It would be easy to dismiss the travails as influencers as trivial. After all, their careers can seem ephemeral – tied to social media platforms that rise and fall on the tides of popularity – and their content is generally designed to steal attention (and wallet share), not change the world.
But influencing – or content creation, as it’s also called – is big business. By 2025, it’s estimated that, worldwide, the influencer marketing sector will be worth $35bn, and in Australia around 75 per cent of marketers now include influencers in their advertising plans.