Caught in the wild: Vernacular surveillance and the collective construction of the influencer category

Influencers in the Wild

At the time of the writing of this article, the IITW Instagram account, owned by social media content creator Tank Sinatra, had 5.3 million followers. The main content of the account is secretly filmed videos depicting people filming or photographing themselves, or being photographed by others, in public spaces. Often, these candid videos are recorded by outsiders without the knowledge of the individuals being filmed. To upload these videos for the Instagram account, IITW operates a separate website where followers can upload their content (Influencers in the Wild, n.d.). Most of the content featured on IITW is not produced by IITW itself; rather, it relies on content provided by those following the account. IITW is therefore similar to many other social media accounts and sites on social media dedicated to collective shaming, by focusing on content aggregation rather than creation. Additionally, the IITW website serves as a merchandise store, offering T-shirts, hoodies, caps and various other paraphernalia featuring different slogans. A board game titled Influencers in the Wild is also available on the site. IITW is thus a monetized account, exemplified by the merchandise available and by the occasional adverts for the account owner’s other monetized online endeavours.

The people featured in the IITW Instagram posts typically have their faces visible in the videos. Consequently, while these persons cannot be considered anonymous, their identities, social media accounts or usernames are usually unknown to the audience. The majority of the content on IITW does not primarily aim to shame and discipline individuals; rather, it addresses influencers and the influencer culture in general. However, some posts featured on IITW may have already gone viral in other digital spaces. In such cases, the disciplining of the filmed person, which might include phenomena such as doxing in addition to public shaming, may have gained traction on other digital platforms, such as Reddit.

Post it on IITW

Instead of disrupting governmental power relations through surveillance enabled by technological progression, or something simpler like for example Googling a Tinder date, accounts like IITW, and many like it, transform vernacular surveillance into a tool for norm cultivation through vernacular disciplining. Social media is replete with accounts and sites dedicated to disciplining people for various offences, such as aggregating screenshots of misogynistic behaviour online (see Hess and Flores, 2018; Shaw, 2016) or videos of people driving badly (see e.g. Idiots In Cars, n.d).

The main content posted on IITW consists of videos, most of which appear to be secretly filmed, of people filming themselves or people being filmed by others in public spaces. These videos are often captured from a distance by bystanders, with the filmed person unaware that they are being observed or recorded. This represents moments of vernacular surveillance, where something about the person’s behaviour has attracted enough attention from a passerby to prompt them to stop, watch and even pick up their phone to record, possibly for amusement or with the intent of exposing the individual to a broader audience.

On IITW, there is an underlying tension between the sometimes conflicting – and somewhat gendered – rules governing public behaviour and those regulating how individuals present themselves on social media. These rules are simultaneously upheld and challenged by both the audience and the account itself. The aesthetics of social media – the posts, and the people behind them – are a collaborative creation, shaped by the interactions between content creators and their viewers. Blank (2013) refers to the ‘internet-based aesthetic’ as one built through ‘variable repetition’ of ‘unspoken, communally sanctioned and malleable values’. Social media is a neighbourhood like any other, where imitation through observing others establishes the appropriate way of existing in one’s community. In this context, the ‘motivations that dictate many behaviours in corporeal and virtual formats are essentially the same’. (p. 112-113, 116-117).

The discourse on IITW about those featured in the published videos if often similar to the cultural discourse surrounding selfies. Consequently, IITW and its audience associate selfie-taking to influencers and influencer culture. Selfies – or self-portraits – are central to social media culture yet frequently criticized. Selfies often evoke negative connotations about the selfie-takers themselves, and about how, where and why a selfie should be taken (Burns, 2015; Tiidenberg, 2018), and how many selfies are simply embarrassing (Caldeira et al., 2021). On IITW, what attracts the passerby to secretly film someone is typically an action that conflicts with societal norms of public space, while simultaneously aligning with the aesthetic values that are celebrated on social media.

