 Hello and welcome to Downstream, the Navarra Media interview series where we pick through all the flotsam and jetsam of politics and culture with an esteemed and insightful guest. And with me this week is Moja Lothian McClain, political editor of Gowden and author of one of my favourite opinion pieces recently, Kirstama is a wet wipe. Moja, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me and I feel like that op-ed will haunt me for the rest of my diaries. I mean, not as much as it's going to haunt Kirstama. What is it like when you've got that kind of official rebuttal from a Labour spokesperson? Were you expecting it? No, I wasn't expecting it at all. I was expecting about 50 people on the left Twitter to read it and when I got the rebuttal I just thought, what a sad man. It's like you should not be reading my article, you shouldn't have this time. I was like, this is great for me but terrible for you and the fact that you don't even have the political new to realise that a signposting this article will bring so many more readers to it than would have done otherwise. Just bowed so ill that you'd rise to that. I did think what a sad man. It was an interesting miscalculation but we're not actually here to talk about the leader of the opposition and whether or not he'd be better off actually opposing the government every once in a while because as well as being a very incisive political commentator, Moyer's astute and sometimes acerbic observations of pop culture are why you'll often find me just lurking around her Twitter account. You're sort of nodding alone in a room by myself and offering a sly like here and there but not wanting to look too desperate. That's very nice. That's also how I read my own tweets. This girl's great. Tweeting from your alt account. I would like to confirm I've never liked any of my tweets from my alt account which may almost not exist. I mean this wasn't a trial for like have you been like self-boosting but I don't know. Bit too defensive if anything. Yeah she doth protest too much. No. Have that on record. I didn't do it. That you can prove. So you've been writing a bit recently about the first pop cultural development that made me feel like I was old and losing touch which is the rise of the influencer industrial complex because I felt like I had a grasp on who was famous and who wasn't right up until that whole Caroline Callaway is a scammer thing popped up and I realized that I was watching the fall of somebody who had never known to rise in the first place. I felt like I'd caught the third act of a drama and had no idea the first two were going on. So the Caroline Callaway thing was blowing up and I was just thinking fuck who is this person and why have they got like a six figure book deal from writing out the captions from their Instagram and it made me think that maybe we should take social media influences a lot more seriously not just because they've now become such a huge part of our pop culture but because it's blurred the line between activist and online personality between amateur and professional poster and all of these things have got implications for how people become politicized and what they think the trade of politics is. So my first question for you super simple super big is what is an influencer? I mean if the influencer marketing industry knew what influence was exactly then they'd have had it pegged down a bit more than this. There are definitions that exist on the competition and markets authority and the advertising standards agency mainly because they needed to know who they had to regulate and I can't cite that definition for memory but influences basically somebody nowadays they're considered someone who has taken money from a brand and uses their influence to promote that brand. Of course this doesn't actually cover the sort of wide range of influences as we know them because influences come in so many different forms you've got your like basic content creators who are your beauty vloggers you know your I don't know lifestyle vloggers lifestyle bloggers the people who their sort of main raison d'être is you know they are human meet the Joneses they are people who make money from promoting products and they make content specifically for that and that is how they've risen to fame they're very good at it they don't like being called influences anymore because influencer has taken on a slightly different meaning so your content your content creates a silver separate lane your content creators are the likes of Hinch Zoella Mel's wardrobe you know people who make different types of content to be consumed specifically for selling products and you know within that lane they operate under different several's that whereas your influences this is also a very broad category but your influences tend to now mean just anyone sort of with a large platform whether they're influential or not is a different matter but somebody with a large platform on social media so you know you could become an influencer you're someone who also I would say primarily communicates through social media your platform is on there you can have people who go from reality TV to social media but what it's your main sphere of influences online so that's why you have people like let's say more Higgings or who come from reality TV and then their continued sphere of influence is online you know they might do the odd TV project but their main way they're communicating with followers the main way they're getting money the main way they're promoting things and the main way they're building a brand is online through that influence so there's a there's a lot of it's interesting because you have like a lot of zedless celebrities have now turned into what we call influences because they've realized it's more financially beneficial to do that but influences don't solely exist to make money per se well actually that's a hard one they often end up making money whether they intend to or not and then they become a different type of influencer but influences can come overnight because anybody who sort of blows up online and gets a platform is now seen as influencers so sometimes you get dragged into it without even wanting to there are probably people out there who'd call you an influencer I don't make enough money to be an influencer I've got all of the psychological damage from posting too much and none of the financial security but it's that thing it's like anybody who's seen as having a large platform and a large sort of command command a large following online is now seen as an influencer which is why it's very hard to sort of narrow it down and define specifically what it is but I would say broadly it's somebody that can monetize their online following and has what we call a sphere of influence whether that is positive or negative through those online platforms I mean so for people that aren't familiar what doesn't influencer get paid for because we've all seen the posts on Instagram which are captioned with ad and it's like tooth whitening stuff or I don't know essential oils and it's pretty obvious like you are being paid to promote this product and then there's a kind of more nebulous self branding where they become a face not just of a specific product but a kind of lifestyle and they end up being paid to be themselves in some way so what kind of you know financial transactions are they a part of well this can range because also a lot of financial transactions that influences are part of may not be tracked or even declared despite advertising rules so and it can really it can really go from anything you know you can have your as you say bog standard simple brand deals where you are paid to advertise a product you can have your gifted sort of products which is where