Updated Sep. 6, 2024 at 11:38 a.m.*
TURIN — Everyone has spied on an ex — at least once, at least for a little while. Social media is absolutely perfect for watching without being seen.
It is necessary to approach from a female point of view in order to talk about what #influcirco is and how it works: the spies and the spied, the influencers and the disappointed followers. All women. Since the pandemic, a community has sprung up on X, formerly known as Twitter, that comments — although it would be better to say criticizes — almost every day on what some of the most followed Italien influencers say and post.
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They don’t use the influencers’ real names but have created anagram hashtags for them. Their targets are the beauty entrepreneur Cristina Fogazzi (referred to as #estetistacivica), the digital media strategist Veronica Benini (#sp0ra), television presenter Giulia Valentina (#viuliagalentina), photographer Nima Benatin (#bimanenati), and blogger Giulia Torelli (tagged by an emoji).
Lately, they’ve been particularly mad at Paola Turani (#taolapurani), a model with 2 million followers, because her son gave chocolate to her dogs — “you suck at sucking,” was among their comments — and over her opinion on the appropriateness of highlighting her hair during her pregnancy.
At a first glance, #influcirco seems to be an avalanche of more or less gratuitous nastiness by a group of very active female accounts — judging from the nicknames and images. It has created an incomprehensible spectacle for those who do not know the influencers, and left observers with only one question: if you hate them, if you think they’re frauds, why do you keep following them? Simply put, what do you get from this camouflaged, silent hatred?
Bursting bubbles of virtually perfect lives
The invented hashtags make it clear that #influcirco is something more serious than gut reactions or passing outbursts. They do not use the real names of the influencers they hate but watch every day, like exes, so as not to contribute to the names’ trending. They do not feed the fame of those who do not deserve fame.
They are followers disappointed by people who later turned out not to be what they said they were.
But then, who are #influcirco, these women who spy on the famous to rejoice in their contradictions, mistakes, naiveté or haircuts? And what do the hashtag’s animators want? In an article for the online magazine Link, ideas for TV, digital communication expert Laura Fontana called #influcirco “the de-influenced community.”
“Undoubtedly, there are users in the group who were already very skeptical of the world of influencers. But the conspicuous majority are followers disappointed to have invested so much time on people who later turned out not to be what they said they were,” Fontana writes. “Their disappointment is triggered because there is a breakdown of a belief pact within a parasocial relationship. For example, the influencer may invite everyone to practice ‘kindness’ but then respond rudely to a private message, make an unfortunate slip on a sensitive issue for which she may even have been a spokeswoman, recommend something that turns out to be a bad product, or totally make up facts just to get more attention.”
The influencer spell
That happened to Julia Elle (the “Desperately Mom” who made up a happy and glamorous extended family only to be debunked by her ex) and to Chiara Ferragni with charity: I’ll tell you a story, my story. I’ll appear on your smartphone and show you my house, my dog — there is no such thing as an influencer without a dog — and my children. I’ll convince you that I’m on your side. Then, a little piece of reality bursts in this virtually perfect life and, poof, the spell wears off. “
To feel less lonely, we go online.
Many ex-followers report that they attached themselves to an influencer at a particular time in their lives when they were more ‘fragile’ (they were going through grief or divorce, they had just lost their jobs), and they were looking for something to distract themselves. The fact is that we get attached to the lives of these characters who tell their stories on social media and share everything about themselves,” Fontana writes on Link. “That is how you establish an empathetic and affective bond.”
After the pandemic, after the courses bought with the pious illusion that they could change our lives, after the disappointments in smaller or larger slip-ups, what is left of falling in love with the influencer is the stalking and online hatred. It is not only solitary, but collective: it has a hashtag. Once again, to feel less lonely, we go online. And lonely we remain.
*This article, originally published January 24, 2024, was updated Sep. 6, 2024, with additional information about online harassment in other countries.
