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Speaker A: Hey, Im Candice Limim and youre listening to icyi. In case you missed it, Slate podcast about Internet culture. And today class is in session because joining me on the show are two pop culture academics. First up, we have a journalism and creative media professor at the University of Alabama, and the author of the Internet Is for Cats How Animal Images Shape Our Digital Lives. It’s Dr. Jess Maddox. Hello, Jess.
Speaker B: Hello. Thank you for having me.
Speaker A: Of course. Also joining the show for the very first time is Dr. Jess Rauschberg, a digital media expert and a professor of communication technologies at Seton Hall University. Welcome to the show, Jess.
Speaker C: Thanks, Canda. So excited to be here with y’all.
Speaker A: So excited. And we should probably start by clarifying some nicknames because we do have two doctors and we do have two Jesses. So what should I call you? Do we wanna do like jmj? They are. Do we do football like Maddox Rausberg? What do you think?
Speaker B: You can call me Maddox. A lot of people do.
Speaker C: Yeah, that works with me, too. Last names work amazing.
Speaker A: Well, I want to jump right into today’s episode with an Internet resolution of mine, which is I would like to stop looking at snark pages about influencers in 2025 for those with a healthy relationship to their browser history. Snark pages are these forums and communities, usually on Reddit, where people will post about influencers they follow but hate and they criticize them for anything from classist things they say on podcast to, like, face tune allegations to breaking federal trade laws and an influencer world. If you’re popular enough, someone might start a separate Reddit snark page that’s just for you. So this is like Brianna Chicken Fry snark or Emily Morocco Snark. And before I say more, what do you guys think of my resolution? Do you think I can make it?
Speaker B: I think you could make it, but why would you want to?
Speaker A: Oh, okay. Okay. Rausushurg, what do we think?
Speaker C: That is a brave resolution, Candace. I don’t know if I can make it, but I think that a lot of people feel your frustrations. In my regular visits to these Snark subs, A lot of hate followers, people who follow snarkers be not because they like them, but because they’re annoyed by them or they dislike them. They’re feeling frustrated with the snarking too. And I think a lot of people are wondering, well, what’s beyond this?
Speaker A: Yeah, it’s such a moment of like, if you can’t beat em, join them, you know, and so I’m trying to beat them. Pray for me. And I think this brings us to two of the biggest Influencer Snark pages out there. I’d argue LA Influencer Snark and NYC Influencer Snark. And as you can probably deduce, these are biccoastal Reddit pages and they started around 2022 and each subreddit has around 140,000 members. I want to play a TikTok, a creator who is describing what the NYC Influencer Snark subreddit is.
Speaker D: To her, the Influencer Snark Reddit page is made up of some of the most miserable people I have ever come across. It’s literally just a bunch of losers on the Internet. Faceless losers who have nothing better to do than to continuously hate on like a select group of creators. It’s like always the same couple of girls. And it’s also like soon as one of the select group of people posts, they’re like, wow, this is so ugly. She’s so stupid. What a loser. And I’m like, for someone who hates these people so much, you guys are really f****** up in their business. It’s giving fan behavior. Go get something to do.
Speaker A: I’d argue it is fan behavior. It’s just anti fan behavior. But first, let’s take a break. When we come back, the Dr. Jess are going to walk me through their recently published paper about NYC Influencer Snark. We’ll get into what they’ve learned about the way we monitor and judge influencers and ourselves online. We’ll be right back. Hey listeners, Hope you’re enjoying today’s show. If this is your first time listening, then welcome. We are thrilled to have you here. In case you missed it, our show comes up twice a week on Wednesdays and Saturdays. So make sure you never miss an episode like this past Wednesdays when we bro broadht in our friends over at what Next TBD to share the fascinating story behind findaggrave.com, which they call the Facebook of the Dead. And we’re back. I am here with Dr. Jess Maddox and Dr. Jess Rausberg to discuss their paper, She’s My B**** Eating Crackers, Influencer Snark and the Digital Gossip Economy. First off, thank you so much. Thank you so much for this title. Cause if you know, you know. For those who don’t know though, could you maybe explain what the title of your paper refers to when you say She’s My Bech Eating Crackers?