you don't have to declare that you know you've been paid you don't have to post that if you do post something say say if I got sent a laptop from Google Google if you're listening I'd love a laptop they always listening I know this from my Instagram ads yeah if you got sent a laptop by Google and they said oh we just want to send your laptop if you post that on Instagram you just have to write gifted because they haven't said you have to post that but it comes with the unspoken agreement that you probably will because it's a brand association for example someone you know if you have something from the likes of boohoo or misguided those clothing companies they send out tons of clothing to influencers influencers may not post some of that because it might not be what they want for their brands but if they do they have to tag it gifted whereas if you do a paid partnership which is you enter a contract with a brand to post a certain amount of content or make videos you know just big them up on your socials post a certain amount of tweets with this caption that is a sponsorship and so it's a paid promotional campaign so then you have to tag those posts add on Instagram there's a new feature where you can tag it paid promotion and then you can have sort of just like brand ambassador deals where you know that would still be an ad and it'll still be a paid partnership so it's slightly different from a sponsorship it's the partnership thing but that's when you have a long running relationship with a brand and you'd promote their content in different ways or you can simply sort of go about your life using them so you'd integrate it as like a partner there was a really interesting video on I think went Twitter the other day but it was from TikTok originally and it's of a I think a cooking influencer they must be I'd never seen them before but it's this woman and she's making quesadillas and she's a bounty as in the bounty kitchen roll partner and she all she does in that video at one point is use bounty to put her fried quesadilla on and get the grease off and that's how she's in she's a long-term bounty partner she's like look how well it looks at the grease and then she goes on with making her cooking video and that's how you integrate that sort of sponsorship within like a daily life thing which is what the top level influences do they know how to but with the sort of influences that we're talking about which is less the professional content creators and more I think the people who've come from sort of like vlogging about what is termed activism by lots of media brands or perhaps you know the reality TV stars who come from Love Island the brand deals tend to be a lot more shameless a lot less integrated and sort of like look at this new toothpaste I'm using and it's quite clear they've never that toothpaste has stopped stopping within a mile of their teeth they're just well apart from when they hold it up in the video they're like here's my here's my hair vitamins that have made my hair go really long as they wear a wig so it's that kind of thing so you know that this this people it's not the people object to this paid content I think it's that when it's done clumsily people don't like to be seeing that they're marketed to but yeah that's that's kind of the range of main financial deals influencers can strike with brands I mean because I want to talk about how influences are this new era in the development of celebrity because of course celebrity culture has changed a lot over the centuries you had celebrity culture sort of being contained around aristocratic circles and those who entertain them then had the sort of development of you know radio and movie stars television you know sports stars started becoming you know more and more famous in their own right you had the huge branding deal you know secured by Michael Jordan which like set the tone for everyone else that followed and then you had the advent of reality TV where people were like hey you're famous just for being famous and then influences seem to be a kind of extension in some ways of the world of reality TV because even though there is a heightened artifice to the whole thing because I refused to believe that anyone wears false fucking eyelashes in bed as they're like you know when you see like you know Lucy from Love Island like posing in bed with like an array of carbs that she's never even seen before you know and I'm just like bullshit you know it is artificial but there is and you know a kind of performance of daily life that you get to see and that's very different from you know the kind of branding and stuff that you know Michael Jordan did you know when partnering with Nike or who was the supermodel who partnered with Pepsi and it was like the massive kind of deal was it Christy Tirlington? Oh you took way back oh yeah yeah yeah like I'm talking about like you know maybe first influences but it's a different thing my memory but what an influencer does implicitly it says well this is my everyday life come and look at it and be a part of it do you think that it creates weird expectations then amongst the audience and the followers of those people? I mean there's several strands there that are important to touch upon first of all of course influences are the extension of reality TV culture that was they are they are the sort of like natural end game of the sort of panopticon of surveillance that went on with reality TV stars you know we wanted 24-7 access and once the internet was on we got it it's like with the Love Island is when the Love Island journey ends when that 24 hours surveillance ends we still have access to them all the time on their platforms and that is the expected thing to do that's how they build a brand it's that continued access so yeah it's it's it's also the interest it's interesting how we could say it's diluted celebrity in some ways because you know it's that 15 minutes of fame everyone and can be an influencer now you even have micro influences nano influences which is just the term for somebody whose friends and family follow them but now that's you're now you're seeing your terms of your sort of influence so it's rather than saying like oh these are people you engage with this how many people can you influence what is your sphere of influence and it's this very is like classic late stage capitalism you know like thinking in those terms of how can you monetize these relationships how and it's also how much value do you have based on how much influence do you have so the celebrity relationships yeah of course you have to think of that as this but it's also like yeah this aspirational capitalism that we're being sold 24-7 on one level of course we all know that it's artificial that's also why we buy into it a bit it's like Molly May Hague who was a before she went on Love Island she was a content creator which is also why I think she's been so good at it when she came off people really like people really took to her last year even people of color so there was she had a big following amongst quite like a large population of young black people and young South Asian people who really just enjoyed the luxury content she was creating because it is that escapism is that fantasy and is that selling of like this is this could be your life it's not going to be but it could be if you buy some of these things and we do you know we do like retail therapy capitalism has done that number on us we do we do buy into that otherwise you know fast fashion wouldn't be as big as it is internet shopping wouldn't be as big as it is we have so much convenience now and access and influences sort of like this gateway that just say come on into this wonderful paradise where if you just buy this top it's wonderful you know it's