Public shaming on social media as a ‘norm-enforcing tool’ (Solove, 2007), operates within this hybrid space, blending the corporeal and digital worlds, as well as vernacular and institutional practices in unique ways. Although IITW operates on a commercial platform and functions as a commercial account, with content selected based on its popularity among the audience, the hybridity central to IITW is the hybridity between corporeal and digital spaces. As Blank (2013) explains, ‘hybridization exemplifies the process by which “real world” discursive practices significantly influence, and are reciprocally influenced by, virtualized discursive practices’ (p. 107).

IITW exemplifies this hybridity by taking actions intended for the digital realm and capturing them in physical, public spaces. This duality is enforced through the act of candid filming, submitting the videos for public scrutiny and publishing them on social media. Whether or not the individuals in the videos are committing any severe transgressions, the process of recording, submitting and publishing serves as acts of disciplining that reflect and reinforce the intertwining norms of both corporeal and digital spaces.

The influencer category

Lyon (2007) describes how classification plays a central role in traditional surveillance, deeply intertwined with power dynamics. It involves grouping identities into categories, which simplifies and solidifies their characteristics, thereby making actions against them not only easier but easier to justify. As with any other type of classification, those used for surveillance are not developed on a neutral basis (Lyon, 2007). Vernacular surveillance tied to content aggregators like IITW categorizes individuals into a limited number of (often reprehensible) attributes. Influencers operate outside the realm of IITW, and only an extremely tiny percentage of them ever appear on the account. However, when individuals are perceived as influencers on IITW, they are often perceived by the audience as representative of all influencers. Since IITW focuses on occurrences in public spaces, this generalization, however, tends to focus on influencers from specific niches, such as fashion or lifestyle and thereby reinforces particular stereotypes about influencer culture.

During data collection, the front page of the IITW website (https://influencersinthewild.com/, n.d.), featured a large video playing on a loop, spanning the entire width of the site. In the somewhat blurry video, a group of women clad in swimwear were on a small boat, cruising through turquoise waters in the sunshine. One of the women was at the bow of the boat, kneeling on the floor and posing with her back towards a camera held by another woman. There was a text on top of the video saying, ‘Get Famous, NO Talent Required’. This emphasizes the role of gender as a key factor in shaping the category of influencers showcased on IITW.

Although on IITW there are videos featuring just men, man/woman couples and groups of all genders, they are not the majority. Of the posts collected, 37 feature female-presenting individuals as the primary subject, while 8 posts feature male-presenting individuals, and 6 posts present both genders in equally central roles. Hence, during the compilation of the data, it became clear that the posts made on IITW predominantly feature women. Moreover, posts in the data featuring men did not often gain as much traction as those featuring women in the central role. Thus, disciplining men for taking up space in public as a perceived influencer is not the entertainment the IITW’s audience craves for, even though Instagram statistics indicate that the gendered differences within Instagram’s userbase are rather minimal (DataReportal – Global Digital Insights, 2024: 307).

Dubrofsky and Magnet argue that ‘surveillance practices and technologies’ are used to ‘normalize and maintain whiteness, able-bodiedness, capitalism, and heterosexuality, practices integral to the foundation of the modern state’ (Dubrofsky and Magnet, 2015: 7). Moreover, vernacular (and institutional) surveillance on social media is not isolated from gender, rather ‘female users and other users from marginalized and stigmatized groups are differentially targeted as objects of surveillance and victimization in social media’ (Nakamura, 2015: 224), as exemplified by IITW. However, as Gill (2019) describes, the term surveillance has not been explicitly used in relation to the ‘surveillance of women’s bodies and of their appearance’ as a ‘long-established topics of concern’ (p. 152-153).

