Online Wannabeism: Why We Mimic Social Media Influencers

Are we start­ing to mim­ic social media influencers? 

In this post, I’ll dis­cuss a form of online wan­nabeism; how reg­u­lar people in your feeds are sud­denly start­ing to talk and act like influ­en­cers — des­pite hav­ing no real audi­ences to address.

I’m a digit­al PR expert, but I’m also a reg­u­lar social media user. I fol­low friends, fam­ily, and acquaint­ances on my social media accounts. And some­thing seems to be … off.

The wide­spread beha­viour where non-influ­en­cers mim­ic influ­en­cer man­ner­isms is fas­cin­at­ing — and some­what sad. ¹“Our res­ults con­firm that the five aspects of influ­en­cing posts affect con­sumers’ atti­tudes pos­it­ively and sig­ni­fic­antly, which in turn leads to pos­it­ive beha­vi­our­al out­comes through their desire … Continue read­ing

Let’s dive right into online wan­nabeism:

Dunbar’s Number

Most of us are famil­i­ar with Dunbar’s num­ber, the idea that we tend to organ­ise ourselves in stable group sizes based on our cog­nit­ive lim­its. These lim­its give subtle clues about how online com­munit­ies estab­lish them­selves in the digit­al space. 

150 — Dunbar’s Number

Robin Dunbar, a British anthro­po­lo­gist and evol­u­tion­ary psy­cho­lo­gist, pro­posed what’s known as “Dunbar’s Number” — a the­ory sug­gest­ing that humans can only com­fort­ably main­tain about 150 stable rela­tion­ships. ²Dunbar, R. I. M. (1998). The social brain hypo­thes­is. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 6(5), 178 – 190.

This includes fam­ily, friends, col­leagues, and oth­ers with whom a per­son can keep mean­ing­ful con­tact. Beyond this num­ber, the qual­ity of rela­tion­ships can dimin­ish due to the lim­it­a­tions in our men­tal band­width. ³Silfwer, J. (2012, April 14). Social Group Sizes (The Social Brain Hypothesis). Doctor Spin | the PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​g​r​o​u​p​-​s​i​z​es/

“Dunbar’s num­ber is a sug­ges­ted cog­nit­ive lim­it to the num­ber of people with whom one can main­tain stable social rela­tion­ships. […] No pre­cise value has been pro­posed for Dunbar’s num­ber. It has been pro­posed to lie between 100 and 230, with a com­monly used value of 150. Dunbar’s num­ber states the num­ber of people one knows and keeps social con­tact with, and it does not include the num­ber of people known per­son­ally with a ceased social rela­tion­ship, nor people just gen­er­ally known with a lack of per­sist­ent social rela­tion­ship, a num­ber which might be much high­er and likely depends on long-term memory size.”
Source: Wikipedia ⁴Dunbar’s num­ber. (2023, May 29). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

According to Dunbar, this lim­it is a dir­ect func­tion of rel­at­ive neo­cor­tex size, which con­strains our abil­ity to keep track of com­plex social rela­tion­ships. ⁵It’s worth not­ing that the concept of Dunbar’s Number has been debated and scru­tin­ised with­in the sci­entif­ic com­munity.

Learn more: 150 — Dunbar’s Number

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The Social Brain Hypothesis

In Dunbar’s case, the “magic num­ber” is approx­im­ately 150 rela­tion­ships, but there are oth­er group sizes to consider:

Typical Social Group Sizes

How many social con­nec­tions you you com­fort­ably sus­tain? According to the social brain hypo­thes­is, lim­its exist. ⁶Zhou WX, Sornette D, Hill RA, Dunbar RI. Discrete hier­arch­ic­al organ­iz­a­tion of social group sizes. Proc Biol Sci. 2005 Feb 22;272(1561):439 – 44.