Speaker B: I’m just gonna say that was all raushbberg’s idea, so I’ll let her take it away.
Speaker C: Okay, thank you. Desess. So this phrase traces its origins to 2010’s Internet culture. And I think it was coined maybe by the journalist Michael Hobbebs. And it describes somebody who’s so annoying to you and they really maybe haven’t done anything wrong, but if they were like eating crackers in front of you’you’re just annoyed. And so that is a popular phrasee that I learned from spending time reading snark subreddits, particularly ourash influencer Snark. Because a lot of these women who are posting or who are posted about on the subreddit, they’re not really doing anything wrong most of the time. They’re just people that were creators that audiences find annoying. And so we thought that was a really interesting way to think about what value to snark have. We often dismiss it as something that’s, you know, very low value or something that women do, like influencing and gossiping or things for girls, quote unquote. But what Jess and I are trying to get at is that snarkers might be onto something when we’re talking about what do influencers or creators owe their audiences.
Speaker B: Years ago I was talking to a content creator who told me, he said, you know, content creators and influencers, there’s no accountability guardrails in place so that we have to be each other’s accountability guardrails. And he wasn’t even talking really about snark. This was years ago now, like I think even before COVID And so I think that there is this belief that like what influencers do is just like completely frivolous. Wild wild West. And Jess and I know those comparisons are ill informed for many reasons that we can talk about, but because of that there’s this need to hold these people accountable. And so even though that the influencer industry isn’t the wild Wild west isn’t even though it isn’t always as frivolous as people may think it is, though it can be at times, I think that what snarkers do is they function as those accountability guardrails, that this is still a growing industry, a growing type of work, and they are kind of functioning as a stakeholder in a way to shape what it maybe should or shouldn’t be.
Speaker A: I would now love to turn our attention to the subreddit NYC influencer Snark. It is the center of your paper and I actually just wa wantn ask about your personal relationships to it. Like when and how did you guys first hear about this subreddit.
Speaker C: So I’m a former content creator in disability advocacy spaces and that’s sort of how I ended up studying content creators. And this is on Instagram in 2020. And so I had a lot of mutual followers that were posted on a different Snark subreddit, which I think is a subreddit that shows that the dark side of Snark, it’s called R Illness Fakers, and it’s basically an entire forum where people try to suss out if these disability or chronic illness content creators are faking their disabilities and grifting and scamming followers for money. And I had a lot of my mutuals on, on that subreddit, which was really, I think, scary, especially like during COVID But I had always known Snark subreddits existed and certainly like R vlogs, Narc has been around for almost 10 years. And that’s like the original Snark sub Reddit. And some of like the Mommy vlogger and family influencer pages have been around a little bit longer. But I think I had a question to myself onces, like, well, if they’re talking about disability and chronic illness creators or influencers, are they talking about the lifestyle influencers too? And I think I just searched. I don’t even remember who. Just somebody’s name on Reddit. And then I was introduced to the Pandora’s box that is NYC influencer Snark and the entire, I guess, cinematic universe of related subs. And I haven’t been able to pry myself away.
Speaker B: Yeah, same. I definitely haven’t been able to prime myself away either. You know, it’snark has just been a presence in my life for so long that I. I’m like, where did it come from? And I’m pretty sure I arrived to R Blognark after from Tumblr. I’m pretty sure that’s when I first heard about it in the mid 2010s and kind of followed that breadcrumb trail over to Reddit. And I think Jess and I started thinking about this together and talking about it. I want to say it was with the London and Olivia drop.
Speaker C: When I have a lot of feelings.
