Taut and Bought Indian Influencers

A case study in hyperreality.

“In its essence, the influencer culture has punctured our Instagram feeds with modern teleshopping advertisements.”

India is big – perhaps too big to be distilled into a few blue ticked accounts on Instagram. The multi-vocal, polytheistic, desegregated nation-state is home to some of the poorest and richest strata of world societies. Amidst the boom in virtual advertising and our collective virtual destinies laid at the mercy of one platform – Instagram – a new species of Indian influencers has emerged and established a monolithic conduit of real-time conversations. Their following is vast, as large as two million followers, and their content generation models although variegated in aesthetic, are calculable concaves of self-aggrandisation. The Instagram algorithm is overwhelmingly partial to trends – in fashion, in music, in conversations around mental wellness, the performance of positivity, and orthorexic furtherances. The operative word here is performance – once lauded for their authenticity and baring their lives to their followers on Instagram, now, like the rest of us, influencers must make money from their living rooms, locked away from reality with their ring lights. And when inspiration doesn’t filter in through the bedroom window like the dust riding on the rays of the sun, sponsored content floods our feeds. If Instagram is the new teleshopping, then we have to expect streaming delays with interludes of sponsored advertisements. The problem arises when the TV programming is interrupted regularly by synthetically sweet long captions of adoring advertisements.

The source of revenue on Instagram for influencers comes from partnering with brands and companies who offer them monetary compensation in exchange for two stories worth of fame – or if they pay handsomely, maybe even a permanent fixture on their Instagram feeds. The pain point for users like me isn’t a war cry against the inevitable monetisation of influencers’ bodies and lives – although that in itself is a behemoth of an ethics discussion; rather, the plastic that coats these influencers’ words, dress, and bodies. The case of the plasticity of the influencer culture is very well applicable to influencers across the globe, however, in a country like India, inching steadily towards a Hindu Rashtra, the politics of Instagram are not as simple as waking up at five in the morning to do yoga. The Tauktae cyclone that devastated the states of Maharashtra, Karnataka and Gujarat in May 2021 killing 24 people and injuring others severely, only attracted a pretty background for most influencers for making ASMR Reels. The by-product of the cyclone was torrential rain in Delhi, and one such blue tick wrote, “if you can’t beat them, join them,” while reclining into the cobra pose on the wet ground beneath her. During the second wave in India, when COVID afflicted families were scuttling in their search for oxygen cylinders, ICU beds, and plasma; faceless volunteers with ordinary Instagram accounts banded together to create a virtual chain of telephone numbers, WhatsApp groups, and tweets with hashtags. Meanwhile, most Indian influencers continued with the tirade of posting their workout routines, what they eat in a day, and how they want to continue fighting the good fight of creating relaxing – positive – virtual spaces for their followers. This advocation of positivity had, and has, no airtime for burning pyres or stories in real-time. Influencer earnings in India have surged to an incredible 200% percent in the past two years according to the Indian Express. Indian Influencers on Instagram haven’t earned their keep by posting resources for COVID stricken families – in fact, their invisible and concerted marketing strategy has done them well in avoiding the snot-soaked reality of the country. Here, it’s noteworthy that most Indian fashion influencers with the largest followings are typically young, thin, and moderately well-off women, belonging to the upper echelons of caste and religion in the country.

For an influential group of people, especially those that we may never meet in real life, to establish a strong foothold in our lives, their own lives must be unattainable and relatable all at once. For these individuals to be influencers, they must possess something that we don’t have, and they then, become channels of our artificial aspirations. We may not even want what they have, but the toxic chain of demand and supply on Instagram is such that if we see it enough – whether it’s a Louis Vuitton crossbody bag or Pinterest inspired chunky boots, we’ll crave the very thing that we never thought we’d need. This disconnect in the spaces of our real homes and the spaces we aspire to on digestible squares on Instagram becomes a fundamental denominator in driving sales virtually, where flashing neon billboards are now replaced with the taut and bought bodies of Indian influencers.  

Jean Baudrillard’s theory of hyperreality is pertinent to this discussion of the fusion of reality with the simulation of reality. In simple terms, new technology diminishes the ability of our consciousness to distinguish between what is real and what is fiction, for, there are no clear boundaries to ascertain where one ends and the other begins. Instagram in this moment is our reality and fantasy rolled together into a tightly wound coil of perceived autonomy, never-ending competition, and vacuous relatedness. In sum, hyperreality detaches us from any meaningful emotional engagements, instead relying on artificial simulations, and the “endless reproductions of fundamentally empty appearance.”

Instagram is fabulously successful because its impetus is rooted in our failure of imagined reality. We are out-posted and outnumbered by others, and the vacuity of feeling like we’re almost touching the gods of the algorithm never truly leaves. If Instagram has plastered onto us like a wet wall in the monsoon rains, then by extension our self-perception is also reliant on its automated validation. In this scenario, influencers become messiahs of digital salvation, promising to bridge the gap while moving farther and farther away to fill their own coffers by dint of our shared insecurities. They are the fantasy with their sponsored chocolates and sumptuous bed linens, while ours is a thinly gauzed move towards their gingerly constructed virtual reality. Influencers’ feeds and projected realities are like Jenga blocks, wherein something must always be plugged into empty spaces without disturbing the foundation of the tower. Indian influencers like their counterparts around the world are brands, and brands are promises. More accurately, a brand is the promise of an experience. Through their personal brand identity, which includes the gamut of edited pictures, signature filters, and niche content, influencers are tasked with building a synthetic following in collaboration with other brands.

In its essence, the influencer culture has punctured our Instagram feeds with modern teleshopping advertisements.

To build and maintain a brand it is important to remain consistent – whether this is through language, colours, or taglines. And when these influencers advertise themselves, or market other brands through their brand, they must die on the hill of their built visual and auditory environments. The influential American designer, Halston, sold his brand name to Norton Simon for $16 million in 1973. This strategic move afforded him creative control with almost unlimited financial sponsorship. However, the senior management changed hands and Halston signed a six-year licensing deal worth one billion dollars with J.C. Penny. The designer, known for his pillbox Jacqueline Kennedy hat, lost his high-end retail clients by peddling $24 makeup items to the general population. Halston died a rich man, but he lost his promise – his brand. In the context of Indian influencers on Instagram, the larger management is their relevance on Instagram. There will always be someone funnier, prettier, smarter; but to keep appearing at the top of their followers’ feed, day after day, these Indian influencers must keep their promises even when they can’t. Their promise is their brand, not their name, and to refrigerate their identities as influencers, they must double down on their promises, however outrageous, however insipid – to cement their brands as mouthpieces of our zeitgeist, instead of melting in puddles around each other.

Perhaps a more caustic reflection to demand of ourselves and the Indian influencers that we choose to follow, is whether they are successful in influencing us at all. And if they truly are able to change our decisions and direct our opinions through their brand, is their promise an invitation for us to join their simulated reality? Here, then we must introspect why we would want to be an insignificant particle in someone else’s galaxy when we could create our own using the same platform and reaching out to the same brands. The clear-eyed answer is that time is itself a luxury, second only to money and health which are important determinants in the circuitous relationship of financial, able-bodied, and pretty privilege. Baudrillard calls this hyperreality a world of spectacle and seduction that creates and maintains “unreal worlds”, perennially depriving us of imagined worlds that we never knew we needed.