“The ‘social brain hypo­thes­is’ for the evol­u­tion of large brains in prim­ates has led to evid­ence for the coe­volu­tion of neo­cor­tic­al size and social group sizes, sug­gest­ing that there is a cog­nit­ive con­straint on group size that depends, in some way, on the volume of neur­al mater­i­al avail­able for pro­cessing and syn­thes­iz­ing inform­a­tion on social rela­tion­ships.”
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences ⁷Zhou, X., Sornette, D., Hill, R. A., & M. Dunbar, R. I. (2005). Discrete hier­arch­ic­al organ­iz­a­tion of social group sizes. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 272(1561), … Continue read­ing

Scientific evid­ence sug­gests that people tend to organ­ise them­selves not in an even dis­tri­bu­tion of group sizes but in dis­crete hier­arch­ic­al social groups of more par­tic­u­lar sizes:

Alas, there seems to be a dis­crete stat­ist­ic­al order in the com­plex chaos of human relationships:

• Support clique (3 – 5 people)
• Sympathy group (12 – 20 people)
• Band (30 – 50 people)
• Clan (150 people)
• Megaband (500 people)
• Tribe (1,000 – 2,000 people)

“Such dis­crete scale invari­ance could be related to that iden­ti­fied in sig­na­tures of herd­ing beha­viour in fin­an­cial mar­kets and might reflect a hier­arch­ic­al pro­cessing of social near­ness by human brains.“
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences ⁸Zhou, X., Sornette, D., Hill, R. A., & M. Dunbar, R. I. (2005). Discrete hier­arch­ic­al organ­iz­a­tion of social group sizes. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 272(1561), … Continue read­ing

Read also: Group Sizes (The Social Brain Hypothesis)

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I can’t help but wonder:

Are we, per­haps, becom­ing less inter­ested in pop­u­lat­ing our social groups with two-way relationships?

Non-Reciprocal Relationships

Online influ­en­cers are typ­ic­ally suc­cess­ful by being con­sist­ently authen­t­ic, unique, evolving, and enter­tain­ing. While massive online fame is tax­ing for most influ­en­cers, they’ve become part of our daily lives.

A mega influ­en­cer can­not sus­tain thou­sands or mil­lions of sim­ul­tan­eous two-way rela­tion­ships. So, all of these rela­tion­ships are one-sided relationships.

Put in oth­er words:

Read also: The Influencers in Public Relations

Spiralling Self-Isolation

As a res­ult of our lim­ited men­tal band­width, we, the audi­ence, are put­ting ourselves in a spir­al of self-induced social isol­a­tion — while influ­en­cers are ever so eager to fill that grow­ing void in our chests.

Still, it’s been this way for a long time; celebrit­ies have been a nat­ur­al part of human cul­ture for millennia.

Due to shifts like the Industrial Revolution, our nat­ur­al tribes have shrunk and, cour­tesy of the mass media, been replaced with a broad­er palette of celebrit­ies. We’re allowed to get closer and more per­son­al in the digit­al space, but the gen­er­al idea is still the same:

Media “helps” you have few­er genu­ine rela­tion­ships by serving an illu­sion of a per­son­al vil­lage. You “know” the influ­en­cers — but they don’t know you.

Read also: Social Media Fakers — Oh, They Seem So Perfect Online

Mimicking Influencers

Ordinary social media users seem to be adopt­ing a ton­al­ity in which they address an audi­ence of thou­sands and thou­sands of people. Without actu­ally hav­ing an audi­ence, that is. ⁹“The main-test res­ults, using the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) ana­lys­is via AMOS 23, con­firmed that the con­cep­tu­al mod­el and all the hypo­thes­ised rela­tion­ships were stat­ist­ic­ally sig­ni­fic­ant. … Continue read­ing

We replace two-way rela­tion­ships with one-sided ones, sus­cept­ible to influ­en­cer beha­viours and man­ner­isms. And since we typ­ic­ally have access to the same pub­lish­ing plat­forms, we imitate.

Where does this online wan­nabeism stem from?

The Social Mirror Theory (SMT) states that “[…] people are incap­able of self-reflec­tion without con­sid­er­ing a peer’s inter­pret­a­tion of the exper­i­ence. In oth­er words, people define and resolve their intern­al mus­ings through other’s viewpoint.”