great you'll be happy and yeah I've fallen victim that several times but it's following them is also I mean it is damaging to your psyche and your bank balance because whether you think you are above it or not that's sort of constant perfection and that illusion of perfection will will get to you will impact you and you might think it's not but then you catch yourself looking in the mirror and like thinking like why am I not this shape or why why when that person all those genes they look like different why is their skin always look completely smooth and perfect why is there like eye shape so symmetrical compared to mine it's because you know you whether you think you might be above it you think we have to spot the tricks but our brain is actually just taking those images in and seeing them as truth I mean I think you said something really interesting about this being you know kind of textbook late-stage capitalism and I think that there are two aspects of that that I kind of want to pick up on one is the commodification of every sphere of your life so all of those things which were non-commercial so those bits of your daily life cooking getting ready to go out those things which don't actively involve a financial transaction have themselves become monetized and then have set an expectation for other people who don't monetize those aspects of their lives you know by these products and then your version of this could look like my version of this whereas it's their job for it to look like this and it's not your job and then the other is the kind of huge intergenerational wealth inequality what people of our generation do not have access to assets to capital the things which were cheap in our parents generation are prohibitively expensive you know like a home but the things which were prohibitively expensive for our parents generation and before like fashionable clothing like makeup like stuff to do your hair prices of those things have collapsed mostly because the production costs have been undercut via workers wages so boo-hoo pretty little thing and you know all the other kind of sweat-shoppy fast fashion brands there's a reason why that skirt costs four pounds and the way in which influencers have kind of inserted themselves like at that intersection of an indebted audience a financially immiserated audience who also become accustomed to quite a high standard of living yeah I mean it says it all that some of the conversations on Twitter recently have been slowly about whether it's good to be able to access Birkin bags how many of us are buying Birkin bags you know we're not going to touch this but there is this real illusion because of influencing that I think is as you say it's at that odds with this idea that you know we're a generation who were used to like this small scale luxury and we used to be able to access small these little small luxuries like you know new clothing wherever you want a new smelly candle like the trappings the aesthetics of luxury without actually having the assets to back it up in the lifestyle and it says a lot that like we somehow well I would say I'm speaking for all of us I think a lot of us somehow have been mentally sort of lulled into the idea that we're on a par with these influences and that you know their lives are relatable in that way and it's like you know they're not and that also we could reach them and they are aspirational but they're not aspirational because you can't aspire to them out of reach like just financially obstructed so all it does is sell us more and more and more of these small scale luxuries as we try and sort of make up for the fact that we don't have access to these big ones and then that that piles up and you know the more you're spending on fast fashion the less you're going to have to save for a house not sound like a telegraph columnist but because I'm not trying to buy a house anytime soon but you know it's true so I think that's definitely like one aspect of it where it's like we have this real disconnect and it's almost an escape from the reality of our situation you know like I think that's something our generation lives in in that we on the one hand we're so brutally aware that you know a lot of us can't afford this house a lot of us can't afford cars a lot of us can't afford to live in a capitalist world because we simply don't have the financial assets or whatever to do that but it's a distraction from that and almost the influence of the world is like that's hypodermic needle that's shiny illusion that no no no it's fine you're still still working perfectly you're still you know lull go to sleep and just buy this and it'll all be okay and when you wake up maybe the money will have appeared I think I think it's definitely sort of like our escape it makes us think that things are completely normal and things are working in normal especially when you see young people who've been elevated to that point of having the financial capital assets through appear on TV show or posting lots of photographs on themselves online it's like oh maybe I could do that too so there's definitely that element and could you just refer to the point you made first because I've completely forgotten what it was the point I made first was also about the kind of the commodification of every single aspect of your life every single interaction every single thing you do in your day yeah I mean that is sort of again capitalism on crack and that is turning any sort of labour and leisure into something we can monetise and but are we seeing the financial benefits of that in the end no because all we're doing is buying to make that happen so we think that you know putting everything online or you seeing that seeing everything as an opportunity to monetise and commodify will make us rich but in fact you have to buy to get to that stage in the first place because people aren't going to watch your video about I don't know getting ready or cleaning unless you have bought a new product or you have a new thing to talk about in that so Mrs. Hinch went viral because she was always talking about this new product and this you know these new cleaning methods and this is and yeah they're like budget cleaning things but you always have to buy buy buy to buy into that there was a selling without her maybe even realising she was selling because she was constantly talking about these new methods new products etc that she was using so yeah so it's that idea that we think that oh we could monetise this if only I buy this to make it more interesting you know I'm going to make a front facing video about this and I've done this before you know if I find a product that I like for my eczema for example I'm like I have to share this with everyone and I'm inadvertently doing super drugs job for them by telling everyone how great vitamin E cream it was it which it is but it's like why am I making a front facing video why have I learned to speak in the rhetoric of an influencer without being an influencer because that's how you pick it up you learn to speak in their language and their language is just the language of commodification I mean it's also interesting to me that there's this whole gender aspect to it as well so when we use the word influencer we tend to be referring to women occasionally gay men as well but within those spheres of activity which have traditionally been considered female so cooking cleaning make up fashion there's of course fitness influencers too but there's a difference in emphasis a male fitness influencer versus a female fitness influencer why is it that with PewDiePie for example or Hassan Piker we don't call them influencers we call them lifestreamers, YouTubers we define them by their technological platform yeah I mean it's sexism and just