Speaker B: About them is when. Yeah, when we started talking about this idea from like a scholarly perspective, because we were like, this is, you know, we have race intersecting here, we have sexuality intersecting here. We have class intersecting here. In that scandal of these two popular queer, I guess their lifestyle creators on TikTok who had, you know, racist past tweets come out about them and or that they had written. And Jess and I, we kind of started talking about it then, and eventually we’re finally like, we got to write about this. We have too many things not to say about it.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker C: When I encountered London and Olivia, it wasn’t on TikTok. It was through Instagram reels. And I’m like, what is going on here? I find them fascinating because of a lot of what Jess shared. I think they’re a really interesting creator group in the lifestyle influencer space, and they’re not quite, like, fully positioned within the queer content creator space. Of course they are queer, but they are pretty unique. And I’ve always been really interested, like Jess, about, you know, how people portray themselves u especially when they’re couple creators or queer couple creators. And what does it mean to influence a lifestyle? And I always had, like, my own critiques, but I was like, maybe I’m just being a hater. And what I think was so fascinating about snark was like, it was thinking, oh, my gosh, it’s not just me. And I do think there’s a lot of snark that really blurs the boundary between when are you actually being hateful and when are you offering critique. But I think with moments like London and Olivia, I mean, they weren’t dep platform, but they lost several hundred thousand followers after those tweets were leaked, and they lost a lot of brand deals. So did it change things? I’m not sure, but I saw that moment as a rupture in the lifestyle influencer industry, and it showed to, I think, a lot of snarkers and to researchers like Jess and myself that influencers need to pay attention to snark pages, whether they like it or not, because snarkers have more power than I think a lot of people give them.
Speaker B: Yeah. I’ll just add, you know, we live in a capitalist society for better or for worse.
Speaker A: Right.
Speaker B: And money talks. And so, unfortunately, one of the biggest ways you can holden influencer accountable is through their financials and through brand deals, especially when you’re someone as big as London and Olivia. Snarkers can demonstrate the power of public opinion and how that public opinion can be swayed to entice folks to drop a brand deal. And again, I don’t necessarily co sign it, but it is what it is.
Speaker A: I think it’s so interesting that you guys are kind of creating this timeline or maybe this catalyst of the moment when the influencer kind of needed a stark page, because red stark pages have been emerging like late 2010s, early 2020s, they kind of replaced gossip blogs. So we’re thinking like Goawk or Tatler, Lipstick Alley. I literally think the reason Reddit is the reason for their landing page is cause it’s just better design, like it’s better to use. But both NYC and LA influencer snark were started in 2022, which I find really interesting. Cause I wanted to ask, do you think the Pandemic had anything to do with the rise and beginnings of these pages?
Speaker C: Absolutely, Absolutely. I think this is something that a lot of snarkers are talking about now. And I was writing about this on Blue sky and cross posted to Twitter or X. I think a lot of these creators who are an influencers who are snarkd on really built a platform exclusively on TikTok. So they’re only doing short form content. And now that the TikTok ban is looming and we don’t know will we have TikTok a few weeks from now, these creators and influencers are freaking out because they did not they put all their eggs in one basket. They just did TikTok. And then it’s easy to cross post on Instagram. And so a lot of creators like I know Victoria Paris who’s pretty much exclusively TikTok and Instagram, she’s often posted on about in in these spaces and I’ve seen her post several videos about not wanting to film long form content for YouTube and not wanting to make that push. And a lot of these creators like Victoria Paris are now content farming and trying to get people to feel sympathetic for them and follow them on new platforms. And so I think that with TikTok exploding in the pandemic and different forms of work emerging and how people were thinking of content creation as opposed to like before TikTok really blew up, now we’re seeing some big differences and I think a lot of audiences and followers are frustrated. Like just said, snarkers play a big role in shaping public opinion. And I have read so many threads on the big Snark pages, especially LA and NYC influencer Snark, that a lot of snarkers or just social media followers don’t want to, you know, follow these people along to new platforms. I think they’re really frustrated with influencers not being accountable to their followers, not disclosing brand deals or kind of just being generally frustrating people to follow or watch and of they’re out of touch. And so I think the pandemic changed the influencer industry and the creator economy and the TikTok ban is going to be another rupture. So like four years later or almost five years later, here’s the next big thing that’s going toa change how influencers work.
