the apolitical influencer

should influencers speak up about what’s going on in the world or simply sell us more products from their Amazon storefront that'll end up in the landfill one day?

I’ve been interested in what the role of an influencer is ever since I became an influencer. My earliest days online were when I had a fashion blog/newsletter in high school (how cringe). I was addicted to Tumblr and reading Rookie Magazine to try to find young people with the same interests as me.

I entered a contest during my senior year of high school to become a teen columnist for the fashion publication Man Repeller. Man Repeller had posted on their Instagram that they wanted to make younger voices heard on MR. I submitted a video for the contest in my childhood bedroom.

I won the contest. I screamed in my mom’s minivan as she drove me home from high school volleyball practice in Minnesota. She didn’t really know what Man Repeller was, but she understood it meant a lot to me.

Disclaimer: I had under 1K followers on Instagram in 2016 when I won the contest. I was not an influencer, but a random high schooler from the Midwest. Influencing wasn’t the 30 billion dollar behemoth it is today.

As you probably know, Man Repeller no longer exists, which is a whole rabbit hole you can go down on the internet to learn more. I haven’t been able to find the articles that I contributed since their site is down, but I went through my email to find the writing I submitted.

I contributed three columns for the site and my first column went live in October 2016, one month before the presidential election.

“Ask a Teen about the Election (and other stuff!)” was the title of the column. The focus was the importance of the 2016 election and what it meant to me as a young person, as well what fashion trends I was seeing in high school.

I have always found there to be ways to touch on important world issues while simultaneously talking about beauty products, fashion, and more. Culture is downstream of politics, anyways.

The year is 2025 and influencers do not talk about politics.

Influencers do not touch on what’s going on in the world in their videos, most of the time.

The formula to be an influencer is to be apolitical, neutral, “brand-safe”, and aesthetic. You link your outfits in your LTK to receive commission and you film GRWM videos. You talk about the restaurants you’ve been dying to try and stay in your niche.

I’ve been doing social media as a full-time job for about 4 years now and I’ve never felt scared to share my beliefs online. I have always paid attention to fellow creators and influencers that do use their platform to highlight important issues going on in the world.

I’ve felt so frustrated at various points in my career at how it seems like the largest creators do not feel a need to share about the world around them. Are they ignorant to the news? Are they in such a privileged bubble to not be impacted by the atrocities happening left and right?

I guess the question here is – what do we expect of influencers? Do we expect them to influence us to care about social issues or just be salespeople for brands?

Why do influencers shy away from using their voice and sharing their values?

I’ve spent time offline talking to my influencer friends about their experience with posting about the 2024 Election, Palestine, BLM, abortion rights, etc. Here are the common concerns I’ve heard that influencers are worried about:

1. I hear plenty of influencers say they will lose brand deals or followers if they do talk about politics.

2. I hear plenty of influencers say they don’t know what to say about politics and/or they don’t feel educated enough to speak on the issues.

3. I hear plenty of influencers say they’re worried that the algorithms will shadowban their content if it is about politics.

Here are my answers to these concerns:

1. It’s true that brands sometimes do not want to work with political creators. My advice is to integrate your beliefs and values into everyday content. I’m not asking you to change your content overnight into something that feels inauthentic.

   1. We don’t need anymore breaking news, “blue MAGA’ creators. These creators are certainly valuable in our media ecosystem, but their audiences have likely already voted Democrat in every single election.

   2. We need lifestyle creators to make their values heard across all niches of the internet — food, fashion, running, motherhood, etc.

   3. You may lose followers, sure. But what about all of the followers you will gain for speaking up about your values and where you stand? Politics are a point of connection. You can connect with new people by sharing your values and my guess is these followers will be more loyal if they know your beliefs.

2. If you don’t know what to say about Palestine, the unlawful deportations, the disastrous “Big Beautiful” tax bill getting passed by Congress right now… amplify educational content + resources available. Repost educational IG Reels, share what podcasts you listen to, or talk about what book you’re reading.

   1. Some may call this virtue signaling, sure, but I think we’ve slipped to a very conservative time in culture. I think we need the infographics and education back online with the rise of anti-intellectualism, ChatGPT, and MAGA’s cult ideology.

   2. We all can’t be experts on everything, but I’m sure there are some issues you are an expert on, even if you don’t feel that way.

   3. If you don’t know which issues to talk about, I’d love to help give you some ideas. I’ve been able to integrate my values into content about running, wellness, fashion, and so much more. It is possible.