sort of like any femme misogyny it's quite it's quite a basic answer it's it is because at the end of the day I think we for whatever reason I mean misogyny is the reason but we see women are selling as more craven more inauthentic it's coming from, it's seen as coming from a place of individual gain whereas it's not like the men are doing I think different in that sense but there's seen there's somehow more morality is attached to that so I think one of the reason as well influencers we've been sitting here talking about influencers why we're so fascinated by it as this sort of very shallow culture is because there is a gendered aspect to it and you know I can't say that I've escaped that like why do I like to sit and critique influencers probably there is a bit of later misogyny in that like why should I not just let the women and the gays get their bag you know but also because it's the height of capitalism and like poisonous capitalism but maybe what I should be doing instead of broadening who I talk about when I speak about influencers because you do have these like but actually that's also interesting because it's like the category of influencers is so broad in the first place it's very hard to pin down so when I talk about someone like Lucy Donlan from Love Island you know I'm speaking about her in a very specific disdainful way about the way she sells things and the way I see her which is probably laden with a bit of misogyny and when I speak about PewDiePie I speak more about how this person is someone I see as a bit of a danger because of the views that he's helped promote but there's definitely less misogyny in there I see even his his danger is more of a weighted thing as a political thing so it's interesting I don't have a straight answer on that but there's definitely misogyny involved. But do you think there's also a difference in focus so take PewDiePie who developed a huge following through essentially live streaming and gaming and was very personable he was kind of like someone's big brother who was explosive and emotive and funny made you feel like you were hanging out with someone who was like a little bit older talking about things mum wouldn't want to hear about and there was a real emphasis on community building so his followers called themselves like a bro army when he was in that conflict with I think an Indian Bollywood YouTube channel and they were about to you know overtake him in terms of following it had real life consequences you saw graffiti popping up of like subscribe to PewDiePie the Christ Church killer either seriously or ironically people don't know on his live stream was about to undertake this dreadful massacre says subscribe to PewDiePie so maybe it's not just misogyny that you think it's more dangerous it's had these more dangerous real life consequences but a key difference being like you know Hassan Piker who politically obviously I agree with a lot more puts his emphasis less on you know I've got a tooth white in to sell you and more I've got a social circle to sell you I mean that's also the thing when we I would say that when we speak about because there are women doing the exact same thing and also you know women gay men whoever want to speak about we're talking about this idea that you know straight cis men are awarded more weight to their words and their content they are doing the same thing and they've built communities just the same way I keep saying his name but PewDiePie you know Felix I like you saying it let's call him Felix I think his name is Felix isn't it fool the git the way he has but you know he's had real consequences perhaps because he does you know maybe perhaps because of his status and gender he does invoke or provoke that more weighted response because people just taking that little bit more seriously whereas you know there's plenty of non straight non cis individuals who both men who both women who are non binary who are doing what we'd call political influencing but we tend to criticize them a lot more perhaps than you know him or they are to a lot more scrutiny than he was until those things started happening and even now he's sort of like above that he's too big to fail as it were so you know even while I dish out these critiques and even while I you know I'm keen to sort of scrutiny what we call activist influences for example I would also remember that you know there's some people who do escape that notice and why is that like question why they do manage to get out from this sort of harsh spotlight on social media and why they may not be as subject to that rigorous questioning of their ethics and their motivations as others are I mean I think it's because one you're right you know if you're a woman and you have a huge following it must be because you've done something which is in some way undignified so you've sold out or it's just about lurks or it's frivolous and so on and so forth so I think there is that element of misogyny but I also think that there is a particular frothiness to some of these politics particularly in the kind of activist influencer world and the frothiness for me comes from the way in which political speech is always through the medium of self help so when you look at the kind of political post there are it's very rarely something like I don't know about child poverty or unionising your workplace it's very much about you know dump him sis as political praxis do you know what I mean yeah I mean I agree to an extent because I would say that those there is actually what we would call that political activism of join a union and you know child poverty those do exist but they're not going to be the biggest influencers and the biggest profiles we're seeing what I'd call the tip of the iceberg activist influencers because to broaden your message to such a degree that they appeal to so many people it has to be about the self because not everyone's going to buy into it become you have people out there who are doing sort of work that is very specific on community activism that is very specific around you know these these issues like child poverty but it's not going to appeal to enough people to elevate them to a position where they're seen outside of the bubble that they exist in whereas the influencers who've or the activist influencers who've gone absolutely stratostophic who've got the book deals, who've got the podcast who've all known the panels you know might even have been on news night they're the ones who've managed to broaden an appeal to such a wide audience that the message has to be diluted it just has to because you know to appeal to that sway of people it's probably got to go down a bit either that or they get more hate followers but on platforms like Instagram in particular it's usually fans at first at least until the backlash happens so I would say the reason it's about the self with the influences that we're referring to and sort of very specific is because they had to turn it onto something that when they talk to people people go yeah yeah that's me I can help myself like this is a proactive self-help thing self-help sells a lot more than saying you know what actually it's a bit fucked and there's not much we can do right now but you know if you actually you can donate a bit and join this community organisation but it is a bit fucked right now that's not going to cut through as much as being like you can achieve your dreams and become this better person and you know be this political agent of change if you just do these three self-help things and you know make your journal and do your grounding and all of that that's gonna that's gonna go far because people want to buy into it again it's that escapism I mean one of the things that I found really fascinating about this kind of