Speaker B: Yeah, I completely agree. I also think during COVID when, you know, again, when TikTok takes off during COVID one of the things I would say Tic Tac did is it democratized content creation. You wouldn’t immediately get an audience, but with its in app editing interface, suddenly anybody could do on their phone what people were doing on YouTube with Adobe Premiere Pro and you know, Canon cameras and like much more sophisticated software could now be done on the phone. So it really that when I say TikTok democratized content creation, that’s what I’m essentially talking about. And I think what happened on the heels of that during COVID is now anybody can have a platform, Anybody can respond to another person’s platform. And in addition, in Covid, we saw such a time of financial hardship that even though I did say earlier that not all influencing is frivolous, a lot of it is though, right? A lot of it is like, I have nightmares about Alex Earl and her puke dress. Like, I will never know peace again in my life because of Alex Earl in her puke dress. If you don’t know, she left a dress covered in vomit in her closet for a year because she had so many clothes, she didn’t even realize the dress was covered in puke. And my students like, but Dr. Matdock, she’s great. I will never know peace. So there is frivolousness here, right? There is this frivolousness. And during, particularly in Covid, that was really unwelcome. Right. Everyone was struggling financially in addition to, you know, everything else that was going on in the world. So I think the influencer lifestyle really became seen as out of touch. And so on the heels of that, we get de influencing. Right? You know, don’t buy the expensive thing by this. And so what is also happening around the same time, 2022, the rise of these scenar pages that we’re talking about. So none of it happens in a vacuum. It’s all connected. Yeah. I think it is going to be really interesting also now to see what happens post TikTok ban, because I think a lot of the discourse I’ve been seeing is, well, now these people have to get real jobs and it’ll be interesting. It’be quite interesting because it is a real job. But that’s another podcast episode for another time.
Speaker C: Wait, can I say something to that, Je Because I think that you bring up such a good point and something that you just opened up like a window for me in my mind where I was like I wait, let’yeah exactly. Like, let’s think about this. Earlier research on gender and the influencer industry really like critiques the way we have talked about, whether it’s in traditional media or even like other forms of media work where we d really dismiss influencing as a girl thing. Or like you’ve said, just it’s super frivolous or it’s not that serious and maybe for some creators it isn’t. But I think that a really great critique that I’ve seen that touches on what you’ve just said is influencing is work. It is a job. It might not be a job in the same way being a journalist is a job or you know, working a 9 to 5 is a job or being a professor is a job, but it is work and it shapes our culture. And I think that we’re go goingna start having on the other side of things like what the general public opinion might change around influencing and now maybe take it a little bit more seriously. Like, oh, this is real work, but it not maybe in the same ways that previous forms of labor are operating. There’s different structures.
Speaker B: It’s okay. People don’t think being a professor is a real job either.
Speaker C: Oh yeah, that’s unfortunate.
Speaker A: Bute I mean I want to jump in here because I think this is now becoming so timely. Right. Like I remember I opened up NYC influenr snark this morning and I think one of the first things I saw was kind of like lol. Isn’t it crazy that all these influencers are on TikTok begging you to follow them on other platforms? And so it is kind of making me wonder like if TikTok ban does happen, do you think the people who are anti fans will still follow them literally just out of hate? Literally just out of hate.
Speaker B: Oh, 1000%. There is nothing as powerful as hate. Jess, what’s the quote we used in the epigraph of the paper?
Speaker C: We use an epigraph because we’re cool like that from a song by a group called Infinity Song. It’s called Haters Anthem and I can’t remember the actual epigraph, but the lyrics of the song, which is also like, it’s so catchy and they’re super talented. Definitely give it a listen. I love the way it feels to be a hater. There’s something so Sweet to think about how I’m better. And in the epigraph, there’s another lyric that we, we actually quote where it’s like, I’d rather sit and criticize and watch from the sidelines. I hate everything you do, and it feels so good to hate something. And I think Jess is on point where, like, yes, maybe not some people. It’s going to be out of sight, out of mind. But I think there are so many folks who are invested in hate watching that they will follow these people not because they want to support them, but they want to see them struggle and maybe get a taste of the real life that everyone who is not a creator or is working what we might call a traditional job is experiencing.
