Swipe Up for More!: Inside the Unfiltered Lives of Influencers - Hardcover

McNeal, Stephanie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593418603 ISBN 13: 9780593418604

Verlag: Portfolio, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

An unfiltered, colorful romp through the IRL world of influencers that spills the tea on the multibillion-dollar industry of content creation.

If you’re anything like journalist Stephanie McNeal—aka, a millennial woman—you spend hours every day indulging in Instagram’s infinite scroll. The influencers on the platform aren’t just providing eye candy; these tastemakers impact how we cook, consume, parent, decorate, think, and live. But what exactly is going on behind the curtain of the perfectly curated Instagram grids we obsess over the most? 

Through intimate, funny, and vulnerable reporting, McNeal takes us through the looking glass and into the secretive real world of three major influencers: fashion and lifestyle juggernaut Caitlin Covington of Southern Curls & Pearls, runner and advocate Mirna Valerio, and OG “mommy blogger” Shannon Bird. Swipe Up For More! is based on three years of unprecedented, fly-on-the-wall access that offers a rare glimpse into how these influencers build their empires, struggle with the haters and snarkers, fight for creative control from the tech platforms that enable their businesses, parent in public, and try to look good while doing it.

Along the way, McNeal answers burning questions, like: Why are there so many Mormon mommy influencers? What is it like to work for a popular influencer? What do they do with all the free swag? How do brand partnerships work? And how much money do they really make?

Irresistible, juicy, and voyeuristic, Swipe Up For More! reveals all about the women some love to hate (and many actually, secretly, genuinely love).

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Stephanie McNeal is a senior editor for Glamour. She is an alumna of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, where she received her BA in broadcast and digital journalism with a double major in international relations. She is originally from San Diego, California, but now resides in New York with her husband, daughter, and cat.

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1

A wise Instagram caption once said, "One day you will be at the place you always wanted to be." That's how I felt when I first stepped foot in a place I had spent hours staring at on social media: the suburbs of Salt Lake City, Utah.

I know, it doesn't sound like a bucket-list-worthy destination. But to me it was. Sure, I've swiped through photos of the beaches of Santorini and lusted over the breathtaking views from the mountains of Cape Town. But mostly? I have swiped and scrolled and liked and commented on photo after photo taken in Provo, Lehi, Alpine, and Draper. I have heard of their chain restaurants, and even know the specialties to order.

That's because this stretch of highway among the jagged rocks of the American West is the fertile crescent of a slice of the internet that I have spent the past decade of my life obsessed with. In many ways, the world of bloggers and influencers was born here.

It's jarring to visit somewhere you have spent so much time visiting virtually from a phone screen. Scenes look both familiar and foreign. The Utah suburbs are a Candy Land soaked with rugged beauty and dusted with the air of new money and fame. Custom-built McMansions dot the scenery like Chiclets, hanging off the side of rugged hills so majestic and awe-inspiring that they could make even the most devoted skeptic believe in the existence of a god.

In the valleys below, young adults with smooth hair and even smoother skin carry their babies close to their chests as they walk through the shiny strip malls filled with everything you could ever need to live a peaceful suburban existence. This is the land of fast-casual anything; you can get any type of cuisine you wish in a bowl from a counter. You can buy an outfit for a night out at myriad chain stores. You can buy yourself a Diet Coke loaded with heavy cream and a splash of coconut, but it's hard to find a Starbucks or a glass of wine. As foreign as that Diet Coke is though, it's also not, because you have seen video after video of people trying it. After all, it's gone viral on TikTok.

I made my pilgrimage to the land of Mormon influencers in January 2022. By then I had been reporting and writing about bloggers and influencers for more than five years, and following, engaging, and thinking about them for more than ten. Finally, I was in my subjects' natural habitat. Excited would be an understatement.

I had come to Utah to visit one of these influencers after nearly two years of talking with her about her career and the impact it has had on her life. Shannon Bird had been sharing her life and that of her family with thousands of people on the internet for a decade, and now she was willing to give me a peek behind the curtain, to see what her family actually looked like offline. Instagram versus reality, if you will.

A perky, blond, Mormon mother of five, Shannon is an OG "mommy blogger," the group of women who took over the mid-2010s internet with their version of aspirational parenting. These women, many of whom are Mormon and live in close proximity to Shannon, were some of the first to live their lives for the masses online, make significant amounts of money doing so, and be true internet celebrities, with their lives dissected on gossip forums and blogs.