activist influencer land is the way in which the political thinkers and activists of the past are kind of flattened and presented as influencers themselves so everybody quotes the Audre Lorde stuff around self-care as a justification for buying more centred candles you know I've seen someone else talking about Olive Morris while also doing a kind of promotion for Uber you know there is this cognitive dissonance between you know the content and the form of the politics here do you think that there's I don't know there's something about the form of social media which encourages us to think that social media is all there is and all there ever has been 100% 100% there's several like aspects of this one when you're on social media because social media is this very addictive small little bubble you know I think there is a thing in our brains which says this is all there is so we don't have to log off and actually do something else because that's almost like that form of cushioning against the addictions we have to social media that makes it impossible to log off and makes us not want to it's like I say to myself yeah yeah it's you know there's that hilarious tweet where it's like they've tweeted about they've said don't do this and they've gone right that's enough activism for the day that's kind of it's that it's idea it's like I think we're quite aware that it can be really really powerful don't get me wrong it can be very powerful but there are limits to it there are definite limits to it and you know the time served offline that could be useful is perhaps something that we can't bring ourselves to do maybe we don't have the confidence to do maybe we just don't want to so we tell ourselves social media is all there is because it's an excuse almost to stay logged on and I think you know citing the names of former activists that's not that new in that for as long as we've had motivational quote books you know you've had people citing Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi in order to just I don't know go out for a run this is a really powerful message and they've been writing in their diaries that's not new it's just the sort of juxtaposition of citing likes of Olive Morris while doing Spon Con for Uber I think it's that sort of like grasp legitimacy it's on one on some level it's like you know perhaps these things are uneasy bedfellows like doesn't matter your intentions this capitalist system is such that if it's commodified the sort of like your the power of your activism is ultimately serving this capitalist system you know you might be like well but it's bringing awareness it's doing this yeah great but structurally it's part of capitalism you're continuing that I mean is it a sin of ignorance or is it a sin of cynicism well this is a this is a thing I think it can be both it's also it's like a big pit of denial as well because you know I've talked to lots of people who do what is branded activism and influencing online and there are lots of them very nice people who mean extremely well and I think what's happened is a lot of them also have had conversations where they're like well I didn't actually ask to be called an activist influencer I was branded that by the media which needs to pigeonhole and commodify as well in order to like you know get because of the models of media which are more and more resembling the models of influencing and social media as well because of you know where they see the money and everything has to be sold and advertising space etc you need clicks so you have to say oh this person's the brand new activist who's queering I don't know vodka great like it's that selling thing everything has to be a radical sort of proposition is paired in order to sell a product or a person or like a concept even so but yeah but there's like citing the forebears of people who we saw as doing traditional activism is a way to bring those strands together and be like well this is still you know this is a new form of activism because and it's actually really radical in its own way because securing the bag is a very radical concept and as an individual if I'm getting this money that's actually really radical especially if I'm from a marginalised identity and it's I think it's just a form of denial sadly I think like I'd love to tell myself that being you know I mean well and that I'm if I'm being paid to do something then it's oh um you know great I've I've got some money but I'm still doing this work and I've raised awareness but it's not one of the things that I've learned in the last few years because of influence activism is that everything can be co-opted there's nothing pure like I am just waiting for someone to start doing Sponcon about like decolonising BAE systems like I think it's on the cards it's happening it's going to happen I think it's probably already happened probably um but what I think is interesting for me is how amenable what you'd broadly call identity politics has been to this kind of commodification of political activism and maybe it's because it's harder to do with socialism maybe you know when you're saying hey we want to expropriate your wealth it's harder to get a Sponcon deal from Uber but that it seems to orbit and coalesce around marginal identities whether it's a marginal identity as a woman as a person of colour as you know part of the LGBT community why is it that idpol has found so stronger home in influencer land well I think there's two reasons for this one idpol is about the individual so it's all about the individual labels you have you know rather than being like an it's not intersectional and identity politics makes you think it's intersectional because it's like yes I'm I'm black and I'm queer and you know I've got all these different labels and it's but it's not actually it's about sticking different labels on top of each other and then ranking in a hierarchy of how oppressed you think someone is and it doesn't take into account you know any class positions going to different countries where the structure's different you might be a westerner in like the global south it doesn't take in fluctuations it doesn't take taking like financial capabilities I see people who have great financial capital being like well because of x y and z I'm more oppressed than this person it's like that's not how it works it's fluctuates so for one it's about the individual so of course identity politics can take a root it's the it's individual sort of like fixed ideas of oppression masquerading as a radical understanding of how to tackle racism and two it takes taken root because we think if we throw money at things it solves the problem so when you have someone who's like you know has is a marginalised identity and you know the brands are like you know what I know how to solve this I'm going to give them five grand to promote this product and that's like an individual piece of reparations fantastic while we've sold we've sold racism meanwhile the garment workers in Leicester just like please the minimum wage it is this is the thing it's like because it social media by its nature the way we build idols on social media is about individuality it's about individualism I don't think individuality is a word but if it is I've just made it up individuality is a word yes I edit for a living yeah so it's about it's about individuality and so the way it builds idols is it can only be one person because you know the nature like a page you can you have pages for collectives or whatever but it really is about looking at the one person's profile one person's sort of like the way they talk about politics the way they promote themselves it's about building up a single person a single on a single platform it's not got the room to do collective organising in the