3. Getting suppressed by the algorithms is an unfortunate reality I’ve seen myself. All of my videos about Palestine do not get pushed out on the FYP on TikTok, which leads to less people seeing my video and hurts me as a creator.

   1. Learning how to fight algorithms and avoid certain words online that get censored is something that all of us can share with one another.

I wholeheartedly disagree with influencers who have stayed silent about political issues. I find it to be extremely privileged and self-centered to ignore all of the horrific things going on in the world when you have built a platform off of thousands or millions of followers who are likely impacted by politics.

I pose the question to my fellow influencers:

What are you *truly* influencing at the end of the day?

If social media vanished tomorrow, what would people remember you for?

Would they remember you for your character and courage to use your platform to talk about the shit that matters?

Would they remember you for the ways you stayed silent when people looked up to you to use your voice?

I have decided to start Influencers Who Give a Sh*t.

It’s nothing quite formal, yet, but I’m planning to organize a group of influencers. Influencers who can talk to one another about their experience sharing their political beliefs online, managing negative backlash, and navigating working with brands as you do share about your politics.

I understand the fears that influencers may have with not feeling educated on issues and the intense backlash can come. By having these conversations with fellow creators, I hope it can be a catalyst to encourage more influencers to use their voice.

I try to not get mad at individuals, but upset with the system. Brands do blacklist influencers that speak up about Palestine. Brands are a huge part of the problem here.

I know that there are Democratic organizations that do work with influencers – which is great. At the same time, I find that these Democratic organizations mean well, but they don’t know how to win online. (read more here in my substack post called “conservatives are winning online.”)

When Democratic organizations do work with influencers, they use over-scripted, wonky, boring messaging that don’t resonate with our audiences. Oftentimes, they don’t let us use our own tone/POV… so the content doesn’t work.

That being said, we need more influencers to post about things that matter.

You may think you don’t want influencers talking about politics or it doesn’t matter at all if they do speak up. You’re incredibly incorrect.

A majority of Gen Z gets their news from TikTok. Half of US adults get their news from social media.

If all of the “NYC Influencers” posted about the NYC Mayoral Election on June 24, you would have millions of people learning about a local election. We all know local politics do not get the same attention as national politics. Acting like social media doesn’t impact our political outcomes is acting as if you haven’t been alive for the past 10 years.

I’m pretty sure none of us want influencers talking about complex foreign policy issues if they aren’t educated in that field, but talking about local elections, reproductive justice issues, healthcare, housing, etc. should feel like something we all can speak to based on our personal life experiences.

No one is suggesting that influencers make dorky political explainer videos like I do. However, the only reason that influencers are able to make it financially is off of clicks, shares, views, etc. from their audience. Their audience is likely to be impacted by the shit going on in the world. I believe influencers owe it to their followers to speak up.

We need left-leaning influencers is because the Right is dominating online.

I wrote about this more in-depth here in conservatives are winning online.

Republicans win online because they throw money at lifestyle content creators that are right-leaning, instead of throwing money at overtly political, breaking news creators.

• The “Breaking News” political creators have a place in the fight, but so many people will scroll past anything on their FYP that is overtly political. We need to reach new voters which is where influencers come in instead of creators.

• Some influencer niches that are dominated by right-wing creators:

  • Health/wellness, “MAHA” creators

  • Fitness space, gym bro / manosphere content

  • Tradwife, conservative values creators

• The reason that these niches of content are so successful at shaping political ideologies and moving audiences to the right is because the political messaging is very subtle. The Right has spent decades pushing their ideas into the mainstream and funneling money into social media.

If you don’t believe me for yourself, here are the most popular online shows and where they lean politically. The bigger the dot, the more popular the show is. You may not see conservative content on your FYP, but trust me… it’s doing far better than any podcast or YouTube channel you watch.

Right-wing media is dominating online and I think that influencers can be part of a solution. Maybe I’m naive to believe that influencers can and should be doing more than just selling makeup products via links.

Democrats need to spend money on influencers instead of traditional advertising to win in future elections. Let influencers talk about politics in ways that make sense to them – don’t give dorky scripts.

If you are an influencer that wants to get involved, feel free to shoot me a DM over on Instagram. Let me know any creators/influencers that you admire who do speak up. And of course, let me know what you think about this topic!

Thanks so much for reading and I’ll talk to you in the next piece!