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Journalism of Courage
Social media personalities who build a significant following on platforms and then use these to market and sell products to their audience as ‘influencers’ are constantly appearing on apps like Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. During the pandemic, in particular, when online shopping and social media both got a boost, influencers reigned most users’ feeds. But some resistance to the concept has developed over time, at least on one of these apps, and now it has a name: “deinfluencing”. What does it mean? We take a look.
TikTok videos under the hashtag #deinfluencing have surpassed 68 million views. The trend has been most prominently featured on TikTok, perhaps because it is among the most favoured apps for influencers. It has a young demographic and also frequently spawns various kinds of trends appealing to young people in the areas of beauty, fashion and lifestyle.
But where influencers engaged in brand deals through positive reviews or simply advertising products related to make-up, jewellery and skincare, deinfluencing means the opposite – influencers telling people not to buy certain products.
According to Glossy, a US beauty and wellness website, apart from tiredness from constant trends and people selling items, there may be economic reasons behind this slowdown in purchasing more and more. With signs of an impending global recession in many countries, deinfluencing offers a way for consumers to opt out of keeping up with trends and owning the latest items.
But it doesn’t just come from a wish to move away from unnecessary consumption. Maddie Wells, a beauty influencer, is credited with being one of the first people to mention the word back in 2020. An ex-employee at a make-up store, she began talking about the products people would return the most in her TikTok videos, therefore telling her followers not to buy them because of their quality. Influencers can also then be more honest and critical in their reviews.
It could further open up the doors to tailored influencing, Fortune noted. A content creator could say what aspects of a product they liked and what didn’t work for them, allowing those watching to decide for themselves what fits best to their own tastes and needs. Companies could gain from this kind of product feedback too, the trend’s supporters say.
Over the years, with the rise of social media marketing and advertising in general, some have criticised these practices for contributing to overconsumption or buying in excess of what is needed. Overconsumption has been pointed to not just because of the negative association with accumulating things needlessly, but because it relates to causes such as environmental destruction and climate change.
Higher consumption drives more production, resulting in further exploitation of natural resources, more fuel for deliveries, wasteful packaging, and so on. This is a reason why there has been growing support for shopping from local stores instead of asking for home deliveries through e-commerce giants.
Influencers also see the deinfluencing route as helping them approach their audiences in a different way, reversing the expectation that they would always be aiming to sell more, instead opting for suggesting some limited products which are worth spending for.
However, it doesn’t mean influencers themselves are going away, because ultimately they are still factors in determining choices made by consumers – they just move from influencing “What to buy” to “What not to buy”. As there are still business needs they have to take care of, and as they cannot completely shun leisure shopping, the success of deinfluencing may not be too far-reaching.
Some further believe there is no real ideological attempt to modify people’s buying practices here, but simply another trend’s turn in the spotlight. That it often features buzzwords related to the environment, or even mental health (connecting it to why people feel the pressure to constantly buy things), has been cited, too, for questioning its long-term efficacy.
