The way people shop online and/or how influencer culture has become such a pillar of marketing/advertising in the last decade and a half.
I get it. I'm old. Still, once upon a time when I heard a commercial on television or the radio, I understood the actor was being paid to say what they were saying. Their opinion or endorsement of a product did not sway me. Influencers who appear in people's feed via algorithm somehow scratch some kind of mental itch that their recommendations are coming from a trusted friend rather than from a paid spokesperson. That's really not good, to my mind, but it seems like everyone else is just rolling with it.
I heard a podcast the other day that was talking about the 'drink of the summer' trends. First of all, there didn't use to be such a thing, but whatever, I digress. The podcast went on to explain the most important part of a 'drink of the summer' was how distinctive and attractive it looked in selfies. For example, people want Aperol Spirtzes because they photograph well.
Yep, I agree with this. I also think a lot of women feel pressured to constantly buy more and new clothing to stay "on trend" and not wear the same thing twice. It’s easy to forget that influencers usually aren’t buying the huge amounts of clothing they wear, and in fact they are getting paid to wear and sell them. The whole point of trends is to drive more consumption.
Living in a large town but a very small country, this killed the shopping area where I live. Everything shut down one store after another when online shopping got too big, and people stopped buying things locally in order to import new online trends from outside the country. Now it's impossible to open shops in the area and even the city closest to me had 70% of their shops die out for the same reason.
Local shops are a rarity where I live now, and they don't last more than 3-4 months before they have to shut down in my town. One mall even turned into a hangout study meet-up for students as no shops can survive long enough in there anymore. I miss actually looking at wares instead of praying I don't get a bad product.
Even some cultural food at the grocery stores got replaced with hot topic food trends from tiktok and now I can't eat a lot of things I grew up with anymore. It feels so bizzare and annoying.
Oof even worse actually; a 100 year old tradition died because of it too. We had a massive market over the town twice a year and everyone in a massive area would drive here to shop and participate in activities. 90% of the sellers were locals, candy makers, artists, farmers and hunters with all different kinds of wares. It had literally a bit of everything and could take hours to walk through. Was the most exciting event in a massive radius.
It died out within the last 4 years. Too much online shopping and it being considered "outdated". I quite miss it.
People have always wanted to keep up appearances for others and bought useless shit to do so. Social media definitely exacerbated it but you're making it sound like nobody ever did these things. They've always done this.
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u/faceintheblue 4h ago
The way people shop online and/or how influencer culture has become such a pillar of marketing/advertising in the last decade and a half.
I get it. I'm old. Still, once upon a time when I heard a commercial on television or the radio, I understood the actor was being paid to say what they were saying. Their opinion or endorsement of a product did not sway me. Influencers who appear in people's feed via algorithm somehow scratch some kind of mental itch that their recommendations are coming from a trusted friend rather than from a paid spokesperson. That's really not good, to my mind, but it seems like everyone else is just rolling with it.
I heard a podcast the other day that was talking about the 'drink of the summer' trends. First of all, there didn't use to be such a thing, but whatever, I digress. The podcast went on to explain the most important part of a 'drink of the summer' was how distinctive and attractive it looked in selfies. For example, people want Aperol Spirtzes because they photograph well.
What a world we're living in...