#DeleteMonday with Under the Influence with Jo Piazza

by Radhika Viswanathan

What’s the one thing you do when you have a free moment? I’d wager you get onto Instagram and scroll and scroll and scroll. Maybe you’ll buy something, or you’ll roll your eyes at an influencer’s post and then DM it to a girlfriend — followed up with a snarky comment.

Social Influencers! Don’t you just love to hate them? They make you want to be them, but leave you feeling woefully inadequate. And yet you don’t unfollow them. You keep going back for more.

And within the influencer world is a particularly thriving subset: the world of mommy influencers.

Under the Influence is a fascinating series that goes deep inside the Instagram industrial machine to look at the how, when and why of mommy-influencers on social media and how they’re shaping who a woman should (and shouldn’t) be in 2021.

How do you become an influencer? How much money can you make? How much of what an influencer shares on Instagram is real?

Journalist Jo Piazza answers all the questions — and yes, influencers can earn a LOT of money. But there’s so much more to this than that.

This series takes a hard look at the mommy-influencer industry : tracing it back to where women-influencers began (a most unexpected beginning!), exposing why the patriarchy makes us dump on mommy-influencers, to why we’ve never taken women’s work seriously (and why we should), to hurrah-ing that at least there’s one place where women earn more than men (but then again recognising how pay inequalities play out on the gram), to seeing influencers as businesses, and in this crazy online world where fads change so quickly, where is content going, and what’s next for social influencing?

Spoiler: it’s messy and complicated and not all black and white. On the way, Jo speaks to some of the most interesting influencers and players in the industry. And tries to become an influencer herself. If there’s one thing I felt strongly at the end of the series: get off Instagram while you can. And listen to this podcast instead!

You can listen to Under the Influence with Jo Piazza on Apple Podcasts here.