“Deinfluencing” is THE trend on TikTok right now – but does social media really work without consumption?

“Deinfluencing” as an anti-trend against wild consumerism – can that work?

Videos are trending on TikTok whose content creators aim to “de-influence”. So doing the opposite of what we know from influencers: presenting beauty products, fashion, travel, books and everything else that we end up wanting to buy.

Defluencing – what is it and what does it look like?

Under the hashtag #deinfluencing, you can find thousands of videos on TikTok (and like with so much TikTok content now also on Instagram Reels) by content creators like @ceejayemarie, who tell you which products they bought and then found bad . Important for this concept of online advice to work (just like with influencing) – the creators have to relatable appear. You can see some creators criticizing lipsticks without make-up and with uncleaned glasses or others saying right at the beginning: “Yes, I was also a victim of the influencer culture”.

But is what is happening in these videos really de-influencing?

First of all, some videos dealing with de-influencing tell you which products have failed and which have been returned, but mostly the content creators name the products they did in the same breath instead of this bought. That seems more like classic influencing in disguise to be.

Another type of de-influencing video makes the influencing a little more subtle. The video by @worthnotwaste, for example, shows the creator doing a classic day-in-the-life video. While she shows how she makes her bed, takes a coffee mug with her, puts on her jewelry and lights her candles for the evening routine, you can hear her off-screen listing all the products that you can not should buy – but it is totally clear that their aesthetic home products actual are the stars of the video.

Even if no company names are mentioned, influencing can take place

Because you automatically ask yourself: Where can I get these pillowcases from? And where this extremely noble crystal hand as a jewelry holder. You think: Oh, that’s right, I actually wanted to get myself a fancy, sustainable to-go coffee cup and so on. With the candles and the beauty products that the influencer uses, you can even see the labels of the brands very clearly, so buying them later is not really difficult – with or without a brand name in the soundtrack. Silent influencing remains influencing.

Is social media even possible without consumption?

The question is: Could de-influencing be done better than in the examples shown? Suppose you make a video in which you just sit in front of the camera in front of a neutral background (no products in sight!) and talk about products that you no longer buy – that would really be de-influencing, wouldn’t it?

Even if we don’t buy any products, we pay with our attention

Yes, yes – because on social media, regardless of what content is shown in videos and whether brand names are mentioned or products are shown, something always takes place that economic experts and social media researchers have been calling “attention economy” for years . “Attention economy” means that we can not only buy goods on the Internet, but also our time and attention currency becomes.

Like, comment, send – all of this pushes the reach and thus the market value of (de)influencers

After all, with every de-influencing video that we see, we also accept signaling to our algorithm that we are interested in product content (whether positive or negative) and: with every de -Influencing video that we see, like, comment on, send, we in turn push the reach of the creators, who, conversely, are more likely to be offered brand deals if they decide to go back to the classic influencers go.

Angela Müller, head of the policy team at the organization AlgorithmWatch, which is dedicated to the goal of “considering and classifying processes of algorithmic decision-making” that have social relevance, explains the whole thing like this:

“The big social media platforms that we know today follow a profit-oriented business model: they make their money from advertising. The more time we spend on the platform, the more ads they can show us – the more money the platform makes. The algorithms that recommend content to us on social media and thus decide what we see in the timeline are intended to ensure that we stay online as long as possible – and have optimized themselves to do so. So their goal is undoubtedly a commercial one.”

So can’t you do it right?

Yes, yes, in the end every social media user has to know for themselves whether it is good to hear from time to time that you do not have to buy every product that is currently trending. Maybe you are specifically looking for an honest testimonial about a certain lipstick and don’t care that there is advertising for other lipsticks afterwards.

But it doesn’t hurt to keep in mind that every content creator, whether influencer or de-influencer, is never for nothing advertises – even if it’s just advertising for your own channel.

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