way that activism as we know on the outside does and it's it's that makes it so much easier to monetise one person and also single someone out and individuals although there's been a lot of very charismatic individuals who've led movements individuals are not sort of like the success of movements and they're not because individuals can be bought and when you have a god-like figurehead they're always going to you know I think power corrupts so going back to the original question yeah the identity politics things it's taken root because we throw money at marginalised people who are marginalised because most in part capitalism because we think that will solve the problem it's a classic like reform instead of you know defund and burn down the entire system and also because individualism and identity politics is at its heart about individualism and that's what social media thrives on I mean I think there's also perhaps a positive spin on it as well because I remember being in left-wing feminist spaces 10 years ago and whenever you want to talk about the issue of race it was like you had you know identified yourself as a suicide bomber the hostility that you would get was unreal I remember trying to have in an organising space a meeting just for people of colour and white people refused to leave I had one American woman saying because she's an international student that's the same as being you know a person of colour you know I had real hostile interactions and now 10 years on you've got this audience of like very socially conscious not necessarily politically active but socially conscious white people who through black lives matter and through me too and through these movements which have been mediated through social media come to an understanding of the ways in which they themselves uphold an unequal society and they want to do something about it and then when you've got kind of pop feminist saying Venmo me and I will absolve you of your sins that's an easy way to do it but it's coming out of something which is good which is the politicisation of a generation of people who even a very short time ago were not receptive to these kinds of ideas yeah absolutely I mean it's definitely a step forward I would never say that this is the thing I would never say that influencing especially when we talk specifically about political influencing and activist influencing is a wholly bad thing because I think awareness does a lot I think starting those conversations does a lot but I also think it's fascinating the systems that we're working with now because you know what you just said about the venmoing the absolving it really reminds me of like in the medieval period when the Catholic church would sort of like get people to what was it pay pay for pay for pardons, pay to pray and pay for pardons so they'd pay sort of priests or the pardoner for a pardon you know it's in Chaucer or whatever and they'd pay for these pardons these bits of paper every time they sin they'd just get a new pardon and it's literally that same system which is so funny wow wow capitalism really just wow capitalism just reinvented feudalism this is true in theory what capitalism says is that it's reinvented feudalism with huge corporations take on the role of kings all of us are tenants but also perhaps with the relationship of guilt and absolution absolutely it's that guilt and absolution relationship that I mean again I want to stress I think that this politicization of a young generation particularly those who may have been in positions of you know broad privilege although it fluctuates depending on you know your status or where you are whatever that's a good thing it's a really good thing what I am concerned about is how sort of like situating it solely on sites that you find on social media like you know Instagram spaces comments sections Twitter discourse will not give those people the chance to develop and grow beyond that because all they're getting is constantly one person saying something a backlash against that person happens so they all run to the other person and go oh no I've done something wrong I need to pay you some money and then turns out actually you know what there's an opposing feud to this and it's coming from another black person so who do we relieve so there's this real conflict for people who because they're just running to individual figures rather than reading around the subject I'm not suggesting you need to be reading like fucking Marx all the time to be versed in I'm suggesting that but I mean there's that because I think a lot of a lot of the arguments I see are especially around what we're talking about which is activist influencing specifically in the feminist sphere is that there's no accessible text there's plenty of accessible text read the revolting prostitutes that is so accessible that's such a great book there's a lot of accessible like bell hooks they are accessible they might sound like these lofty titles but there really are these accessible texts out there and I think once you get that awareness and that politicization you have to broaden out your sphere because otherwise you're just taking the word of different false idols and that's the problem it's like someone coming to me and saying can you tell me everything about feminism and I will tell them what I know and what I believe to be true but is that correct is that a broad view no it's just from my own like potted together experiences and my personal opinions you have to kind of like develop your critical thinking skills and I think social media develops sheep not critical thinking skills but I mean I think that maybe this has an emergence in a problem with the politics itself you know we've got this kind of you know lived experience is the kind of absolute defense and you know kind of stamp of legitimacy and authority and sometimes it is useful because you can say I have lived it this is what I've seen it's like a credible witness giving testimony but it's also turned into as a in my case you know Muslim Bengali woman it means I am always correct in my assessment of the social reality that I live in to me then seems more dangerous and then you have conflicting lived experiences you know I remember being in a conversation with David Badeal where he was talking about his lived experience as a Jewish man and on the left and Semitism being treated less seriously and it would never happen to anyone else and I was like well hang on my lived experience as a Muslim tells me something different and you add this irreducible impasse between kind of hermetically sealed subjective prisons and then it means that you have the space opened up for someone to say I'm going to commodify my lived experience because that's what that's what influencing is and that's where I'm going to be a political arbitrator of really quite complicated and contested ideas and issues yeah I mean I'm I'm a long time now I say long time it's probably been the last couple of years when it's been on the rise a real a real opponent of identity politics as we know them today because I think identity politics as they were brought around in order to make things more intersectional and make us understand how someone's lived experience could influence the way they saw the world and could influence the testimony they can bring to the table but you know if you rely solely on what we call lived experience as you say you get completely conflicting sort of accounts, testimonies political views like if I went to Modi and said Modi what's your lived experience about you know why is Hindu nationalism like good he'd give me a great long answer Modi talk to me as part of the BIPOC community yeah he'd be like Modi would be like well I've lived experience as a man of colour and it's like