Should I become a dessert influencer? We are all entrepreneurs now
I am deeply committed to helping people find the best desserts in the world. I am also interested in helping people find wellness and joy. I like taking pictures. So, am I an influencer? You tell me. Better yet, like this post.
As quarantine progressed, I, like most of you, found myself searching for socially distant ways to connect with people. In a time and space where connections are increasingly computer mediated, fractal, and strained, I found myself trying to bring something sweet to the timeline.
My interest in dessert and all the things surrounding it is profoundly casual. I don’t know much about baking, I’m not a great home cook. When I do it I love it, but my technical skills are lacking. I love eating full stop. It’s just so great. I’m open to fine dining and street cuisine alike. I love food history and food cultures, and though I began my career as a history teacher, I am not a formal historian, I suppose. I enjoy taking pictures, but again, my technical skill is just slightly above average. Film School dropout here. I am not over-investing in gear, and I am modest about taking pics in public (read — I will not set up a ring light or tripod in public) . As a result, many of my on-location shoots, especially in the pandemic, are me taking over the shoulder selfies, or, if I’m lucky enough, my mom snaps a quick shot. While these photos are shot with love, they don’t always get the best angles. My content production is mediocre, but authentic. Is there a market for that?
The word influencer has become part of our daily parlance, a term used to refer to those “everyday” people that curate digital content to influence culture. In fact, it’s so salient that one of my students is writing a doctoral dissertation on it. Let that sink in.
As an educator and as a person, I’ve resisted the idea that we are all brands. I’ve successfully dodged attempts to brand myself or establish a cohesive twitter presence that would give me an academic clout. Now, however, I’m falling into that same trap on Instagram. Should I curate my persona in ways that make people gravitate toward me? Should I invest in lighting? Should I spend my days and nights location scouting and caption writing? Should I work on growing my following?
I know that it works. I went to high school and college in Los Angeles, which is to say, I went to school with current and former influencers. One of them actually started a media empire, based on influential, targeted content. Others were influencing long before it was a word, and now run successful travel and fashion sites that allow them to live in fat-flung places and live the good life, or at least the appearance of it. Could that be me? Could I combine my love of dessert, yoga, and photography into something so deliciously lucrative?
Not with my budget iPhone… not without a ring light, and not without the diligence and dedication to get the shot. And not without the intention to turn my life into a highlights reel, projecting feelings of exuberance of glee, whether or not they are real. Verisimilitude is the goal, but reality is beside the point.
The inauthenticity of influencer culture makes me uncomfortable. Like all people, I am complex and contradictory. However, in curating a persona, you must be on message, and on brand. I am a messy person. You must be neatly organized as an influencer. Unless messiness is your brand. But for the most part, even feelings must be clearly captioned into beautiful, instagrammable memes. Everything must be captured, everything must be contained, everything must be controlled. Being an influencer feels like planning out your happiness, so you can try to convince others that it is real. Going on a vacation solely for the pictures. Or forcing an experience and forgoing the spontaneity in order to get the shot. That feels like the opposite that dessert is to me. Dessert is about sweet and rich spontaneity. How can I capture that on my content calendar?
When I was in graduate school, I wrote a paper about these larger themes of media surveillance, control, and entrepreneurship. Drawing on Nikolas Rose’ concept of the entrepreneur of the self, I wrote about how this weird mix of techno capitalism has us all desiring to not sell things, but ourselves. Not an original concept, but I was really interested in how these logics permeate schools and infiltrate even our youngest minds and earliest hobbies. You like that part of yourself, sell it. Developed, undeveloped, just curate it and package it, quickly. Likes, subscribers and views. You must manage your very personhood. I was concerned and remained concerned about the division of all of our time into these quantified bits. If I embrace my calling as an influencer, I must divide my personal life into a type of production schedule, where I am always posting and creating. Working, so that I can project leisure. This makes me sad.
Also, influencer culture is centered around consumption. Me documenting my consumption, and you consuming me. There are some two-way interactions, but the pace of media and of life seem to lend to an endless stream of clicks and likes, passive scrolling and weak engagement. Through, authentic engagement between the average influencer and the average follower seems few and far between. The illusion of connection is one of the most pervasive and unsettling aspects of our media landscape, and one that influencers trade on.
Still, being an influencer has its benefits, particularly for me as a Black woman. As an influencer, I become someone with social presence, which is a form of social status. Should I befall one of the many fates all too common for Black women in this society, my status as an influencer would give me a following that could advocate on my behalf. If I remain an unbranded citizen, the chances for social support are a lot more slim. Also, my influencer status would allow me to have a partially curated narrative already present. When the media attempts to distill my story into the least common denominator, as often happens to Black victims, my profiles and content will be able to speak to ideas that are more dynamic and complex. Influencing provides us with ways to posthumously tell our stories. For members of underrepresented groups, that visibility, so often denied, brings much power.
For me as a Black academic, being an influencer offers a way for me to project myself as fully human. Academics are often depicted as “serious”, “reserved” and “erudite”. I am a young Black woman, and the default perception of me and my interests does not often align with the aforementioned. I have more in common with Megan the Stallion than I do with many of my colleagues. I spent some of graduate school and the earlier part of my career trying to fit into the culture of the Ivory Tower. By embracing influencer culture, I can center interests that are more personally aligned to my own, like my interest in being a cool millennial immersed in popular culture. As an influencer I get a chance to be loud about the elements myself that academia encourages me to hide. Many Black academics have found refuge (revenue streams, social support) in the public personas they’ve curated that reject academic norms. Many Black academics have also been forced out of the academy for doing this very thing as well. It’s tricky.
So, status, visibility and safety all attract me to influencer life. And then there is money, duh. Is YouTube still a cash cow? My most popular video got 34 views, so I’m not sure. As an academic and really as any type of worker, I am always concerned with precarity. Turning myself into an influencer allows me to generate a revenue stream that could insulate me from the shocks of an increasingly tenuous economy. Living in Los Angeles, being an influencer could also grant me with the supplemental income necessary to fund the little luxuries that make the stress of the city manageable. Work is for basic needs, but yoga classes, lattes, massages and plants all require side hustles.
At this point, I should also note that I hate side hustle culture. While I love the idea of hustling and bootstrapping, they are a response to precarity, and we’d do well to remember and to resist that. Perhaps we could create a stronger social safety net, rather than attempting to build our own golden parachutes. Influencer culture, like side hustle culture, obscures the huge cultural deficit that occurs when leisure must be commodified for survival.
So, back to my original question… should I become a dessert influencer? Should I capitulate to the culture and curate my life for consumption? Can I both persist and resist, and build a following using the poorly lit pics from my budget iPhone as content? Can I be an anti-influencer influencer? Time will tell.
Post Script — Sharla started a curated newsletter with some of her content — The Sweet Life with Sharla B. Check it out, and subscribe to her YouTube channel, too.
