New York Magazine - 19.08.2019 - 01.09.2019

26 THECUTAUGUSTSEPTEMBER,



Potted plants

Lisbon

Negroni

Destination

weddings

Met Breuer

Maine

Wide-leg pants

“Into Broadway”

here is an hourof my life I lose every

day to Instagram. It’s always alone, usually

after dinner or sometimes during middle-

of-the-night bouts of insomnia, and reach-

es some kind of crescendo, like ordering

$30 shoe inserts that promise to make high heels less

painful (so convincing in the ad!) or doing a deep dive

into this woman who is an ex of a friend of someone I

grew up with. She posts stills of outfits fromThe Talented

Mr. Ripleyand odd, witchy-looking grapes. For this, she

has around 20,000 followers. I become one of them.

At first, I’m just curious about the logistics of her life.

There seems to be an inspiring amount of #influencer

content that doesn’t really align with her follower reach.

She tags every single item of her clothing like she’s a star-

let at a premiere. There’s a lot of content: sweaty gym

selfies as an excuse to show off her abs, golden lattes,

dinner with “the girls” at Pastis, lines like “I just took a

DNA test, it turns out I’m 100% that bitch,” tips on how

to reduce your carbon footprint, so many pictures of tiles

during a trip to Lisbon (“my office for the week,” “I live

here now”).

It all starts to grate, and soon my follow has officially

turned into a hate-follow. Her feed is turning me off to

things I once loved, like No. 6 clogs and Patagonia

fleeces. Eventually, I’m closing my eyes and rubbing the

bridge of my nose—which I do only when I really can’t

handle life—and whispering to my phone, “No, don’t

ruin Negronis for me, too.”

Meet the unfluencer, the person who makes me want

to do the opposite of whatever she’s doing and throw out

whatever I already own that she has posted about.

To be clear, I love my white linen dress from Reforma-

tion, and my most recent post on social media was of my

dog. I have the same modern desires as many, many

other women and men of my demographic. This is nei-

ther an argument against being basic nor a critique of

social media’s influence. My most recent purchase was

T

Superbloom

Paella

Carbon

footprint

Golden latte

NOT FOR ME

The

Unuencers

The agony of overexposure

to the things we love.

By Marisa Meltzer

PHOTOGRAPHS: THIS SPREAD, UNSPLASH (MAINE, PANTS, PAELLA, BROADWAY, SUPERBLOOM, PLANT, LISBON, LATTE, WEDDING, BIKE); JAY SURESH/WIKIMEDIA (MET BREUER); WILL SHENTON/WIKIMEDIA (NEGRONI); COURTESY OF VENDORS (REMAINING). NEXT SPREAD, COURTESY OF CHROM (TEETH)