Influencer culture is forcing everything into an endless, senseless trend — I’ve had enough

Back in college, when my roommate announced she was making “Gigi Hadid Pasta” for dinner, I expected some carb-free miracle meal.

Instead, my friend served up a regular plate of ziti with vodka sauce, plus a few lonely flakes of red pepper. No secret ingredient or supermodel twist — just a famous name slapped onto something normal.

Still, six years after Hadid filmed herself cooking the basic dish during the COVID lockdown, social media has treated a glob of vodka sauce like a Michelin-starred breakthrough.

This isn’t an isolated trend — it’s the foundation of contemporary internet culture. Long-practiced behaviors get repackaged with star-studded branding, and because we’re all chronically online, we view the content as important and new instead of just routine.

As a 22-year-old, TikTok is my go-to search engine for virtually everything — from outfit inspiration to dinner recipes on a $20 budget. But when I see new trends flooding my feed with claims of being “brand-new,” I am constantly asking myself, ‘Hasn’t this always been a thing?’

I hate to agree with my Gen X parents who say my generation has no originality. To them, every song sounds the same and every trend is recycled from years past — and they’re not wrong.

Anytime my parents learn of a “new” online trend or hear my friends and me talk about something circulating on social media, they’re quick to point out that their generation has already been doing or saying that for years.

Take the “partless slickback” that Kylie Jenner wore to a Knicks game in August.

The standard ponytail Jenner wore to the game was identical to the one my mom brushed into my hair for every elementary school picture day. But TikTok instantly exploded in “get-the-look” tutorials, calling the lip kit guru “iconic,” when she was just sporting a regular hairstyle.

Hairstyles and trends come and go, but for a generation that spends hours on the internet, it sometimes still seems like other Gen Zers live under a rock.

Sofia Richie, the social media personality and daughter of Lionel Richie, had a similar viral moment when she posted a tutorial for a “sleek lazy girl bun” with her hair pulled back tight into a knot.

The clip racked up nearly 43 million views, quickly inspiring the viral “Sofia Richie slick-back” trend that swept bridal styles nationwide. One TikTok bridal hair and makeup stylist posted a tutorial and said the sleek, low-slung bun has become her most requested wedding look.

We’ve reached a point where chronic influencer obsession has warped our perception of ordinary life, turning basic and longstanding styles into groundbreaking innovations — at least if they’re performed by impossibly pretty and incalculably rich influencers.

Witness the recent, and vaguely ridiculous, frenzy around Hailey Bieber enjoying a sushi lunch.

When the definitive Gen Z “it girl” posted a video snacking on sushi in a sheet mask, fans began posting videos following suit, fascinated that she was able to do skincare and eat at the same time.

Bieber was called a “trendsetter” and iconic” for her face-mask sushi video, with users trying to replicate it and failing.

“Queens, Hailey makes it look easy because you need to let the mask soak in a bit before eating,” explained a TikTok user.

“She did it so effortlessly BECAUSE her mask already started to set on her face, you can see it on her chin,” said another.

Soon, the online cult of Hailey was begging her to launch a “sushi-friendly” face-mask line, as if you can’t already grab a California roll while practicing some self-care.

I am guilty of buying Bieber’s $25 lip gloss and don’t mean to stand on a moral high ground.

As a chronic internet consumer and girls’ girl myself, we are diminishing these successful women by calling them “pioneers.” Putting influencers on a pedestal should have higher criteria, because we’ve been throwing around the word “iconic” for the bare minimum.

These everyday social media trends exist independently of influencers too — and it’s no coincidence that 2020 marked the rise of “romanticizing your life,” a social media term for treating your ordinary routines with more intention and creativity.

But online culture has pushed this impulse so far that even taking a routine outdoor stroll was rebranded into a viral phenomenon: the “hot girl walk.”

TikTok creator Mia Lind first coined the phrase during the COVID-19 pandemic to describe a simple daily pass around the block.

The concept quickly exploded, inspiring young women everywhere to organize group walks with friends. Lind subsequently trademarked the term, and her legal team now issues cease-and-desist letters to creators hosting “hot girl walk” events — or even using the title on Spotify playlists.

Trademarking the concept of stepping outside for fresh air turned a simple, healthy habit into a commodified trend. Promoting a “hot-girl walk” is inherently positive but turning it into a branded product feels almost dystopian.

This year, romanticizing life went one step further, hijacking language around real fashion trends to describe… burned bread.

“Turns out toast is kinda chic,” captioned one TikTok user with a video of her making a totally normal breakfast of toast and eggs, accumulating over 632,000 likes. In response, one commenter dryly dubbed her “the boy who cried chic.”

Ridiculous, yes, but it nevertheless launched a “kinda chic” trend, with users framing simple habits—such as taking a coffee break at work or practicing basic self-care – as a stylish statement.

The absurdity is that influencers aren’t even trying to market these concepts. Their audience does the heavy lifting for them, voluntarily spending time — and money — to copy plain behavior and coin it with the influencers’ names.

The click-to-buy snake is eating itself.

Running influencer Brett Chody even secured a brand deal for her viral “dessert bowl” where she put different combinations of salty and sweet snacks into (yep) a bowl.

I guess if you’ve never heard of trail mix, it is pretty revolutionary.

The trend of making your own “dessert bowl” blew up and Pop Up Bagels, the viral bagel store known for their speciality butter, made its own bagel spread with chocolate pretzels, Oreos and M&Ms.

Delicious? Absolutely. Innovative? Come on.

I think Gen Z’s originality is suppressed by how loud a viral video with thousands of comments feels. We’re giving older generations ammo to continue hating on social media and the job of being an influencer.

The creativity that social media and influencers can spread is buried under the billionaires’ focus on the ordinary and basic.

Tying your hair back or eating pasta doesn’t require an influencer’s permission.

Labeling simple skincare or minimal makeup as devotion to a “clean girl” or spending a lazy day “bed rotting” is weird.

We don’t need to turn daily life into a forced category, and we should be able to simply exist without having to live inside a hashtag.

There’s even an online phrase for this kind of resistance — “touching grass” — and so far, no Hadids, Biebers or Jenners have turned it into a TikTok core.