Speaker A: I’m already learning so much, but I think we should take a break. When we come back, the doctors, Jess and I are gonna talk about the difference between gossip and snark and how NYC influencer snark plays into feminist media scholarship. We’ll be right back. And we’re back. Now I feel like it may be a bit hard to understand, like NYC influencer snark, the subreddit without explaining what people are writing on there. Can I ask what’s the most egregious or memorable post you’ve seen on there? It could even be like the fun..niest thing you’ve seen on there.
Speaker B: Maddox, that’s a great question and it is going to be so hard to pick one.
Speaker A: I know, man.
Speaker B: Now I’m under pressure. I’m going to come back to the London and Olivia debacle. I mean, I don’t have a specific example from that that’s really jumping out at the top of my head at the moment. But I just remember that. I think I remember that the most because that was a moment as, as a researcher, I was like, oh, like there’actually like there is something here. And kind of my thoughts about it have kind of consolidated or starting to consolidate. But I appreciate the contributions of these types of posts because they do get at deep social issues, maybe without naming them. You know, sometimes we talk about the Internet has made us dumb. But I also think one of the things the Internet has done is made us a little bit more class conscious, aware. You know, we think we hear terms like gaslighting and microaggressions now entering, you know, popular, you know, discourse in ways they were once not. They were once, you know, very much in psychology and like. But posts like what we saw in the London and Olivia debacle get at some of that Kind of class consciousness between class, race, gender, sexuality, and actually are getting at the intersectionality of it all. Maybe without naming it, but they’re headed in that direction.
Speaker C: A top moment for me. I mean, we’ve already talked about the puke dress or like also Alex Earl urinating and defecating on herself. And it’s quirky and cool, which I have thoughts on that maybe is a whole other podcast episode. But like also offers there really interesting commentary about race and whiteness with maybe out without naming it, but like she can get away with doing all of that because she’s a conventionally attractive CIS white woman who has a lot of money and is one of the major players in the influencer industry. I think for me there have been so many beautiful moments, but I think the moment that changed things for me. I’m also gonna go back to London and Olivia and this is right after the wedding tweet leak scandal. I was really invested. I was admittedly, like, refreshing. They actually had to create a separate snark subreddit because there were some f for context. The London and Olivia’original sub was also a space for actual fandom for people who like them, and so they had to make a separate snark Seateit someone on. When the snark for Londonel and Olivia was created, there was a really great post that said, my critique is not with London and Olivia as people because we don’t actually know them. It’s London and Olivia, the brand. And I, it. I was just. My mind was blown and I was like, these snarkers are so smart and they’re saying the things that I have been thinking about in terms of influencers and content creators. Having been a creator myself, obviously not a lifestyle influencer or creator, and not at the same level as a lot of these women are working at. But I’ve had these thoughts and someone has verbalized it and put it into words so eloquently and thinking about this from a strategic communication and like, what does it mean if we think about these people not as people, but as brands? And brands owe consumers things. And so shouldn’t influencers also o their audiences who are consuming their content and giving them money in some way, shape or form? We are owed some things too. And I think that for me was like, oh yeah, the snarkers are ono something. They offer not just other audience members or lurkers, but also researchers from that perspective. They offer so much to think about. What is the future of the influencer industry? Like, what’s happened before? What’s happening now and where is it going?
Speaker A: Yeah, I would say that these snark pages, they love a breakup.
Speaker C: They love.
Speaker A: How did you afford that? Rent, allegations, anything that has to do with money or perceived class mobility, I think they tend to kind of like pickpocket. But inna talk about the actual community behind these pages because I do think sometimes we forget that behind snark pages are like, people with lives. And I definitely have been asking myself, like, why do I have such a hard time letting go of snark pages? And I was kind of like looking on Reddit, obviously, and I saw this comment in NYC influencer Snark, where someone wrote that snark pages have, quote, helped me see the real world. These pages reveal the real truth. And it helps me reassess what I’m consuming and what I’m comparing myself to and feeling bad about myself and my life. I’m tired of the lies. And these pages are my reality check. And I wanted to ask, from your research, who are these snarkers? Have you been able to kind of like, deduce maybe like, what they represent, what they do? Who are they?
