Social Media Influencers are very popular and they are categorized as celebrities. Their communities are very large, sometimes reaching hundreds of million followers around the world,  most of them being very young. The online influencers are often portrayed as lucky people who live lavish lifestyles. These people earn their living by posting videos, photos, and content which are usually interesting. Their “perfect life” and their happy lifestyle encouraged many of their fans to imitate them or even to try and have the same lifestyle. The aim of this paper is to show that many influencers use a fake identity that they show to their followers. Their goal is only to get glory, money, and fame. This paper will explain why they fake their online identity and how they fake it. It will also demonstrate the impact of their fake online attitudes on their real identity and on their followers as well. It will also highlight the arranged drama that the influencers made to get more and more clout, meaning fame, followers, and attention in the language of the internet. However, this paper will also point out some positive aspects of being an influencer. Even though they fake their online identity, some can also play a vital role in the life of their followers.  In this paper, we will discover all the reasons behind faking their online identity, as many of them can have a life with many problems that they want to escape.

INTRODUCTION:

Nowadays, millions of online users follow each other on different platforms and they get to influence each other regarding their different posts. But many have done it to get fame, money, and glory. They are called influencers. Influencers as per Kim and Kim (2021) are defined as “those who have the potential to create engagement, drive conversation, and/or sell products/services with the intended target audience”  When you look at the different content which is posted daily from influencers, you could easily think that they have a perfect lifestyle and that they are living their best life while taking care of their followers at the same time. But their real lifestyle and identity may not be absolutely what their followers are seeing every day from them on social media platforms. For most of them, they are faking all that. One effect of pretending to be someone else online is that they are actually losing their real identity. Sometimes this transformation of identities may be because they need to fit the different standards set online by other influencers. At first, influencers are ordinary people, then one day they become popular because of a post that gets viral on the web.  From there, loving that popularity they start showing their private lives and lifestyles, engage with their followers digitally and physically, and monetize their page or channel by putting advertisements on it or when they promote a brand on their page (Abidin, 2021). However, the influencers neglect their real identity in order to keep these luxuries. They also lie to their followers, make drama and create a new online identity in order to keep their clout. 

Why does the influencer transform their own identity?

Influencers transform their identity for different reasons and one of them is only to earn their living from it. These opinion leaders get money from different partnerships and contracts that they are associated with to promote a brand or through influencer marketing. As per Glenister (2021) Influencer marketing is, “the strategy of promoting brands, products, or services with selected individuals who are judged most likely to exercise a significant influence on purchase decisions within a particular target market”. So an influencer is not just an ordinary person but also a businessman. As “Social media influencers have become a crucial part of contemporary marketing. Global spending on influencer marketing is skyrocketing, from around $2 billion in 2017 to an estimated $15 billion by 2022”. (Rosengren, Campbell 2021). Another point is that most influencers want glory and they love being followed by people who worship their image on the web. Another type of influencer is one who wants to escape from real life. These people create another identity online, where they feel better and can show off, tell stories and interact with people. Some of them just want to be the one they cannot be that they can achieve in life. And there is the last category where the influencer himself has been influenced by social media and wants to be part of this community. 

The Influencers lose their real identity by faking their online ones

To be a genuine influencer, the internet requires some standards. Such as to be very smart, have money, be beautiful, and to be very cool. “Instagram is a platform that is based on visual aesthetics and filtered images, which makes it a suitable ecosystem for popularizing certain body images and advocating luxurious lifestyles and prominent luxury brands.” (Jin et al. 2019) 

And all of these are called the ideal self. That ideal identity, which is more about perfection in everything, is humanly impossible. Also, it is an aspect of cancel culture which is good at first but when you have power like an influencer it takes a completely different definition. The influencer when he creates his new online identity does not create it for himself but for the audience that he has (leaver, 2015). He wants to be perfect so as people look at them and say “wow! I want to be like him” his attitude can have a bad effect on the influencer himself. In order to attain their ideal self, influencers’ online self-presentation is an “evolving cycle” in which they are continually altering, adjusting, and comparing themselves to other influencers so as to get the best persona. (Abidin, 2021). As the influencers are always showing their false persona online, when they switch off the camera, their followers want to know what happens backstage, which means their real life. In addition, they must hide from it. This leads the influencer to have no offline life to continue posting things about their fake life, but the public will always want to know what is happening backstage. (Papacharissi, 2010). Influencers therefore simply do have not the right to have an offline persona, and he loses themselves in this online character and continues to be immaculate. It is the concept of performing self, which is also destructing the real identity of the influencers. Performing self means when someone acts and behaves in such a manner that a certain audience perceives him, he is presenting the most positive picture of himself in a given scenario. (Goffman, 2001).  That is a very bad thing because when the influencer is actually showing him in a positive picture, he must always fake it, even in real life. Because the followers will see their influencer in real life, the actor must be prepared to fake even in the situation that makes him lose more and more of his identity. 

