We made the wrong person famous

Who is “we” and how much say do audiences really have on who rises to the top?

The universal “we” is a feature in online comments sections that has always confused me. A single, ambiguous word renders the entire audience an aligned monolith; often in direct opposition to the creator or the stance “they” are responding to. There are features implied by invoking “we” – the “normal” people, the non-influencers, the people watching the content rather than making it. Along with the imagined consensus is a belief that the audience is a hive acting decisively on who makes it and who doesn’t – or who deserves to.

Despite what “we” think, social media is not a democracy, or a meritocracy, and it never has been. Modern users are often nostalgic for a time on the internet that did not exist. Within nine months of its public launch, YouTube had its first disingenuous influencer scandal. Rather than accepting an unsavoury brand deal leveraged off a platform built on allegedly progressive politics, LonelyGirl15 – who appeared to be a normal 16-year-old girl – turned out to be an actress performing a series scripted by two men in their late 20s.  

Sometimes, the biographical details are true, but the personality or appearance someone is known for turns out to be fake or filtered. Other times, the popularity of a creator may be artificially inflated. Men in their 30s and 40s were rocked recently by the revelation that their favourite underground discovery, Geese, was placed on their timeline by a marketing firm rather than their singularly exceptional taste. Other examples are more nefarious and more opaque, even to those savvy enough to know true serendipity is hard to find online anymore.

Clavicular, a 20-year-old LooksMaxxer from New Jersey, exploded onto everyone's timeline (and recently, TV screen) – whether you had pre-existing body dysmorphia or not. If you took this pure ubiquitousness as proof of popularity, you would believe he had been quietly building an empire of teenage anorexics like a one-man distillation of Tumblr in 2011. Undoubtedly, content featuring him has millions of views and seems to come from everywhere – but why?

The answer can be found in the playbook of the last toxic masculinity advice merchant to evoke moral panic, Andrew Tate. Crucially, this time, Clavicular has more institutional support than “Hustlers University” ever did.