With the prospect of challenging the overabundance of material goods relentlessly promoted by #influencers across #socialmedia, #deinfluencers are emerging to push back against impulsive purchases and waste. The de-escalation starts now…
While many young people are being influenced by social media into making impulsive purchases, others are using TikTok to advise people on what not to buy. According to the Associated Press, the “de-influencing” trend is the opposite of earlier trends such as #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt, in which users showcased products they had purchased after seeing them on TikTok.
Several TikTokers are now informing their followers about products that aren’t worth the money, or encouraging them to resist the temptation to buy. Some warn about beauty products that fail to deliver on their promises, while others tell their followers to steer clear of hairstyles and trendy water bottles that became popular through TikTok itself.
#deinfluencing
Videos featuring the hashtag #deinfluencing have amassed more than 150 million views in just a few months.
It remains unclear how the trend started, but one of the earliest videos was posted by a former beauty retail employee, who shared lists of the products that consumers return most frequently.
Paige Pritchard, 33, was herself caught up in the consumerism frenzy. She decided to become a de-influencer during the first year after graduating from college, when she realised she had spent her entire annual salary — $60,000 — solely on clothes, cosmetics and hair products.
“I could barely afford to move out of my parents’ home by the end of the year,” she says.
Authenticity
TikTokers embracing the new anti-consumerist trend may come across as more trustworthy, which could help them gain popularity, says Abhishek Kumar, a lecturer at the University of Essex who studies how Generation Z interacts with content creators.
His team’s research found that Gen Z typically ignores influencer campaigns that appear to be controlled by brands. Although influencers and brands have now become almost synonymous, users still value authenticity.
A lack of authenticity can seriously undermine an influencer’s credibility. Recently, Mikayla Nogueira, a makeup artist with 14.4 million followers on TikTok, was accused of wearing false eyelashes in a sponsored video promoting a L’Oréal mascara.
Nevertheless, influencers remain closely tied to companies producing all kinds of products. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, the influencer marketing industry skyrocketed from $1.6 billion in 2016 to $16 billion in 2022.
De-influencing is unlikely to reverse the trend, and in some cases it is already becoming a parody of itself, with some users using the hashtag to criticise specific products and recommend alternatives instead - which, in practice, means they are not encouraging their followers to buy less.
Mandy Lee, a fashion critic who supports the anti-consumerist movement on TikTok, says she is sceptical of influencers who are suddenly rushing to embrace the new trend.
“I find it difficult to trust someone who has never seriously engaged with products and suddenly starts doing so,” she says. | “I would question how genuine it really is.”