Duffy et al. (2022) describes ‘influencer antifandom’ where social media accounts or online websites are created for the purpose of relentlessly scrutinizing influencers, many if not most of them women, for their perceived inauthentic, fraudulent and/or phony self-presentations (p.1658–1659). Although IITW does not discipline individual influencers, and is perhaps more intended as light-hearted fun – as the existence of the board game illustrates – it is a disciplinary space where the targets of the discipline are often women. According to Burns (2015), selfies are typically associated with femininity, and with characteristics stereotypically linked to women, particularly young women. The discourse surrounding selfie-taking and individuals who engage in this practice frequently involves the policing of women’s behaviours when they film or photograph themselves in public. In contrast, self-entrepreneurship, which is often connected to being an influencer, along with the sometimes aggressive self-promotion that accompanies it, is viewed as a masculine domain (Duffy and Pruchniewska, 2017). Although combining ‘entrepreneurial selfhood’ where women are ‘empowered to write the stories of their own lives’ with postfeminist ‘construction of women as active, desiring sexual objects’ (Gill, 2019: 151), could make social media influencing an acceptable career choice, doing it for the imagined audience, turns the visibility inherent in social media influencing seemingly sour on IITW. This reflects the broader societal trend of disciplining women for occupying both the feminine space of selfies and the masculine realm of self-promotion, making it unsurprising that women are so prominently featured on IITW.

However, even though the account and brand are named ‘Influencers’ in the Wild, not all the people who appear in these candid videos are what could be called ‘actual’ influencers. Often, simply taking pictures of oneself in public, or being filmed by someone in public, is enough to get recorded on a stranger’s smartphone and featured on IITW. Although social media has enabled ordinary people to gain fame (as influencers) in a way previously unattainable (Khamis et al., 2017), on IITW the people secretly captured filming themselves in public are perceived as either influencers or acting like one, or ordinary people. The process of transitioning from a passerby observing someone’s actions to secretly filming them and submitting the video to IITW culminates in the public scrutiny of the published video by the account’s audience. By thoroughly studying the behaviour and appearance of the featured individual in the video, the audience decides whether the person qualifies as an influencer. The distinction is essential, as the audience is more inclined to perceive public disciplining as justified when the individual featured is considered an influencer. In contrast, the covert filming of ordinary individuals and the posting of such videos on IITW are frequently met with strong criticism. Commenters accuse IITW of engaging in mean-spirited shaming or of sharing content that does not belong on the account. Afterall, IITW is for disciplining influencers, not commoners.

While a substantial portion of the videos has a disciplinary tone, the ‘humoristic videos’ category contains more light-hearted posts. Although humour can be derived from many of the posts on IITW and laughter, puns and jokes are common in the comments, the posts categorized as ‘humoristic videos’ differ from other categories even when there is overlap. For example, a candid video of elderly women filming themselves dancing in public could be categorized as an ‘influencer taking up space’. However, the utter delight expressed in the comments differs so significantly from posts featuring younger individuals, that the posts cannot be placed under the same category. Additionally, the humoristic category contains posts that could be described as ‘fail videos’. In these the people featured in the videos are, for example, getting run over by a large wave of water or are seen stumbling. These videos typically appear to have been filmed with the featured person’s consent or even by the person themselves. While some posts in the humoristic video category do of course attract negative comments, overall, this category contrasts with the more disciplinary or critical content. The commenters do not perceive the humoristic posts as disciplinary as other posts made on IITW. Therefore, the people in the posts, the candid filming and the act of making the post itself evade shame more readily.

Looks like an influencer, acts like an influencer

Even outside the less disciplinary posts, not all comments on IITW ridicule influencers. In addition to the occasional non-malevolent humour, many of the commenters also tag their friends in the comments to join in on the fun. Comments made to defend the person seen in the posts made on IITW are not unusual and debates in the comments between the defenders and accusers or ridiculers are relatively common. Yet, a disciplinary rhetoric frequently prevails.

