Second-year UBC student Allegra Kastner went viral once. For her, that was more than enough.
After a TikTok she posted suddenly garnered 15 million views, she got a brief glimpse into internet fame. This post, which consisted of Kastner calling out someone from another online video because Kastner assumed this person had altered their appearance, initially seemed like just a quick commentary. However, because of the video’s popularity, Kastner was quickly forced to learn the reality of having millions of eyes on her.
“People were commenting: ‘Oh yeah, well, you would think it’s edited — look at yourself,’” she said. “Getting criticized by people that I don’t know on the internet was a lot.”
Yet, while that attention can be uncomfortable, for some, it is not only something they seek out, but a central part of their job.
Some UBC students have found internet virality and latched onto it. They have gained a following and become recognizable across campus, even making a living off social media, catering to an audience of students and beyond.
Through this popularity, these students have been able to obtain one of Generation Z’s most coveted positions — an influencer. Essentially an internet celebrity, influencers are those who have managed to build a large following online, gaining credibility — or influence — with each new user who chooses to follow what they post. However, if we look past the shiny job title, what does that actually mean?
How is it that students have been able to leverage online popularity within the UBC community to spark a career? Or, perhaps even more importantly, why do UBC students follow and interact with these influencers in the first place?
According to Dr. Derrick Wirtz — a professor of psychology at UBC Okanagan who has researched the effects of social media on subjective well-being — the desire to interact with influencer content comes down to basic human instincts.
“Humans are social by nature, which is likely a part of the appeal of social media in the first place,” Wirtz wrote in a statement to The Ubyssey. “When people interact with others in-person, our research has shown that it typically makes us happier.”
This sentiment especially rang true for Kastner, who was able to seek out UBC-related social media content when she decided to transfer here from Montréal.
“I find having the online aspect does [make me] still feel like I'm part of a community,” she said. “Having this online community where I see people posting and relating — I don't think it's a priority [for me], but I do enjoy it and appreciate it.”
A particularly notable part of UBC’s online community is Dominic Tomkowicz, better known as Scooter Dom. Perhaps the most well-known example of an on-campus influencer at UBC, for him, content creation was also about finding connections at a new school.
“It was kind of an alien environment for me at UBC,” he said. “This is a huge campus with so many people, and I [felt] like I [didn’t] fit in.”
After transferring from UVic, Tomkowicz quickly gained popularity with his titular scooter.
“I was trying to just make random videos about random stuff on campus with my e-scooter,” he said. “Eventually, the page turned into an entire thing [because of] this viral meme that happened to me when I took a girl on the back of the scooter — it blew up.”
For parody Instagram page @ubc_real_news, there was a similar desire for connection, albeit through a comedic lens. In their content, viewers can see themselves and their school reflected in satire.
“I make fun of literally every single type of person at UBC,” the owner of the account said. “I think it’s sometimes fun to be like, ‘Hey, [they’re] talking about me or people like me,’ or ‘Oh my God, I hate it when arts students do this, or business students do that.’ So, it’s relatable to a lot of people.”
But while connection may be what draws both influencers and consumers of influencer content in, it is by no means the end goal. For many of these student-influencers, there’s a business behind the online communities they’ve formed.
With his scooter videos, Tomkowicz had nailed down a distinctive, memorable online identity, something Kastner believes has been crucial to his success.
“I feel like he’s able to retain my attention and have this following because he’s really nailed the idea of a marketed character,” she said. “You could dress up as Scooter Dom for Halloween.”
For Tomkowicz, this was no accident. The cultivation of his online persona was an intentional move to set himself apart.
“Other scooter influencers you’ll see online … you’ll never see them posting anything unique,” he said. “It focuses too much on the scooter itself and not on the personality.”
Tomkowicz’s personality and content ideas are an asset for him, and he recognizes that.
“My favourite part of it is that I’m my own boss,” he said. “I can make videos for brands [and] eventually make a full-time [job] of it.”
It’s a major part of the job description — influencers will inevitably influence their audience, whether more explicitly through influencing people’s purchases, or more subtly, in altering how people act, dress or present themselves. However, for some, that relationship is more complex. For UBC alum and content creator Remy Zee, the title of “influencer” feels inaccurate to what he does.
“I have trouble with that title,” he said. “I always call myself a content creator. Influencing feels like a burden. Like, ‘Oh shit, I [have] to influence people in a certain way.’ I feel like I’m just making things I find funny.”
In his own way, Zee has created a brand too, becoming known for his skits revolving around the satirical character of Lebron. However, while this character drove his success, it was hard for Zee to not feel defined by him.
“I [would’ve] love[d] to work on other things, but a part of me was also super scared, because that’s what was getting me views — I was growing. I wasn’t at a point where I was making a lot of money either,” he said.
Inevitably, when money starts becoming part of the equation for influencers, the question arises of how a push for profit can be balanced with the maintenance of a creative voice.
“Eventually, I came to the conclusion that I have other things I find funny that I would love to make content on,” Zee said. “So I made a video where I was in my normal accent, just me. And then, the world didn’t end.”
While Zee has been able to overcome that fear of evolution, there’s a reason why taking that leap can be so frightening. Choosing to pursue content creation for a living, Zee suddenly needed to make a profit from his videos. That profit would eventually come in the form of sponsorships.
“Sponsorships changed my life because I wasn’t really making any money … It’s made me financially independent and able to pursue projects,” he said.
When making sponsored content, however, the focus is no longer on just the creator’s vision.
“Brands will have their own image that they want to portray,” said Zee. “It’s totally understandable [that] they have this product and this image, [but] it does make it more of a lengthy process.”