The social mir­ror the­ory is a psy­cho­lo­gic­al concept that sug­gests that people learn to see them­selves and their iden­tit­ies through how oth­ers react to them. The the­ory sug­gests that people use the reac­tions of oth­ers as a “mir­ror” to under­stand and form their sense of self. This can hap­pen con­sciously and sub­con­sciously and can be influ­enced by many factors, such as fam­ily, friends, and the broad­er cul­ture and society.

Regular social media users without audi­ences are start­ing to mim­ic influ­en­cer man­ner­isms. So what?

Attention Starvation

Should we blame ourselves for influ­en­cer inflation?

“People want to be loved; fail­ing that admired; fail­ing that feared; fail­ing that hated and des­pised. They want to evoke some sort of sen­ti­ment. The soul shud­ders before obli­vi­on and seeks con­nec­tion at any price.”
— Hjalmar Söderberg (1869−1941), Swedish author

We all prefer to be seen, acknow­ledged, loved — even hated and loathed! — instead of suf­fer­ing what many fear the most — oblivion. 

And it seems like the genu­ine prob­lem of hav­ing “no PR” has shif­ted to emerge as a real exist­en­tial crisis for everyone.

In a soci­ety oth­er­wise starved of atten­tion, hav­ing thou­sands and thou­sands engage in your choice of break­fast cer­eal becomes the ulti­mate flex.

I feel for us. Having advised hun­dreds of brands, I know that the most com­mon PR prob­lem isn’t bad PR… it’s no PR.

Online Wannebeism

Online wan­nabeism = When a reg­u­lar social media user mim­ics influ­en­cer man­ner­isms — as a form of psy­cho­lo­gic­al role­play without an actu­al audi­ence to entertain.

So, we’re exchan­ging few­er tra­di­tion­al celebrit­ies for many online influ­en­cers. Maybe we’ll devel­op few­er two-way rela­tion­ships, but at least we’re get­ting more choices of who to follow.

Read also: How Social Media Divides Us

Given the gen­er­al state of the world, maybe this is a kind of pro­gress. In the future, per­haps we shouldn’t be liv­ing in the phys­ic­al prox­im­ity of large groups anyway.

I don’t know.

But amid this online wan­nabeism, I would be amiss if I didn’t also high­light influ­en­cer infla­tion as an attract­ive PR opportunity: 

Attention-starved audi­ences offer excit­ing PR oppor­tun­it­ies if we allow cus­tom­ers to exper­i­ence “the influ­en­cer exper­i­ence” them­selves — if only for a little while.

Online audi­ences aren’t thirsty for more con­tent or more two-way connections. 

They’re thirst­ing for attention.

PR Resource: The Principle of Scarcity

PR Resource: Social Media PR Issues

Examples of Social Media PR Issues

Social media isn’t all sun­shine and rain­bows. With massive change come new types of issues we must deal with.

Here are a few examples of social media issues:

• Bot accounts
• Filter bubbles (social media algorithms)
• The silent switch
• Echo cham­bers
• Ghost fol­low­ers
• Dark social
• Cyberbullying
• Online trolls
• Online hate
• Polarisation
• Electoral tam­per­ing
• Fake news and altern­at­ive facts
• Conspiracy the­or­ies
• National pro­pa­ganda and disinformation
• Government sur­veil­lance
• Cyber ter­ror­ism
• Facebook zero
• Spam
• The cul­ture war
• The use­ful idi­ot syndrome
• Online fraud
• Online wan­nabeism
• The copy­right mafia
• De-plat­form­ing
• Cancel cul­ture
• Techlash
• The splin­ter­net
• Paywalls (journ­al­ism)
• Clickbait journ­al­ism
• Social media fakers
• Fear of screen time
• Mental health issues
• Programmatic brain­wash­ing
• Information over­load
• Filter fail­ure
• Deepfakes

Read also: Social Media: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

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