By Juliette Warbington
From “Brat Summer” to “Very demure, very mindful”, this summer has seen yet another rotation of viral trends take over our social media platforms. This cyclical tradition has grown in the past years, whether intentionally or not: every few weeks, we are introduced to a new short snippet of a song or a sentence, and its repeated use grows so overwhelming that it soon becomes obsolete—until the next one arrives. Yet, during its brief moment of relevance, it reigns as the ultimate symbol of vogue—the most definitive marker of social awareness any self-respecting social media user can have. Our obsession with this has touched all areas of our society, from marketing to celebrities and even politics. Two things are certain: the growth of social media has allowed publicity to become constant and inevitable in our environment, and I have had more than enough.
The concept of Internet trends has been around for as far as I can remember—such is the curse of being a child of the 21st century—but since 2020, there has undoubtedly been a marked shift in their frequency, their reach, and most notably, their audience. Gone are the times of the occasional joke or reference that could be shared between a younger, online-present generation. Today, it seems that every other brand and celebrity is pouncing onto the next hot trend with the same urgency as a stockbroker onto his ringing phone. For years, the separation between these entities and their audience was untouchable: brands connected with consumers through radio ads, billboards, and TV spots, while celebrities remained shrouded in an almost mythic distance, offering only carefully curated glimpses into their lives through magazines and interviews. That separation has since been breached; the backstage has been revealed through an intentional drop of the highly controlled curtain, if only to cater to what the public is asking for.
Which celebrity hasn’t been seen on TikTok with a bare face, in their sleepwear, in an attempt to mimic the candid filming style of the average user? Should we offer them the same status of untouchable royalty, now that they have lowered themselves to the same playing field? If there is a benefit to this lens that has been placed in the lives of both public figures and everyday users, it is that we have been given the power to choose whom we give importance to, instead of being carefully directed by the hidden garden wall of Hollywood and other industries. It has allowed us to see that the celebrities who we once venerated are no different to our own selves, with the only exception being the wealth we still enable them to accumulate.
This has caused a shift in their role, in which they now need to constantly chase after their followers’ attention instead of setting the trends on their own terms—unless it is simply another highly elaborate marketing technique, executed with the goal of staying relevant. These speculations are ever present, especially when every other video seems to be a subtly camouflaged advertisement for another unnecessary product. While celebrities have always been companies’ most trusted tools to promote merchandise, it seems that their role has been reduced to that very thing, their personalities increasingly manipulated to become instruments of consumerism. But although the danger posed by Internet celebrities stays rather mild, this shift has not spared the other public figures to whom we grant influence.
The fact that political figures have bought into this is therefore no source of comfort. Giving them a total, unfiltered medium of direct communication with the general audience has been a cause of unnecessary controversy and conflict, as seen with former United States President Donald Trump Jr.’s frequent tweets on the platform X. Often aggressively worded or simply untrue (e.g.: an AI- generated image of US-presidency candidate Kamala Harris facing a crowd holding communist flags, posted on 18 August 2024), it is concerning how much free reign we allow our leaders. If even a public figure with the ability to gain relative power over the largest economy in the world can manipulate his audience with artificial intelligence, how are we supposed to distinguish the real from the fake? And how are we meant to gain any agency over the information we choose to believe?
One of the greatest resentments I harbor is never having been given the choice to function without the high-speed world of social-media—rather, it has been imposed on me. Indeed, arguing that it is a choice and that there is nobody to stop us from deleting every social app from our phones stays true, but there is no doubt that not being present online has become a handicap to social activity. In my own circle, the handful of friends and acquaintances who were known for not owning any form of social media did not last long before giving into the feeling of exclusion.
And who can blame them? I likely would not have figured that the Welcome Week events needed to be booked, if I didn’t follow the LSESU Instagram account. And I wouldn’t have known that The Beaver was open for submissions, had I not seen their post. Certainly, LSE has only chosen to drift through the same tech-stream as the rest of the world has, and there is no shame in that. But the reality is undeniable: our dependency on social media isn’t so much a choice as it is a necessity. Still, I am not to be mistaken for a Luddite: the technology of our century is one of the greatest comforts we have been allowed, and it is not to be taken for granted. I have not, however, consented to being permanently tethered to my smartphone, destined to stare at the same flashing advertisements at a day’s length, for the simple security of knowing I can stay socially relevant. Without truly realizing it, I have traded autonomy for convenience, and at times, it seems impossible to reverse.
But all is not lost. Awareness is the first step toward reclaiming control. We can’t eliminate the influence of social media, but we can reduce its grip on our lives, and the solution is simple, radical and audacious as it may be: put down your phone, go outside, and only pick it back up if you really, really must.
Illustrated by Luoyi Shen
