Being an older Gen-Z, I’ve had the distinct privilege of witnessing a number of influencers, vloggers, and YouTubers grow and fall throughout the different decades of the internet (two decades, to be more specific). I’ve seen the British YouTube groups with all their fun activities and posh accents collaborating, I’ve seen the rise and fall of the beauty YouTuber sphere, and the rise, then fall, then new age of gaming influencers.
But one of the things that has always fascinated me was seeing what happened after the peak of some influencers. What was it about these influencers that got so many people to stop watching them? Why did I stop watching them after being enamored by their content for months or even years?
Well, more often than not, it was how they stopped becoming so relatable.
Now, the thing about it is, it all depends on the content someone gets initially famous for. Take, for example, Haley Pham. Don’t get me wrong, she didn’t do anything wrong (as far as I’m aware of). But I think having a proper example to outline why it becomes hard to relate to some personalities will give you a better idea of what I’m talking about.
So with Haley Pham, I got into her content initially because, as a tween about to graduate from high school and bound for college, she was everything I wanted to be at the time. She lived the typical All-American girl’s high school life. The thing about her relatability was that she and I were going through very similar life changes, but hers were my idealized versions. She was what I saw in the movies, and it felt good to see that. She was even a dancer, a fact that I found myself clinging onto her for.
It was as if content creator Haley Pham’s initial humility and down-to-earth nature were being zapped away by the fame she was garnering
But as time went on, her content slowly skewed in such a way that I just couldn’t find myself coming back to it anymore. It felt as if she started losing touch with what made her relatable–when she started spending $500 on luxury items, the challenges she did for videos felt forced, and it was as if her initial humility and down-to-earth nature were being zapped away by the fame she was garnering.
And don’t get me wrong! Spending money and doing challenges like that are perfectly fine when you make the kind of money that you do, running a successful YouTube channel. But instead of being the kind of girl that I could relate to, she started moving away from the things that made her fun, and it felt like she was beginning to churn out content for the sake of it. I didn’t know it at the time, but that’s something that I could sense even before I came to the realization, years after the fact.
Soon after that, I stopped following her.
The same can be said of people I followed in the beauty community. Oftentimes they start off wanting to rave or rag on a product that they found, and just posting it online. It felt like talking to a friend through the internet who tells you about a product you definitely should or shouldn’t buy, because they went ahead and bought it before you. But over time, the more money they earn, what initially drew us to them may just be the thing to push us away.
I’m sad to say that many of the influencers and content creators that I loved became out of touch with their own content, to the point that rather than creating content for the sake of their audience, it became about creating content to peddle and to push for products and sponsorship deals. It isn’t necessarily a crime to earn a living, but it becomes a different story when you begin to use your influence and the trust that viewers have in you to sell products and only sell more products.
The thing about it is that viewers are a lot more perceptive than creators think. Although we know that content creators show only what they want to show, it’s all about how we perceive you that affects our relationship with you. If we notice that you’ve been aggressively pushing a product and try to deceive us into believing it isn’t an advertisement, or you come off as disingenuous, then that’s something we’ll clock immediately.
Viewers are a lot more perceptive than creators think…. it’s all about how we perceive you
There is also the issue that if you start off making content that’s novel and interesting to capture people’s attention, then what happens after, when it starts becoming stale. When you keep trying to push the same content over and over again, but it has little to no substance, or you don’t develop it further, you’re bound to become stale. Some content creators start becoming desperate to reach the same numbers they used to with more outrageous content and opinions. But that ends up turning me away, and you become less relatable to me in the end. If anything, it feels like I’m being baited for my attention rather than being respected as a viewer. I don’t like feeling like I’m shallow and that my attention span and “like” are the only things the content creator is after.
Like I said, there’s nothing wrong with getting that bag and making a living, but there comes a point where content creators lose relatability if they don’t stay grounded.
At the end of the day, relatability is all subjective. For as much as I want to outline that “XYZ makes you relatable and not ABC,” at the end of the day, something that trumps relatability is a creator’s sense of self and authenticity. Rather than acting like you’re better than something, understanding where you are in life, and that you may have outgrown your initial relatability and are moving towards a new direction that suits you, is a better move for content. We all grow and change, and that is the same for creators. It’s okay to move in a new direction. Sure, some people could walk away, and that’s just as fair. But it’s better to stay authentic, and not force relatability or act like you’re genuine on camera or on your platform, just to chase after what your followers aren’t anymore.
