I recently started posting videos on Instagram. Like, actual videos.
Reels, as they call them. Where I say things, with one of those obnoxiously tiny microphones with the fuzzy head on top. I remember when microphones were gigantic tubular monstrosities that you couldn’t accidentally swallow without a pretty substantial effort and a handful of God-given talent.
Why am I making Reels? Because if I don’t, I’ll die in obscurity, penniless and alone. The global creative industry revolves around video content on social media, forcing even a mildly attractive middle-aged divorced parent to try to be a star just to pay the bills.
If I can turn into a well-compensated influencer by peddling my complaints about the new Burbank airport terminal, I will. I can either try to swim in the fetid pool of the attention economy or get eaten by a shark who posts TikToks about carb-conscious dieting.
Of course, that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
In fact, I really, really don’t. I feel what gen Z might refer to as cringe whenever I open up CapCut and try to cobble together a coherent thesis while my head floats in front of a green screen.
It’s so easy to squirt a Reel out, and the medium so thoroughly demands the aesthetic feel rough, that it’s almost like a mockery of the idea of creation. My Uber Eats order didn’t include the Diet Coke I ordered? Let me do a Reel about how mad I am. Too much air in my bag of potato chips? Better make a Reel. The Dodgers lost? Reel time.
I miss the days when making a thing and sharing it with the world was hard. It doesn’t even have to be good. Just tasty enough for the Pac-Man monster that is the algorithm.
It being so simple to make a Reel is why thousands of people are doing it, and getting rich in the process. Influencers are everywhere, especially in big cities such as Los Angeles.
They wander around, consumed with a thirst for “hidden gem” restaurants to film in front of, or elaborate cocktails to try. They film explainer videos about your laundromat because it used to be owned by a mob boss or has a ghost living there. Since I started trying to be an influencer, I’ve filmed content while next to someone else also filming content a few yards away.
This is what I imagine the California Gold Rush was like – starving maniacs with greed in their eyes sifting around for something to change their lives. But swap out Levi’s jeans and a floppy hat for Alo workout gear and On Running sneakers.
Food influencing alone has become a massive industry that can make or break the success of a restaurant, or worse, make it so insufferable to try to eat there that normal people stay home so as not to end up an unpaid extra in someone’s vlog.
Some places, such as the fancy-pants Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes, are fighting back against the Night of the Living Dead invasion of content prospectors. The hotel has banned photoshoots to combat guests who have allegedly booked lunch reservations, then skipped the meal to take pictures in expensive clothes. Instead of functioning businesses tasked with serving paying customers, some places have devolved into mere backdrops for someone’s Robin Leach fantasy.
Look, I’ve on more than one occasion gone to the Sunset Tower hotel in West Hollywood with the explicit purpose of taking a bunch of photos for Instagram. I’ll do it again, too.
But what I will not do is not have the decency to sit down for a burger and a martini first. The Tower Bar is one of the most popular influencer traps in the city. The last time I was there, there were no cameras around, but it felt like there were. The Tower Bar has tried to limit photography for years, but no amount of begging has stopped patrons from snapping and ’gramming when they can.
Maybe a part of me wishes there were cameras around at the Sunset Tower. I wouldn’t be making Reels if part of me didn’t have the same thirst as the rest of the would-be influencers that haunt our major metropolitan areas.
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That need is inside of me, even if I’m partially repulsed by it. My sense of modesty is a voice in my head, but it’s actually a quiet one that gets drowned out whenever I get a dopamine hit from a like on IG. If it feels good, why stop?
But it’s not just that it feels good. It is, as I said earlier, a way to make ends meet. It is a career path that, unlike almost every other one, isn’t shrinking faster than Lizzo’s album sales.
As social media video platforms such as Instagram Reels and YouTube gain more and more ubiquitousness in our lives, and as ad dollars migrate to those platforms from places that emphasize the written word, ignoring these opportunities starts to seem like a losing fight.
Restaurants can litigate and scribble rules on menus. Hotels can ban photoshoots. But this is the equivalent of banning breathing. I fear that society is now built for influencers, or more modestly, the entertainment industry is.
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I might be too late to make money from influencer posting. I’m also probably too old for it. But if I didn’t, I would just be sitting around in a rapidly contracting room full of old writers typing away while the walls of their professional lives close in on them.
We used to make movies in this town. You’d see a film crew or two in every neighborhood. Studio backlots would be buzzing with activity.
The lunch spots where Hollywood movers and shakers used to dine are now the real backlots. The cameras are in our pockets. The sets are the mundane slop of everyday life. And the cast of characters is staring back at you in the mirror.
