Influence and Authenticity

The Paradox of User Generated Content

Demetra Dias is a seventeen-year-old TikTok fashion influencer from New Jersey. Every week, boxes filled with hair spray, hoodies, eyeliner, and tank tops line her doorstep from companies desperately hoping she wears their product in front of her millions of TikTok followers.

Her going rate is 20,000$ a post.

Demetra isn’t the only one. Influencer marketing is said to reach a whopping 24 billion dollars in invested capital this year, up 50% from 2022. Many influencers, like Demetra, do not come from a pedigree of modeling or auditioning for commercials but are typical teenagers creating UGC (user-generated content). Shai Eiseman, founder of Bubble Skincare, explains:

“This generation is programmed to ignore ads,” Eseman says. “They scroll right through it. So because of that, we believe in a grassroots approach.

UGC is original content related to a product or service created by individuals and not by the brand itself. It’s the authentic, unfiltered more experience-driven form of advertising. The polished ad campaign produced in a studio after hours of prep and layers of editing, finalized into a quick, crisp moment of targeted brand awareness, has given way to customers promoting products themselves in their parent’s basement.

From a marketing perspective, it “gives customers a unique opportunity to participate in a brand’s growth instead of being a spectator.” It also speaks to our desire to belong, that allure of social proof, as argued by the CEO of Glewee, Dylan Duke:

UGC fosters this sense of belonging by building a community around shared interests that welcomes individual voices. This community can produce buzz straight from the consumer’s mouth and get everyone talking.

UGC might be a healthy promotion of “the community” but I also see it as a pushback on reproduction; an attempt to move us closer to something original and more authentic.

Maybe it’s this movement in our culture from contemplation to distraction that is creating big changes in how people sense and perceive. Everyone is producing and repurposing content online; sharing and circulating various forms of the same image is a constant component of internet engagement. We’ve all moved so far away from what Walter Benjamin noticed as the “aura,” that magical or supernatural force arising from the uniqueness of the original. It’s that sensory experience one feels when walking towards an original piece of art in the museum. You can find Pollack’s “Autumn Rhythm” online, but it’s a whole other experience to see it in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

It’s this aura that we might point to when we notice the power of user-generated content. I’m not comparing Demetrea Dias to Jackson Pollack, but I am saying both might be harnessing the power of originality to combat the overabundance of reproductive forms in our modern culture. Repurposing is everywhere, deeply engrained in a consumer culture that thrives on mass production to the point where what feels authentic or inauthentic is hard to define. With AI, this will become harder, and I think people sense this and are naturally bothered by it.

Once reproduction is set in motion, we sense the difficulty of capturing what’s authentic. In the novel Dr. No: A Novel by Percival Everett, the villain, John Sill, admits to stealing the Mona Lisa and has it on the wall of his sitting room. The protagonist questions its authenticity and John has a snarky response:

I stole it from them five years ago. It’s an unreported theft because it’s so embarrassing for the museum. I stole it in broad daylight. It’s worth more to the Louvre to let me keep and have everyone believe that such a crime is unimaginable than to possess the real thing. Hell, no one is ever close enough to it to see the difference. What, is some Austrian businessman going to start shouting that it’s a fake? better to accept the loss.

Everett presents a funny commentary on the ability of reproduction to strip any value from the real thing. He also implies that we are all complicit, Sill’s heist couldn’t be conducted unless the general public lost its thirst for the real thing, a drive for Benjimin’s “aura.” This is what we are afraid of.

But when provided the idea of authenticity in some form or another, we wonder towards it like flies to a light. There’s a strong urgency to find the source, or at least witness it through our iPhones.

Meanwhile, at the Willowbrook Mall in Wayne New Jersey, Demetra can be easily spotted by locals out shopping. Girls her age approach her as if she were a celebrity, shy, giggly, and asking for photos. She’s taking it all in stride:

“It’s scary, but it’s also nice and sweet because at heart, it’s just girls being friendly,” Demetra says. “It’s cool to see people influenced by me, but it’s also a weird feeling.”

Maybe this “weird feeling” stems from the complex and often contradictory nature of being an influencer in today's digital age. On one hand, Demetrea can experiences the validation and excitement that come with fame—being recognized by her peers, and receiving admiration. On the other hand, there’s a certain discomfort that comes with the realization that her persona, once private and personal, has now become public property. There’s a hidden paradox between distance and intimacy that defines her role as an influencer, something much more complex than the museum goer sensing an original piece of art.

Andy Warhol once said that he would “rather watch somebody buy their underwear than read a book they wrote.” Maybe it’s not their story we are necessarily after, but something closer to its truest form. It’s the subject in action that attracts us, the UGC among the piles of replications. The rest is just fluff that can be edited out of our TikToks.