The category where this disciplinary rhetoric is most pronounced is the ‘bikini clad women on a beach’. These posts feature bikini-clad women filming themselves at beaches or pool areas. Eight of these kinds of videos were posted on IITW during the collection of the data. In these videos, women often engage in twerking or other actions for the camera that can be perceived as flaunting their sexuality, either near or in the water. Posts featuring bikini-clad women at the beach elicit the most unanimous reactions from commenters, indicating a clear consensus regarding the reprehensibility of the actions depicted in the videos.

In the combination of the posts and comments on IITW, shame clings to the public bodily presence and visibility of the people featured in the published footage. Afterall, shame or the lack of it is a common theme in the comment sections in many of the posts in any category. The commenters exclaim that the individuals featured on IITW should be ashamed of their presence, or that others feel ashamed for them, including the commenters themselves, or that the individuals should be publicly shamed in a more punitive way than just posting anonymous footage of them on IITW. However, the bikini-clad women on a beach seem to be the most shameful – or shameless. Many commenters express difficulty in understanding why the women in these videos do not feel shame, believing they should. Commenters might exclaim ‘what would her parents say’ or ‘I would be so embarrassed if I were her’. Thus, the behaviours exhibited by these women are deemed inappropriate for a public beach setting. Commenters on IIITW ridicule the ‘bikini clad women on a beach’ by implying that their (and their genitals’) close proximity to the water contaminates it with ‘chlamydia’ or ‘pink eye’, or alternatively causes the water to have a pungent ‘fishy smell’. Additionally, the commenters claim the women all look the same and that they increase the amount of ‘plastic in the ocean’. IITW thus works as an example of how the use of sexuality as a strategy for advancing one’s career in social media influencing is generally disapproved of, often viewed as a ‘violation of gender-coded norms for professional decorum and respectability’ (Duffy et al., 2022: 1667).

This discourse highlights the complex hybridity of social media as represented on IITW. Behaviours deemed reprehensible in a public beach setting, sufficient to warrant posting on IITW, can be celebrated on other social media spaces. For women, displaying sexuality on social media (Caldeira et al., 2021) and engaging in gender display (Butkowski et al., 2020) are something that can attract likes and followers. However, IITW effectively brings the public beach environment to social media, revealing aspects that may have been edited out of the secretly filmed person’s own posts.

Another significant category found in the videos posted on IITW is the ‘influencers taking up space’ category. These posts feature videos where people are disturbing others or simply taking up space. This category overlaps with the posts featuring women in bikinis filmed at the beach and is a recurring motif across various types of content. For instance, some videos depict persons halting traffic to create dance videos for TikTok or invading someone’s personal space to capture the perfect angle for a selfie. Disciplining individuals for taking selfies in inappropriate locations or at inconvenient times is not uncommon. Instances where taking selfies has been judged inacceptable include people taking selfies at Auschwitz (Noyce, 2023) or with children during volunteer activities (Laywine, 2021), both of which have drawn criticism for their insensitivity and lack of awareness regarding privilege.

Sometimes, simply filming oneself in a public space is sufficient for a person to be perceived as disruptive. The person might be enjoying themselves – such as filming themselves dancing at a gig or whilst having fun with friends – without any intent to disturb others. Yet, something about their presence compels a stranger to film them from a distance and submit the video for public scrutiny. Commenters often refer to the featured person’s movements as ridiculous, likening them to a ‘dog in a heat’ or birds ‘laying eggs’. Women perceived as older (which seems to mean over 30 or 40) are ridiculed and criticized for wanting to make social media content – like younger women. In these the commenters judge the (women’s) bodies seen in the corporeal world as somehow off, or too much. However, those who showcase skill, such as acrobatics, tend to avoid the strictest criticism from the commenters. Such skills benefit even the bikini-clad women facing the most criticism. Alternatively, people identified as models by the commenters, rather than influencers, tend to escape disciplinary actions more readily – since they are seen as performing their professional roles rather than merely taking selfies. Thus, IITW’s audience evaluate the appearance and actions of the filmed person’s body as a body that is either allowed to ‘take up space’ without judgement, or not.