well no you're still a fascist I'm not going to like believe what you say so lived experience is really limiting and the problem is with social media again it's the sort of like setup of it as well it's a platform where someone who has a lot of power can say something and then they control both the way someone replies to it the discourse that happens it is a space for them to air their views of course but you're just going to get what they say and if you only see that one side of it it's just like the soul their testimony only and it really sort of skews you because then suddenly you start going down this whole way you're like but that person says something different and that person says something different and then you have to think hmm maybe it's structural maybe I could look at the sort of structure of the individual here but influencing relies on the individual again like going back to this point it relies on individualism that's how it sells itself that's how it commodifies and you know from any sort of perspective if I turn a lot of the things I think we do nowadays on social media particularly is turn the interpersonal into the structural so we say that like you know we have for example a cancellation of someone there'll be perhaps a cancellation of someone who I wouldn't call a celebrity maybe like they are an influencer and a lot of people maybe just didn't like them and they'll come up with these views being like well actually you know what they said this thing which makes them against this marginalised person and all of that and it's like we love to do that a lot and we do it the other way as well and where we turn the personal into the structural by saying you know perhaps oh well because I have this lived experience as I've said before it's really radical of me to ask for the money to do this X, Y and Z and that is actually anti-capitalist even if you think it's not because I'm actually subverting the capitalist system to work for me and then you just have to like it's also as if there've been no black or brown capitalists ever I know what do you think like is running the minds of India man it's really annoying for several reasons but also because I think identity politics insists that we see anyone who is of a marginalised identity particularly people of colour as sort of magic fucking angels and it's like you're slightly brown so everything you say is correct and you're right on everything and I'm going to defer to you and it's like okay you know what we're talking about say racism or whatever those voices should be taken precedence but there are lots of you know you've got in government saying white privilege doesn't exist is that a voice you want to elevate really over a white person who says that perhaps you know white privilege is real and exists so it's not there's not like a subjective no there's not like one size fits all answer to this and we can't just keep going around saying like I'm going to listen to this person because they're X, Y and Z minority and you know that and their lived experience means that they you know they're mad because lived experience makes us do you know wild things my lived experience is being a hot mess yeah like there's this you know there's things I could point to in my past where I've got lived experience it's made me a cunt so I don't know if I said it or not but like maybe a total cunt and it's like okay you might have lived experience and we should take that in but you need to approach these discussions with nuance and understanding and have the range before you actually try and like say well it's X, Y and Z this and that and that means this like I think a lot of the time we throw around so many it's also big words we make a lot of these discussions actually inaccessible by being like well you know this is a marginalised, this is an ideological perspective and it's like well you're just saying that to like obscure what's actually going on and you strip it all back and you think hmm is this person working as an agent of capitalism in their own self-interest okay yeah maybe they are and good for them on that level but don't pretend it's anything bigger than that I mean so do you think that there's going to be room to grow from where we are because where we are is in this kind of cul-de-sac of you know lived experience dance-offs do you know what I mean and you don't get any closer to you know what is our shared social reality and how do we negotiate that and how do we build a movement but you have this kind of quite you know it's like an oil well of potential of you know potential politicisation and you know that awareness you know building towards an increased dissatisfaction with the way power is organised and distributed you know is there a way for social media to play a role in navigating us out of the cul-de-sac and tapping into that well of potential well I mean I think there is I think there is but again I could just be you know catch me in five years when I'm shelling goods for Mastercard and we'll talk again when you're doing the decolonised BA you know that's a really good idea listen you're going to be like how to make drones intersectional how to make drones intersectional make sure the AI actually recognises black and brown faces too that is the quality that's the quality civilian wedding so I think the thing is like social media is there are people having slagged off this like sphere of influencing for the last 20 minutes I do want to say there are people out there doing really good useful stuff with their platform and you know you've got like young people like Hassan Patel who's running massive campaigns from his platform and he's mobilising loads of people from just like an Instagram account a Twitter account and it's just about and I think there are also people out there who are really looking at this with the same like side-eye that we are like we're not the first and we're not the last to be going like this is a bit not going as well is it there's a lot of people on like the left who really are looking at these systems and being like this isn't making me happy being part of this and I think there are better ways to and more productive ways to actually go about sort of the politicisation and capitalise on the sort of political awakening of this like young generation through social media there's lots of people out there who really you know they they've looked at the sort of ongoing discourse that happens again and again and again about oh this influence is bad this influence bad and thinks hmm this seems to be a lot of focus on individuals and not so much focus on sort of where the movement can go beyond them and they are having these discussions in you know and I've heard them like they are in rooms from Clubhouse they're having these chats and they're in these small groups and they're organising and there's people who do community organising outside of social media spaces who are coming on here and being like well you know let's convert the people who want to go to who want to come to this like Clubhouse Room or come to this online discussion into people who now attend a meeting down the road so you know these spaces are proving a way to link up with fellow-minded people they're proving a way to organise and mobilise I don't want to like cite momentum here even though I know the name is the name is dragged through the mud quite a lot but we saw in like 2017 and using things like social media to really mobilise these young people so it's not like there's not patterns not like there's not roadmaps for that to happen it's just I think the thing is with the influences because they do straddle the line especially political influences who straddle the line of celebrity culture and politics it's impossible to look