Speaker B: We haven’t done any interviews or reaching out to folks who are on these subreddits, but I think for who they are, the first thing that comes to mind is just people seeking commonality in community. You know, I think there in our very saturated media world, it can get really frustrating when, like, everyone is talking about someone that you may hate. I’ll shout out my best friend here who can’t stand Taylor Swift, and I’m a huge Swifty. And she’s so. I know the last year and a half was tough for her. Love you, Natasha. And so. But like, she couldn’t talk to me about that because we had, like, differing opinions and I couldn’t. Like, I mean, we still do because we’re friends, but you want to find people that have similar opinions with you, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Right. So I think snarkers that can be one way snarkers find themselves online is just I’m just frustrated with being inundated with a saturated media landscape that is like, focusing on this type of lifestyle or these types of people or these types of things. And I want to know I’m not crazy. I want to know I’m not alone. And, you know, thinking these things may be problematic or wanting to critique them. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I think that can be a really, actually good and healthy thing because then you’re talking to other people and maybe not just like suppressing your feelings. So I think that could be a good thing.
Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Related to what just, just shared media is not reality, but it’s informing our reality. And reality informs the type of media people make or want to seek out in terms of what they watch, what they scroll through. And I think Snark is a snark. Subs. While again, they can be really dangerous, they can definitely play into some misogynistic or homophobic or racist undertones or sometimes overtones. And it’s like, oh, you’re actually being problematic and hateful. But I think ultimately those are rarer. What Snark offers people is like a community to unlearn this idea that what what content creators are doing, they’re working and that work is real, but we’re seeing something super curated and something that is not necessarily realistic. Like there’s so much work that goes into making content and I think that is sometimes not always clear to people. But when you have a space to actually talk about these major influencers who basically are shaping maybe choices that you’re making, not just what you’re consuming, but how you vote, how you choose to live your life. And increasingly we saw that in the last selection, it becomes a space for people to like actually say no. What influencers are doing have serious impacts on our lives and we need to talk about it. And sometimes it’s the good stuff, but there’s also we need to talk about the not so good stuff.
Speaker A: Yeah, I loved this quote. I love this sentence you guys wrote in your paper where you wrote quote, future research on influencer snark can and should interrogate the tension between a misogynistic s and attempts at feminist interventions. And I love this because Reddit is misogynistic and it is not a coincidence that NYC influencer snark this honestly cought behavior stuff that seems to kind of propagate a lot of targeting of female influencers by female users. It’s not a coincidence that they are finding this home on Reddit. My question is what do you think is the role of influencer snarkpges in the midst of this feminist era or maybe crisis?
Speaker B: Oh, I love this question because this is something I’ve been thinking so much about lately because my 2025 resolution is to write two books so wish me luck one of them that will touch on influencer snark. But one of the things and that book is essentially looking at parasocial relationships and Internet culture and of course snark is a, to some degree, yeah, is a form of a parasocial relationship where when you do seek out and follow an influencer that you hate across platforms, across sites, across accounts, keep up with their every move, you’re invested in them. You are invested in them. Even though it’s a kind of a hater position instead of a bestie position, you’re still invested in them. And so I sometimes think this culture of increased parasocial relationships that we live in online has sometimes made us view each other as less human and we’ve kind of forgotten the humanity of it all because. And I think this kind of feminist backlash that you spoke of in your question, we see so much now in terms of body shaming online. And like body discourse has come back in a way that makes me very uncomfortable online. And I think, you know, from whether even it’s, if it’s, you know, people speculating on Cynthia Rivo and Ariana Grande and how thin they look, or all the way up to, you know, this kind of culture of like diet meds that seem to be like inundating us everywhere again. And it’s like everything, all the progress we made in the 2010s, whether it was in like the has Me too movement, right, was great. It started, but then was completely bungled under sexual predators and mismanagement, then mental health awareness in the 2010s, we are now seeing a really kind of stark turn against this, especially with return of slurs, like the R word becoming normalized again. And so now I see that again with like the body positive discourse of the 2010s now being like, they’re too thin, they’re too fat, they’re too this. So like that critique of snarking can definitely play into this, right? That like there’s that line where goes from being something good to hold someone accountable to being. I have now taken this past the point of accountability and made it personal and mean and anti feminist, if you will. And I have a lot more to say specifically about Reddit, but I’ll turn it over to rash break for a sec so I don’t just ramble on forever.
