shop, and 14,000 reviews online. They walk along the beach in slow motion wearing linen, while the rest of us arrive sweating, carrying a plastic bag with sun cream, water, plasters, and a sandwich wrapped in tinfoil.
They say, “You need to go before everyone finds out about it.”
Well, you’ve just told half the internet, so I think that ship has sailed.
The thing that gets me is the confidence. Influencers never seem unsure. They can talk about moisturiser in the morning, investments at lunchtime, and emotional healing by dinner. One week they are telling you to cut out bread. The next week they are launching a wellness journal. Then they are suddenly experts on property, sleep, hormones, and how to become your best self.
Do they know what they are talking about? Some might. To be fair, there are probably a few decent ones out there who try products honestly and give sensible advice. But sensible advice is not very exciting. “This is grand, but don’t be paying full price for it” is useful, but it does not sound very glamorous.
Everything now has to be life-changing. A moisturiser is life-changing. A water bottle is life-changing. A drawer organiser is life-changing. I have reached an age where I can say with some confidence that very few things are life-changing. Marriage, children, illness, retirement, moving house, and finding out the biscuit tin is empty; those are life-changing. A bamboo toothbrush is not.
And yet we watch them. That is the worst of it. We give out about them, but there we are at night, scrolling away, watching someone explain how to fold towels properly. Suddenly you are looking at your own towels with disappointment, even though they have served the family well since 2009.
Maybe influencers are not the problem. Maybe we are. We used to look over the neighbour’s hedge. Now we look into strangers’ kitchens and wonder why our own lives have more crumbs.
In the end, an influencer is just someone who has managed to turn having an opinion into a career. Fair play to them, I suppose. I have had opinions for over seventy years, and nobody has ever offered me a discount code.
Although, if anyone wants a slightly doubtful older man from Donegal to stand in a kitchen holding a frying pan and saying, “It’s fine, but I’d wait until it’s on special offer,” I am available.
Use code: NOTIONS10.