For Zee, it became about standing up for his ideas, while negotiating with the brands he worked with to make content they could both be proud of.
“I’m a really big proponent of trying to make every sponsored video as great as I possibly can,” he said. “Some of my favourite videos are sponsored videos — it’s just because I think they’re good, regardless of the sponsor.”
Sponsorships and brand deals are a reality of the profession, necessitated for creators to make a living and continue producing content. The question is, then, how does that contribute to the initial desire of these influencers to form connections at UBC? Can genuine connections between influencers and their community be found even in the midst of a seller/buyer relationship?
According to Wirtz, the answer is no. Yet, that isn’t because of sponsorships or brand deals — it’s because all of influencership is inherently one-sided.
“The kind of social interaction that occurs online, particularly when it’s asynchronous or one-sided, is fundamentally different from in-person interactions,” wrote Wirtz. “The interaction may feel more like listening in on a conversation … if this is the case, the feeling of connecting with someone and the positive feelings that result are probably diminished or absent.”
This unequal, almost parasocial relationship doesn’t just impact those who consume online content — it impacts those who make it too. Because they see what influencers post online, an audience can often assume they know the influencer personally, therefore feeling justified to criticize them personally.
“I do think people on social media tend to focus too much on what the person is [doing on camera], not their life outside of social media,” Tomkowicz said. “I have a family life, a dating life, an academic life, all the stuff that everybody else has off social media. Sometimes you do wish that people and viewers could understand that before they try to judge you.”
Reflecting back on her own experience in front of an online audience, Kastner emphasized the consequences that come with mass exposure.
“It’s way more vulnerable than you think … [It’s like] if you’ve ever been in a car crash where your car is on the side of the road … people are driving by and looking,” she said. “You feel very seen and it’s not comfortable.”
While the intense vulnerability that Kastner described was something she only had to deal with once, for someone like Tomkowicz, it is a constant commitment.
“There’s a certain point in this line of work that once you cross a certain following and popularity level, there’s no going back,” he said. “A lot of people will say, ‘I’ll tough it out, I don’t care what people say.’ [Maybe] you won’t care what they say when there’s 2 or 3 of them, but what about when there’s 150 or 200?”
In the face of this intense vitriol influencers can face online, how much of that actually translates to the real, tangible world? As I was startled to find — very little.
When searching for students to interview for this piece, many seemed to either not know or care about student-influencers at UBC. Everyone who I approached on campus for an interview turned me down. When I posted an online form, I got very few responses, often sparse in detail. Even when I put posters all over campus — including in all residence buildings — I only got two responses.
At the end of it all, one question loomed large for me. Do UBC students even care about student-influencers? As Kastner described it, the answer is complicated.
“I don’t think I care, but I don’t not care,” she explained. “I have my opinions — I think everyone does. But I don’t think it’s something I’m invested in.”
One potential reason for this is the very nature of the platforms housing these influencers. The algorithmically-driven, instant gratification-based foundation that social media nowadays is built on overwhelms its users with a deluge of content. These addictive systems are what led to Kastner deleting TikTok.
“I can’t express how much better I feel as a person since deleting TikTok,” she said. “I cared about things that [were] so trivial. ‘Oh, this one influencer [was] cancelled.’ I cared so much, and now I don’t even know that they existed.”
While this experience was liberating for Kastner, for influencers, it might be frightening. It’s a reminder of the demands of social media’s attention-based economy. A successful influencer has to be vulnerable enough to put themselves out there, while also having to continually engage without reprieve in order to stay relevant.
“There definitely is pressure once I start posting consistently,” said @ubc_real_news. “If I post three times in one week, I’m like, ‘Okay, I need to match that.’”
Social media necessitating vulnerability within a fast-paced environment is just one of the many dichotomies that are an inevitability of being an influencer. It’s an occupation unlike any other — paradoxical to its core.
As an influencer, you have the chance to follow your passion, be your own boss and let loose unrestrained creativity. Yet, in order to financially sustain that creativity, you must contend with a looming pressure to output content constantly, while potentially compromising your vision to appease a sponsor.
As an influencer, you are presenting yourself to an innumerably vast crowd of people, opening yourself up to the unrelenting negativity of the internet. Yet, as I found, this work is often met with indifference offline.
As an influencer, you have the potential to form connections with thousands of people across and beyond campus. Yet, those connections are filtered through an impersonal, opaque window, warping the aspects of human connection that give community meaning.
In the midst of all that, however, these student-influencers press on, finding their own way to push through these challenges.
For @ubc_real_news — having not publicly revealed their identity — criticism can roll off their back, as their followers aren’t under the pretence that they know them.
“[It] makes it really funny, because some of the insults contradict each other,” they said. “They’re trying to make an assumption of who I am, but they’re usually wrong.”
For Tomkowicz, he manages to transcend the virtual connection barrier, going out to parties and meeting with fans.
“It always makes me feel so happy and warm inside whenever someone on the street recognizes me and says [that] my video made their day,” he said. “It feels so great and rewarding.”
So, perhaps being an influencer isn’t about taking the plunge, diving headfirst into the internet, holding on tight and hoping you come out in one piece, but instead finding balance — not ignoring the paradoxes, but embracing them.
When you block out the noise, maybe what it means to be an influencer can be simple after all.
“I think one of the main reasons I find what I do so fulfilling, and why I chose to try to do this full-time is because I really enjoy making people laugh,” said Zee. “When I see positive comments — people having a good time, laughing over a specific joke I made or finding it relatable — that does make me really happy.”
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