Speaker C: Yeah, I think Reddit is a platform that invites a lot of misogyny and it’s really curious when like that misogyny comes from other women or female users. And so in terms of body, the body discourse, what I’ve seen in the like snarkers responses to influencers and their bodies, I’ve seen it as like a double edged sword where it can do some good things and also contribute to some bad things. And I think it speaks to the imperfections of feminism and how feminism is always changing and is also imperfect. And is it utopia? There’s no utopian feminism because there’s always going to people create feminism and we are all really imperfect. And so it’s all about how we’re trying to continuously change it. Like I think about how on the good side of or more positive side of things, Snarkr played a big role. And this is something we talked about in our article with banning the or getting the lifestyle influencer Liv Schmidt, who posts a lot of pro Anna content. They’ve had her account banned twice because they created mass reporting and mass flagging campaigns. And TikTok actually has a pretty explicit statement in their terms of service about not using your account to promote pro eating disorder stuff. So that’s really good. But then I also see in the same vein, um, those same snarkers likely are surveilling Remy Bader who got super popular for I don’t think she ever claimed to be body positive, but she was a plus size influencer who got viral in the pandemic on TikTok for her realistic clothing hauls. And she’s had a pretty drastic body change. She’s lost weight and a lot of these. I’m not making a comment on you know what I think, but I have noticed a lot of snarkers, whether it’s on NYC influencer Snark or Ramy Bader’s sub make comments about why they think she lost weight. And there’s this big debate like does Remy owe us and explanation? And so what I think is we’re gonna see a lot more of as like we kind of creep back into this scary like pro anorexia and pro eating disorder and thin content that was like super popular at the beginning of the 2010s but we sort of phased out of. With the rise of body positive like content creation and influencing, I think that we’re gonna see a lot of snarkers start to have like meta debates over what we can and cannot say. And that’s like one of the reasons why I wa want to interview Snarkr as an academic researcher, like how do you conceive of snark and what do you think is appropriate or what crosses the line into like hateful gossip or just being mean.
Speaker B: Yeah. And going to the fact that this is Reddit specifically, I think that we can’t ignore the fact that it is, it is Reddit that cannot be divorced from one another. Reddit is a notoriously misogynistic racist platform. And even though they have taken steps to try to curb that in recent years, you know, there’s questions of how far that can ever really go. And even taking a step to look at like the technical features of Reddit for a second, right? Like the site is built on you getting points from upvoting or downoting content. So people want those points. They want to get their metrics, they want to get their karma. Exactly, yeah, they want to get their karma. And so does that mean you have to go on and like one up somebody in hatefulness every time? Right. Like, how do you get you a karma? Right. And so I think that would be something really interesting to talk to Starker about is how do you understand the relationship to like this specific platform and this specific platform’s aim of upvotes, downvotes, karma, those features, that system, and then snarking itself. And so because to me, as an outsider, you know, as a researcher looking at this, I see it as kind of reinforcing itself in a way that again, can be good for building community, but can also reward and promote more inflammatory takes.
Speaker A: That is just such an important point. The way that, like, first off, read it using karma. That’s cultural appropriation. How dare you. But second, Reddit is a platform where you get points for being a hater. You get points for being an anti fan. It is anti fans showing each other just how much hatred is within the blood of their oath. And I guess the question I have is like, I have a really hard time figuring out if there is a good, if there is a positive to NYC influencer snark. Because, for example, I did read this one Reddit comment that was like, being on the snark pages has definitely made my body dysmorphia, an insecurity improve after years of seeing the heavily edited propaganda that influencers push. So I guess the big question I wanted to ask you guys is like, are snark page net toxic? Cause I have a really hard time knowing and thinking about what is positive. I literallyimes sometimes when I wake up and I go on Reddit, I literally just say to myself, like, all right, who do we hate today? That’s the vibe. That’s the vibe, you know?