The ensuing debate in the comment sections oscillates between those labelling these ‘influencers taking up space’ as narcissistic and those defending them as individuals simply living their best lives who deserve to be left alone. Those defending the person featured in the post might exclaim how amazing they look or that the commenters do not know the context of the situation in which the ‘influencer’ is ‘caught in the wild’. However, even when defending the people perceived as influencers, some commenters refer to influencing as something that is essentially seen as shameful by making comments such as ‘normally I find these posts embarrassing, but this one is wholesome’. Others mention the even more reprehensible individuals by writing ‘this is better than the pictures of their crotch’. At times, the focus of the disciplinary gaze shifts from the perceived influencer to the person filming them secretly. In these instances, it is not the influencer’s behaviour that is deemed shameful, but rather the act of filming without consent, redirecting the shame back to the observer.

Regardless of whether those featured on IITW are perceived as influencers or commoners, it is the camera – held by the individual or by someone else on their behalf – that captures the attention of strangers, labelling them as selfie-takers. Burns (2015) describes how the prevailing perception of individuals taking selfies is that they are narcissistic, selfish and lacking self-control. Selfies are associated with vanity and sexual impropriety, and are essentially perceived as trivial, thus rendering those who take them as lesser individuals. Regardless of whether the persons featured on IITW are disrupting their surroundings, as Burns (2015) explains, the act of taking selfies is commonly viewed as anti-social. Selfie-takers are perceived as overly preoccupied with their appearance and attention-seeking behaviours on social media, often neglecting their environment (Burns, 2015).

The general sentiment emerging from the comment sections on IITW reflects a pervasive sense of defeat, with commenters expressing fatigue over the societal trajectory that is, according to the commenters, exemplified by influencers. Common theme among posts featuring pornographic aesthetics or environmental disruption are commenters denouncing influencers as representative of what is wrong with the world. These ‘tragic’ influencers ‘desperate for attention’ display how social media has made the world crazy, self-centred and in need of a ‘large meteor-strike’. Some commenters protest how humans in the future were supposed to ‘have flying cars’ and be ‘smart’, but ‘instead we have this’. Dobson (2015) explains that societal attitudes toward young women on social media can suggest that for young women to ‘seek appearance feedback publicly’, which often means taking selfies and can be linked to influencer culture as well, is to have ‘no value to society’ (p. 145). Moreover, selfies are often described as a ‘metonym for social media and social media use’, suggesting that the problems associated with social media could be resolved through changes in individual behaviour (Tiidenberg, 2018: 107-109). This perspective is evident on IITW, where influencers embody the essence of social media, and social media, in turn, is regarded as detrimental. For the commenters on IITW, the (woman) influencer’s body seen in the publics goes beyond the body by representing the decline of society.

The look of (in)authenticity

The surveillance of women’s bodies is easily noticeable in celebrity culture, now intensified by social media, where the ‘forensic dissection of cellulite, fat, blocked pores, undepilated hairs, wrinkles, blotches, contouring and hairstyle/sartorial/cosmetic surgery’ flourishes (Gill, 2019: 153). Influencers are constantly monitored for their apparent (in)authenticity in various aspects. Accusations often arise that influencers use Photoshop or plastic surgery to enhance their features to unattainable levels (Duffy et al., 2022). Moreover, audiences might also thoroughly dissect influencers’ engagement in activism. When the authenticity of an influencer’s participation in activism is found lacking, they may be accused of exploiting the rhetoric of activism for views and likes. For example, young (white) women posing at Black Lives Matter protests have faced scrutiny regarding the sincerity of their participation in activism through videos posted throughout social media, including on IITW (Banet-Weiser and Glatt, 2023: 505. Sobande et al., 2022: 1581).

