From Quick Fame to True Influence: The Slow Burn of Digital Identity
Finding your voice, your unique touch, and being recognized by a community takes years to build. New figures are emerging on social media.
New edition, written under the rain of Paris. This week, we talk about the long term and digital identity. You can also read this post in English. And as always, don’t forget to buy my book
Advice on becoming an influencer in just a few weeks is booming online. On LinkedIn, companies offer to get you a Top Voice badge in less than 10 days, a supposed mark of quality to bolster your credibility and help you gain more followers. In 2023, Meta launched its Meta Verified program, which promises, in exchange for a subscription, to let you put the famous "blue tick emoji" on your Instagram profile. What was once a kind of Holy Grail, a form of recognition (sometimes unfair, just like any trophy), has now fallen into the transactional realm.
A semantic confusion has occurred: influence—a relative concept—has lost some of its meritocratic dimension. We forget that it is built progressively, that it is granted by peers in one’s field, that it reflects a kind of work and recognition by a more or less large group.
Objective reality: a moment of glory does not make an influencer.
Content published online can reach astronomical numbers, especially on TikTok. However, the discovery of these videos does not often translate into a new status for the author. At best, a few thousand new followers who—while now your followers—won’t always consistently see your new posts. Nor will they offer you the recognition you seek overnight. In other words, even though “engagement farming,” those techniques designed to artificially inflate interactions under posts, seems to be part of the toolkit, the real impact is limited in truly making someone an influencer or even making them recognizable.
“We may not even recognize many of the people we see, and we think of our time on these apps as a form of wasting time on the internet (that is, leisure) rather than connecting with people in our own lives. We are posting less to consume more.”
Taking time to grow in people’s hearts: the example of fashion
In France and within the fashion sphere (and beyond), Sophie Fontanel, a renowned journalist and writer, took time to build an identity recognizable among thousands. First, through the way she writes her Instagram posts: always a play between her often quite lengthy French version and a somewhat quirky English translation, which is punchy, amusing both French speakers and international followers.
Her white hair, of course (she even wrote a book about it). And a regular posting routine.
It’s what we call a deal with an audience in sum: what Sophie Fontanel does, is Sophie Fontanel.
Examples abound: Jordan Maurin and his advice on men’s wardrobes, at the crossroads of vaudeville and personal shopping. The improbably polished aesthetics of Kiwi Lee Han, one of the first to explore a short film style in her brand collaborations, with a heavy dose of humor.
Ultimately, execution or the method doesn’t matter: all of these personalities found a touch that is distinctly theirs, easily recognizable, and makes you want to return to their profiles like you return to your favorite cafés. In short, the desire to follow them for a part of (their) life and to allow oneself time to become attached.
Letting go and… just enjoying it
The influencer marketing industry is at a turning point; instead of trying to replicate outdated strategies, which rely solely on performance metrics, we see that beautiful stories, real talents represent what holds the most value for humans, whether on a small or large scale. On Substack, there are many similar examples; talents who didn’t necessarily want to go further on Instagram or TikTok manage to become part of people’s daily lives through their unique ways of seeing the world. I’m thinking, for instance, of
by , which blends fashion and food culture, with each new edition being a moment of intellectual indulgence.Joy is contagious; I believe that after a phase of discovery and expansion of social networks, there’s a desire to find unexpected, unsettling spaces that not only capture attention but also nurture a real appetite for beauty, the bizarre, the erudite, or the anecdotal.
A digital liveness—the quality or state of being alive—that allows influencers to exist beyond their means of publication and to enter people’s minds for the long term. That’s probably the real success: remembering someone and being able to talk about them without consulting your phone.
The number of the week: 10 million
It’s one of the images that will go down in Olympic history. The photo of Brazilian surfer Gabriel Medina, taken by Jérôme Brouillet, has surpassed 10 million “likes” on Instagram.
Amazing links
The “gross beauty aesthetics” is exploding on social media. Could gore be a response to an uncertain world? (Dazed)
Outsiders are the new insiders and are becoming the most inspiring figures of our generation. (Columbia Journalism Review)
How Google Maps first failed in India…then succeeded. (Elizabeth Laraki)
Have a great week! This newsletter is written with love, passion, and (French) café.
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My book “Alive In Social Media” is available on Amazon.
A propos de gloire, Antoine Lilti dans son bouquin « Figures Publiques, l’invention de la célébrité » et justement la disparition au XVIIIe de la figure glorieuse (posthume de préférence, évacuant la question du profit) au profit de la célébrité (les premières ‘stars’ : Voltaire et Rousseau)