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: So this is my researcher hat coming out and giving an unsatisfying answer of I don’t think it’s net anything. Again, this is my researcher cop out answer. I think it’s a part of this un necessary we can Talk about what? I mean, like a necessary part of this influencer landscape, this influencer industry, because influencers do have audiences, they do have stakeholders, and they do have anti fans, the same way any celebrity would. I think it can be good in the sense of holding folks accountable for bad behavior and then educating people on filters and the ethics and legal nature of sponsored content. But then of course, I mean, then there’s a subreddit like Trishyand that had to get banned for harassing Trisha Paytas so much. So I think their’re strangely necessary for where the industry is right now. And I think that it’s necessary for people to not just hold influencers accountable for the people in these subreddits themselves to make sense of the changing influencer world.
Speaker C: For me, I’m always reflecting on how young the influencer industry as we know it is. It’s less than 20 years old. I mean, YouTube is like just about to celebrate each a second decade, which is absolutely wacky to me. I remember when it was brand new and shiny and the sky was the limit and it still kind of is. But I get asked a similar question a lot. Are influencers going away? And I don’t think influencers are going away. I think they’re here to say. But the ways that we understand influencers or we see them work now is probablynna look really different next year because it was super different in 2020 and it was even more different than it was in 2014. So I think a lot has changed in the last decade, like when we really started to see influencers takingick off. I think that as we. I agree with Jaz. I think that as the industry is figuring out what it means to be an influencer and what it means to do this kind of work, we need a space to make sense of it. And is snark the most productive way to make sense of influencers behaving badly or issues of not disclosing ads or being dishonest with fans? Maybe not. But I also don’t know where else we go, especially when these other platforms don’t always provide us a space to talk about it. And so I think we will see some kind of snark exist as we discuss in our paper. Gossip has always been around and it’s not going away. Gossip bogs. Like I remember frequenting Perez Hilton and Gawker as a teen or like a young, a tween. I guess I was always super interested in celebrity culture and like what’s real and what’s not real. And what’s being manufactured and what does this all mean? Why do these things exist? And I think snark, as we talk about in our paper, is just the most modern or contemporary version of celebrity gossip. And I think it’s a way to sort of historicize how this industry is AOL B. Will it exist in the same way, like this time next year? I don’t know. But I think for now it’s going to be a really important part of the influencer industry because influencers are increasingly looking at these subreddits, whether it’s like a general sub like TikTok gossip or NYC influencer snark or their own pages, because they know that snarkers are watching and they’re watching back.
Speaker B: My prediction for influencing that is that by 2030 we are going to have seen or we’ll see a rapid intensification of the professionalization of influencing. So what I mean by that is like by 2030, almost every influencer is going to have an agent or a manager or a spokesperson or someone to speak for them, basically, that this access and intimacy that we have is going to be severely reined in by gatekeepers, essentially. And I think that as that happens, I think the nature of snark is going to change because part of snarking is critiquing the fact influencers do do it all that, you know, they are living these very glamorous lifestyles and through the access of social media platforms, they are accessible. They are accessible figures to critique. And I think as the influencer industry professional_ionalizes we’re going to have less access and then therefore what snarkers have to critique will. They’ll just be less of it.
Speaker A: Okay, that’s the show. I want to thank Dr. Jess Rausberg and Dr. Jess Maddox for joining me on todays s episode. We’be back in your feed on Wednesday, so definitely subscribe. That way you never miss an episode. Leave us a rating and A in Apple or Spotify and tell your friends about us. You can follow us on Twitter iymi pod and you can always drop us a Note@iymi slate.com. icy YMI is produced by Alexandra Boi and me, Candice Lim, with production assistance from from Vic Whitley Berry and Kat Hong. D. Rosario is our senior supervising producer and Alicia Montgomery is Slates’s vice president of audio. See you online or on the mildly interesting subreddit.
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