Influencers

People over thirty often don’t even know their names, but to younger generations they are superstars: influencers. Young adults and even children film themselves doing makeup, travelling or exercising and share their tips with their fans via social media. Along the way, they skilfully place product cues and that’s how they make a living – or even a fortune.

For Ole Nymoen and Wolfgang M. Schmitt influencers are the symptomatic social figures of our times. Dreams of success seem to come true in a society of decline, late capitalism glams up with filters and photoshop, while Instagrammers and YouTubers complement the business model of the commercial internet with a revolutionary way of advertising. But according to Nyomen and Schmitt, influencers impact on the zeitgeist in another regard in spite of all their purported modernness: By propagating reactionary role models, consumerism and rigid body ideals, they are aiding and abetting a conservative backlash.

»Nymoen and Schmitt skilfully show how this enormous money-making machine works and the absurdities and dangers it creates.« Oliver Weber, DIE ZEIT

»It is high time for an analysis of this trend to be published. Ole Nymoen and Wolfgang M. Schmitt provide us with one. Their book […] offers an examination of a strangely iridescent phenomenon that is as entertaining as it is rich in facts.« Thomas Ribi, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

»Nymoen and Schmitt’s book is as meritorious as it is depressing. Meritorious because analysts of society rarely bother with such – in individual cases – seemingly unimportant matters; depressing because it is only through their description that one is made aware of how counter-progressive the things are that influencers normalise.« Peter Praschl, DIE WELT

»... so far, no one has looked at influencers more clearly and critically.« Sebastian Puschner, der Freitag

»In a conversational tone at times but never garrulous and always with reference to concrete examples they introduce readers to the basics of cultural materialism. That way, they manage to present a polemic that has itself the makings of a classic – merciless and highly entertaining at the same time.« Thomas Wagner, neues deutschland

»Nymoen and Schmitt succeed in examining the creepy phenomenon of the influencer in an eerily beautiful, sometimes sardonically brisk and very funny way.« Maxi Beigang, Berliner Zeitung

»Ole Nymoen and Wolfgang M. Schmitt written a trenchant, an astutely arguing as well as a sad book, a book that makes us see a different side of the seemingly perfect world of influencers – an unvarnished side.« Sebastian Friedrich, NDR

»Smart, critical and often downright funny.« Max Knierimen, SWR