away from for a lot of people because it's that it really hits the heart of what gets people going which is that sort of like gossipy celebrity culture mixed with like politics that is life or death and like these really big discussions the problem is the platforms that are happening on are not quite equipped to continue those discussions in a nuanced way 280 characters in a comment section on Instagram are not enough to have proper discussions about the limits of identity politics because it just leads with people being entrenched in the positions they're entrenched with and not actually listening to anyone else I actually do think clubhouse has been quite a good place for that but that is also turning into a space that is just constantly people not having the range to talk about these things and the people who want to speak loudest the people who don't actually know much about it which is true on all social media because the loudest voices are usually the ones and I say that booming into the mic the loudest voices are usually the ones who have them who are the most ignorant or perhaps think they know the most without really having taken stock of all sides of a situation so yeah it's I just always I just plead nuance and I think I think there's like a lot of it is an oil well but I would I do think it's I do think we should note that there are people who out there who are already in the oil well and people them like young people themselves are like this is not a discussion that is serving me and I do want to sort of get out of it so the reason we might not see them as much as because they're not the ones in the comments sections but they are organizing outside of that so I don't want to raise their existence well I mean I suppose there are defenders of influencer culture and social media politics culture who would say this is a corrective to gatekeeping that kind of very intensely hierarchical in group out group policing which defined early iterations of social movements and I think maybe what I found myself thinking is that I don't think that this has been an end to gatekeeping at all what it has done is use anti-intellectualism as a pretext for gatekeeping so it's saying in order to make people feel better you don't have to have done the reading your lived experiences enough well your lived experiences is a hugely powerful starting point but actually sometimes it does matter if you're right or wrong I would really say it depends on the community we're talking about because I do know there are social media communities out there of people who their voices may not have been heard before and this has I would say this has in some ways social media rise has undone that gatekeeping in some senses like you have a much wider range and I think I would say social media has definitely introduced me to figures and identities that I need to listen to and brought about a political consciousness or maybe a more considered political consciousness than I would have had without it so I would say in some instances there is that you know the gatekeeping has been broken down but because social media is so vast the other side is also true this is a thing there's no like one size fits all answer to this sadly but in that the gatekeeping is still going on but it's all like just the colour of the gatekeepers has changed it's not just all white people there's now some brown and black faces in that too but what they're gatekeeping pretty to tell somewhere smiling to herself smiling we love representation politics so that gatekeeping yeah there is an anti I do think there is what you refer to as anti-intellectualist movement that has sort of taken up as a defence on social media and like you know I saw a lot of I see a lot of defending where it's along the lines of oh you shouldn't have to read X Y and Z because it goes about the accessible texting it's like well you know these Instagram captions are accessible and yeah they are they're like a early learning centre book great and they probably have really turned some people on to you know concepts they wouldn't have come across before or they've helped boil them down they've helped me boil some things down sometimes everything's like oh yeah that's what it means okay cool but hopefully that would spark a curiosity to go further I think the problem in social media is instead of sparking that curiosity to buy well I say buy ha ha capitalism instead of corresponding to curiosity to go to your local library and borrow and borrow a book that sort of takes you takes a bit further you think I want to find out more about this ideology I want to find more about this concept I want to find out more about this you know political movement and what was it the umbrella movement am I doing that the 70s I think it was like those kind of things there's counter counter revolutionary things those movements the problem with social media is you just keep scrolling so when I'm putting something out I'm like oh yeah I should really look that up later and then I think I forget it in two minutes because I've moved on to the next post or I've moved on to the next tweet so it's because it we consume the past it's like sometimes I'll read a social media post and I'll be like I want to hold on to that post because it really is it has made me think about things in a different way and I just can't like it's just my concentration loses it like even if I save it that feeling that I'm trying to think about that feeling of learning to sit with something and process it is just not aided by social media that's the problem it's like it wants you to keep consuming you have to keep consuming and sort of the patterns in built in your head because you know social media has I don't want to say changed I'm sure scientists or neuroscientists will be like shut up it hasn't changed our brain but it has like rewired some of our attention spans the way that that's worked means that you know we're compelled to keep scrolling instead of sitting with the information taking it in and thinking hmm and that's again comes back to the idea of like the reactiveness the fact we can't hold these nuanced discussions because it has to be a knee jerk instant opinion that we form an instant mastery of the subject where we've only just started it's that like canning Duggan I can't remember the name the cruding the thing where you think you're really good at something you know everything about it yeah yeah yeah I know the phrase you're talking about and in my head I just can't reach it so it has just turned into the Diane Kruger effect no isn't right that's what we're going to call it it's the Diane Kruger effect it's the Diane Kruger effect it's the like the syllables are similar yeah it's like the Dunning I want to call it the Diane Kruger effect I think in fact we should all just call it the Diane Kruger there we go we've done it we've done it we've influenced everyone but yes that thank you so much for joining us today it's been just such an enjoyable discussion and you've approached the issues with a level of both seriousness and lightness of touch which is exactly what I love to see in these interviews if people want to find more of your work where should they go if they want to be influenced by me they can follow me on Twitter it is so ironic that I'm promoting this at the end of this but they can follow me on Twitter at mlothianmclaynealloneword for thought shots head to Instagram that's at moira underscore lm but if you want to just read my work without any of the faff then go to my website which is moirlothianmclaynealloneword.co.uk but yeah I'm not a prophet I'm just as one famous influencer like to say I'm just a baby girl I'm just a baby girl just a baby girl thank you so much for having me Ash thank you so much