James' World 2

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For about five minutes a few months ago, people seemed to genuinely believe that our culture was entering the age of “deinfluencing.” “Step aside, influencers,” wrote CNN. “A new breed of ‘deinfluencers’ has arrived, and they’re saying that materialism and overpriced trends are no longer in style.” The idea of the “deinfluencer” was that instead of encouraging you to buy stuff, the influencer would encourage you to … not buy stuff.

At first, many videos tagged “deinfluencing” were genuine appeals to push back against influencer culture; people talked about how overspending and viral haul videos were part of an unsustainable and unethical system of capitalism that moved at the speed of TikTok trends, often including mea culpas about how their own videos had contributed to that system. It was pretty interesting, honestly, to hear people whose livelihoods depend on selling other people’s products reflect publicly on what their job has meant for the mental health, spending habits, and ethics of both themselves and their viewers.

What started as a rare glimpse into what professional salespeople truly feel and believe, however, immediately became a rather ingenious sales pitch once the hashtag caught on: Instead of influencing people to buy stuff, influencers who tagged their posts “deinfluencing” were simply posting negative reviews of products they didn’t think were worth the money, and — more often than not — telling you what to buy instead (one was captioned “showing you products that can potentially help with overconsumerism!”)

Did anyone really think a TikTok trend was the beginning of the end of capitalism? Probably not. In the months since “deinfluencing” faded from the discourse, TikTok has made consumption on its platform even more inescapable with the launch of TikTok Shop, a feature allowing viewers to buy a product shown in a video without leaving the app. TikTok Shop videos — recognizable by the orange shopping cart tag next to the description — are everywhere, and they are leaving people’s TikTok feeds “in shambles.” TikTok has always been full of product-hawking, much of it rather sneaky: You might be watching a video of someone doing their makeup, and they happen to name the brand of mascara they’re wearing, or a lifestyle influencer is showing her newly renovated living room and suddenly all the commenters demand to know where she bought her lamp. (If she says no, that’s gatekeeping! Even the very language of the platform encourages consumption!) The app was already full of cheap, unethically made goods from sites like Temu or AliExpress, but TikTok Shop has made it even easier for people to buy them and much more lucrative to sell them.

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Lorena Spurio for Vox

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