Shannon isn't the type of mommy blogger you may be envisioning. If the typical mommy blogger posts a beautiful photo of her quiet, serene children coloring in front of a dreamy background, Shannon's kids are on her stories showing off their rabbits (who may or may not be having babies of their own) and roaring around on dirt bikes. If others may show their kids only in perfect outfits with perfect hair, Shannon's kids often look like, well, kids, with messy curls and sometimes just a diaper. And when some moms post idyllic Christmas shots of their brood in matching pajamas, Shannon uploads a video of her husband, Dallin, taking a chain saw to the trunk of their Christmas tree in the middle of the living room, surrounded by her cackling kids.

Shannon is her own person, and thus her own influencer, and she wants to post only what she thinks is actually good content. She could post videos of herself putting on makeup and her kids doing homework in sepia tones, but what fun would that be? If she were to compare herself to anyone, she would say she is the Adam Sandler of mommy bloggers.

"Shannon loves putting out content that the normal lady trying to sell her minivan or better her life is thinking, 'What is this woman doing?'" Dallin, Shannon's husband, explained to me.

I got to know Shannon over a two-year period. Initially, I found her fascinating for one specific reason: much like many people hate and mock Adam Sandler's movies as lowbrow and cheap comedy, many people on the internet mock, belittle, and even hate Shannon. In fact, she has a reputation for being one of the most "messy" bloggers on the internet, with hundreds of pages of comments in online snark forums absolutely ripping her to shreds.

"People think I'm a shit mom," Shannon repeats over and over in our conversations, with the deadpan breeziness of someone who knows she isn't one and doesn't care that people think she is.

The Birds live in Alpine, Utah, a ritzy, upscale suburb that looks like a cross between a ski town and a bougie town populated by Real Housewives and strip malls. As I drove through in my rental car, each home seemed grander and more ostentatious than the last. By the time I pulled up to Shannon's home, which has five bedrooms and is more than fifty-five hundred square feet, it seemed modest in comparison.

Meeting Shannon and Dallin for the first time was surreal, like watching a painting spring to life. Dallin was taller than I expected, greeting me that day with a relaxed surfer bro energy that I would soon learn was his natural resting state. Shannon soon bounded up beside him, carrying her youngest daughter, London, then two, wrapped in a towel. Shannon was glammed up with long bouncy blond curls, wearing a crop top and jeans. I wasn't sure if she had gotten dressed up for me or if this was just how she always looks. After all, she needs to be camera ready a good amount of the time.

Shannon and Dallin live in the epicenter of Mormon bloggerville, surrounded on all sides by some of the most famous names in content creation. Two of the biggest fashion influencers on Instagram can literally look down on the Birds from their massive homes on the hillside above. A major home design influencer lives down the street. And the Birds were willing to show off.

Soon after I arrived at their home, Shannon got an idea. Did I want to go on a tour of her neighborhood, and she could point out all the houses of famous influencers? It could be a true "Utah experience," she said. Um, absolutely. Had I died and gone to Mormon mommy blogger heaven?

Shannon recruited Dallin as the chauffeur for our outing. I rode shotgun and three of her kids, Holland, then eight, Brooklyn, then four, and London came along.

We first drove to the top of a hill near Shannon's house to the home of Rachel Parcell. Rachel started her blog Pink Peonies just before Shannon started blogging, and Shannon has known Rachel and her three sisters, known collectively online as the Skallas (their maiden name), since she was a kid. Now they are all influencers and live in the same neighborhood. Rachel is a major success on Instagram and has turned Pink Peonies into an empire, with a line at Nordstrom, her own fashion line, and more than one million followers.

Rachel and her husband, Drew, who works in construction, recently built a massive home that sits on a hill literally looking over Shannon's. I'm not sure if I should be embarrassed to admit this, but when we drove by I recognized it right away from her Instagram-perfect Valentine's Day wreaths framing the front...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Portfolio
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2023
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593418603
• ISBN 13: 9780593418604
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 272
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: M.E.G Cards & Gifts; 443000000000; paula@megcards.com; ; 48 Cloyfin Road; Unit 4, 48 Cloyfin Road; Coleraine; Londonderry; BT52 2NY; Irland