At the centre of the influencer antifandom examined by Duffy et al. (2022) is authenticity, or the perceived lack of it: are the influencers truthful, or are they simply performing perfection. Influencer antifandom can criticize, for example, the promotion of unattainable beauty ideals or doing things specifically for monetization, sometimes by simultaneously upholding normative gender ideals. However, by amassing footage of what is perceived as influencer behaviour in public, IITW does not appraise the reprehensibility of individual influencers promoting inauthenticity, but the influencer culture. With the caveat that the influencer culture targeted seems to be primarily the beauty and lifestyle faction of said culture.

In the data, posts aimed at disciplining individuals for distinctly displayed inauthenticity are relatively few. The category of ‘inauthenticity’ contains only a handful of posts, three in total. However, one of the posts contains a particularly viral video that for a time circulated in many social media and other online spaces, and the person and their actions featured in the video got severely judged by what seemed like the whole of internet. This post and the other posts showcasing inauthenticity reveal situations where individuals in the video are filming something for social media that is intended to give an impression of something that is in clear conflict with the reality. However, the inauthenticity of the situations depicted in the videos posted on IITW is not self-evident; it is contingent on the analysis conducted by the audience, which is influenced by the constructed category of influencers and influencer culture as inauthentic.

Although posts explicitly featuring inauthenticity are not the most frequent, IITW is intriguing in how it is affixed to the general perception of social media as inauthentic. The posts on IITW often capture the moment before a seemingly perfect social media post, revealing the behind-the-scenes reality that contrasts with the polished final product. For instance, a social media post featuring a bikini-clad woman’s buttocks on a picturesque sunny beach, may crop out the photographer hovering behind her, as well as the sunbathers on mismatched towels nearby. The passerby secretly filming the person captures them from the incorrect angle, further highlighting the complexity of the perceived inauthenticity of social media criticized by IITW and its audience.

Social media largely revolves around the aesthetics of oneself and one’s life, carefully curated to create the image one wants others to see. Taking a selfie is not something one just snaps, getting the perfect image requires complicated effort (Abidin, 2016). Caldeira et al. (2021) describe how selfie curation can involve anything from seeking the perfect location and lighting to taking numerous pictures, editing them and ultimately deleting many of them – or all of them. This practice is not limited to influencers; regular social media users also engage in curation. Instagram, in particular, demands both ‘beauty’ and authenticity. The ‘Instagrammable’ look is associated with specific demographics – primarily white, young and thin – and emulating this aesthetic is often necessary for success on the platform (Caldeira et al., 2021; Foster, 2022). In addition, to find success on social media, this curated presentation needs to portray authenticity (Caldeira et al., 2021; Foster, 2022; see also Duffy and Hund, 2015). As such, Instagram can be viewed as a neighbourhood where adhering to the collectively defined rules ensures acceptance (Blank, 2013). Thus, even if one is not interested in becoming popular on Instagram, in theory, one would know how to do it (Caldeira et al., 2021).

When ‘influencers’ are ‘caught in the wild’ on IITW, the act of watching is wrongly timed. Typically, those judging content such as selfies as either authentic or inauthentic (see Duffy et al., 2022) conduct their analysis by scrutinizing the published images. Selfies are evaluated based on criteria such as whether they were taken during a natural moment or posed, and the extent of manipulation involved (see Lobinger and Brantner, 2015). Catching influencers, celebrities or even royal families manipulating their selfies by examining the photos for distorted backgrounds has become a popular pastime (see Rhoden-Paul et al., 2024; Ryan, 2023). However, on IITW, the origins of seemingly casual and perfect social media posts are revealed through vernacular surveillance, exposing the truth behind the perfection. This reality is then judged as inauthentic and publicly disciplined.

What connects all the videos posted on IITW posted for disciplining purposes is a camera. The camera wielded by a person transforms many situations into something perceived as inauthentic and hence reprehensible. Having fun in a bar is not the same as filming oneself having fun in a bar. Noticing the camera encourages bystanders to reach for their own, further perpetuating the cycle of observation and scrutiny.