Moreover, it is very dangerous because performing the self explicitly stated that several selves may emerge from one individual, yet having numerous faces would be considered, contrary to their original identity, hence influences having conflict with their genuine identity may exist. (Brusseau, 2019) and not only that. The influencer can be very sick because he is playing another person every day. He can get depressed, and lose people that he loves and his friends that were always here for him. In addition, it can also lead to a cancel culture when the influencer does a thing that he does not usually do. Cancel culture is when there is a mass of people that do not agree with your attitude then they just leave by unfollowing or unsubscribing. (Ng, 2020). For example: when an influencer always says that he is eating healthy and one day someone saw him in a fast-food restaurant, he takes a picture and it goes viral, afterwards people who were following him because of his healthy style start to unfollow the influencer. And all is the result of Faking his own identity.

Influencers transforming the online identity of their audience

When the influencers influence their audience, it is not just for good reasons. They usually influence their audience to buy products that they are advertising. As per Jin, Muqaddam, and Ryu, (2019) Most research has revealed how social media influencers affect users’ brand impressions, purchase or behavior intentions, and how they are employed as a branding strategy. This means that the audience also loses their identity to try to be like their influencer. For example: when an influencer is promoting Adidas, the follower wants to buy it, because the blogger is saying that it is a good product, and that he is wearing Adidas every day. Moreover, research has been made that shows that millennials depend on their influencer to construct their identity. As per Siphumelele’s (2020) research, “most people agreed that Instagram influencers play a role in identity construction by aspiring one to achieve something.” This means that the audience wants to be like their influencer, he wants to achieve something in his life, which brings the followers to do the same thing as the influencers which is eating, the same lifestyle with the same clothes.  But the influencer by doing it has a negative impact on the identity of their audience. Because as per Siphumelele (2020) “negative effects range from: persuades one to succumb to social pressures, provide an unrealistic benchmark for what life is today, they infiltrate your self-esteem and worth.” For example: when an influencer is showing his best life on the internet, the audience can feel bad because he thinks that his life is not worth it. He might be frustrated because he does not have the latest iPhone or the newest car. So he transformed his online identity to feel better, to be like his influencer.

There are not just negative impact 

As per Raieh (2012)“ people can learn through observation alone, but their learning may not necessarily be shown in their performance thus learning may or may not result in a behavior change.” This means that even if people see their influencers and that they love what they do they do not change their behavior. Moreover, other people think that the influencers have a positive impact on the identity of their followers. As they help you by motivating and encouraging you to achieve better or accomplish what you want to do, instructional and enlightening, confidence gained from watching others’ triumphs, and making people comfortable with the uncomfortable (i.e. body, skin, fashion, or personality). ( Siphumelele, 2020). 

One example from local influencers in Mauritius, during the oil spilling of Wakashio, many influencers have gone to help remove oil from the sea and they motivate the population to come and help. Another example was in the Covid-19 lockdown where the influencers did many live streaming videos where they were doing Challenges and games to help people to forget about the lockdown. And the last example is the French sport Youtuber, Tibo Inshape helped many people to lose weight and to regain confidence in themselves by doing small motivating videos and videos where he was showing them how to exercise. Other people also share that there are influencers who are showing their true lifestyle, to show people that they can achieve even if they do not have millions in their bank accounts. (Siphumelele, 2020). For example, there is a french Tiktoker who is a garbage collector who just posts videos to show his lifestyle and how to throw garbage. He also shows the importance of nature, and the audience really likes that.

Conclusion:

To conclude, even though influencers transforming their own identity and the identity of their followers may have adverse effects, there are some positive impacts. For example, when the followers have better self-esteem, they perform better in their studies and achieve higher in life. My thoughts are that the influencers can be frank nowadays because as a youngster I see many influencers that show their real life. Their sadness and the worst part of themselves. They are actually achieving it by using social media because what people want is authenticity. “Influencers come in all different guises, but those that are successful are the ones that remain authentic and relevant to their audience”. (Glenister, 2021)

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