there will be so many more Tavis

Reading Tavi Gevinson’s essay from last week’s issue of New York mag is both a fascinating throwback to the blog-dominated internet of yore — god, remember scrolling through all those fashion blogs?? and barely registering that, yes, these pictures were mostly taken by semi-professional photographers and models but ugh, their lives looked so cool??? (lol we had NO idea what was coming) — but also a kind of shiver-inducing sign of things to come. 

As one of the first full-blown online influencers who grew up in it (she started her fashion blog when she was 11), Gevinson’s seen and done it all: the use of the self as a brand, the spon con, the existential Instagram reinvention. Now she’s 23 and publishing this essay about the degree to which her sense of self and authenticity have been warped along the way. It’s a thoughtful and dishy piece — and just the first of what will probably be a huge (probably lucrative) genre in the years to come. If growing up in the internet of the early 00’s moved Gevinson to write this, just imagine what the YouTube teens and baby Instagram baddies will have to spill once it’s their turn.

Still, we did especially like this paragraph that Gevinson wrote about how the answer is not necessarily Cut Out All Social Media Forever, but to maybe recognize that there are other outlets (figurative and literal) for the kind of built-in expertise that Being Online has ingrained in all of us:  

I don’t expect ever to fully unlearn the inner salesperson or the shareability lens, nor do I necessarily want to. The never-not-branding feeling of being on Instagram — and the seeing the world as a reflection of your brand, which comes with it — can also be part of being an editor or curator. Knowing you could always end up writing about what you’re experiencing is part of being a writer. Watching yourself within a moment can be part of acting and is certainly part of the self-promotion that comes with doing any of the above for a living.