Caught in the wild: Vernacular surveillance and the collective construction of the influencer category

Abstract

Social media has created new, horizontal channels for both vernacular surveillance and discipline. Social media influencers are often at the receiving end of both. This article explores the Instagram account Influencers in the Wild (IITW), which shares secretly recorded videos of individuals taking photos of themselves in public spaces, as an example of vernacular surveillance on social media. Through an analysis of posts and comments on IITW, this article aims to understand the mechanisms of vernacular surveillance constructed by IITW and its audience, and how they are affixed to public shaming on social media. Both the IITW’s content aggregation and the audience contribute to the construction of the influencer category. The posts on IITW suggest that the criticized behaviours depicted in the videos are often associated with self-obsession, inauthenticity, as well as the negative traits linked to selfies. By compiling these videos under a single account, chance encounters where strangers film other strangers are transformed into a category under surveillance.

Introduction

Social media influencers are subject to continuous monitoring for transgressions or norm violations by other social media users. Their (in)authenticity and (in)sincerity, their looks and body size, opinions, parenting practices, and shopping habits are often thoroughly scrutinized by their audiences (see Duffy et al., 2022; Lawson, 2021). However, it is not only the content influencers post on their social media accounts that attracts attention; the process of creating these posts can also be closely observed, particularly through the Instagram account Influencers in the Wild (IITW from here forward). IITW features videos of influencers, or individuals presumed to be influencers, ‘caught in the wild’ while filming or taking pictures of themselves in public spaces. The videos are posted on IITW for the amusement – or at times, dismay – of other social media users.

The act of filming these ‘behind-the-scenes’ videos, often without the filmed persons’ knowledge, can be described as vernacular surveillance, which ultimately leads to vernacular disciplining through the publication of these candid recordings. IITW is not the only space on social media where people, corporations or authorities are collectively or individually shamed by the public through the use of secretly captured content, such as screenshots, videos or photos. Over the years, online shaming has evolved into a prominent practice on social media, illustrating the intertwinement of surveillance, disciplining and often, entertainment (see Jane, 2016; Murumaa-Mengel and Lott, 2023; Solove, 2007; Trottier, 2017).

IITW exemplifies this intertwinement through its content aggregation, which links the vernacular surveillance methods with the inherently hybrid nature of vernacular practices on social media. This article examines how the mechanisms of vernacular surveillance on social media are constructed by IITW and its audience, and how they are affixed to vernacular disciplining. The aim is to explore how IITW and its audience participate in the surveillance and disciplining processes and what behaviours or practices are subjected to surveillance and shaming.

Despite IITW’s name, which directly references influencers, the individuals depicted may not be influencers in reality. Abidin (2016) describes influencers as ‘everyday, ordinary Internet users who accumulate a relatively large following on blogs and social media through the textual and visual narration of their personal lives and lifestyles, engage with their following (…) and monetize their following’ (Abidin, 2016: 3). Khamis et al. (2017) note how social media has created the impression that anyone can become a (influencer) celebrity by simply self-branding oneself the right way in social media. For IITW and its audience, the visual and bodily expressions of the individuals seen in the secretly filmed footage emulate the known methods of seeking and potentially achieving popularity on social media (see Caldeira et al., 2021). Thus, the individuals in the candid content published on IITW are categorized as influencers, and as belonging to the imagined ‘influencer culture’, based on their actions and behaviours. In doing so, IITW and its audience draws a distinction between different social media users, regardless of the featured individuals’ ‘actual’ influencer status. IITW, as a whole, represents a combination of the brand IITW itself and the followers who create most of the content and engage in each post through liking, sharing and commenting. Together, they construct a space where, through surveillance and (online) shaming, a collective image of what an influencer is – or does – is formed.

Influencers in the Wild

At the time of the writing of this article, the IITW Instagram account, owned by social media content creator Tank Sinatra, had 5.3 million followers. The main content of the account is secretly filmed videos depicting people filming or photographing themselves, or being photographed by others, in public spaces. Often, these candid videos are recorded by outsiders without the knowledge of the individuals being filmed. To upload these videos for the Instagram account, IITW operates a separate website where followers can upload their content (Influencers in the Wild, n.d.). Most of the content featured on IITW is not produced by IITW itself; rather, it relies on content provided by those following the account. IITW is therefore similar to many other social media accounts and sites on social media dedicated to collective shaming, by focusing on content aggregation rather than creation. Additionally, the IITW website serves as a merchandise store, offering T-shirts, hoodies, caps and various other paraphernalia featuring different slogans. A board game titled Influencers in the Wild is also available on the site. IITW is thus a monetized account, exemplified by the merchandise available and by the occasional adverts for the account owner’s other monetized online endeavours.

The people featured in the IITW Instagram posts typically have their faces visible in the videos. Consequently, while these persons cannot be considered anonymous, their identities, social media accounts or usernames are usually unknown to the audience. The majority of the content on IITW does not primarily aim to shame and discipline individuals; rather, it addresses influencers and the influencer culture in general. However, some posts featured on IITW may have already gone viral in other digital spaces. In such cases, the disciplining of the filmed person, which might include phenomena such as doxing in addition to public shaming, may have gained traction on other digital platforms, such as Reddit.

Vernacular surveillance

The term surveillance is inherently complex, but its Latin origins translate to ‘keep watch’ (Lyon, 2022). Different interpretations of surveillance often converge around the concept of power relations, particularly as a practice that occurs from a position of authority. Whether referring to police surveillance, border control, loyalty programmes in grocery stores or data collection by major social media platforms, traditional surveillance flows from the top down (Lyon, 2007, 2022). However, the participatory nature of the internet and social media has enabled other forms of surveillance, including horizontal channels. Similarly, the digital landscape has provided numerous tools for disciplining both those in position of power and those without (see Jane, 2016; Trottier, 2017, 2020), thus enabling both surveillance and disciplining on social media as vernacular practices.

The ‘vernacular’ is often described as opposite of the institutional, official, commercial or standardized. The vernacular is a position of the everyday, unofficial and self-produced (Koski, 2023: 14-15). As an analytical notion, vernacular is a lens that highlights the position from which people view themselves in relation to others, and the basis from which they participate in ‘cultural production and societal discourse’ (Koski and Turtiainen, 2020: 85; see also Noyes, 2016: 68–106). However, as Howard (2008a, 2008b) explains, social media is an apt example of the inherently hybrid nature of today’s vernacular, of the intertwining of the vernacular and the institutional. Although social media has enabled countless forms of vernacular participation and creation, they are provided by commercial institutions that simultaneously grant freedom and set the boundaries. Social media also illustrates the hybridity between the corporeal and online realms, between which vernacular ingenuity traverses with ease (Howard, 2008a; 2008b).

Blank notes that ‘cyberspace undeniably supports and modifies the folk process by combining the familiarity of face-to-face practices with the conveniences and conventions of online interaction’ (Blank, 2013: 112). From the position of the vernacular, the self-produced surveillance practices can operate both in online and offline environments, and move towards any direction. Although surveillance and discipline do not necessarily always intertwine (see Albrechtslund, 2008), on IITW and many other spaces in social media that aggregate content that has been published without consent, the discipline part of the surveillance is innate. Certainly, vernacular surveillance and the act of watching one another with a disciplinary gaze are not phenomena exclusive to the social media or internet era. Every community, whether a village or an apartment building, has had individuals observing others, whether openly or by peering through drawn curtains. However, the gaze of the watcher has now extended into digital spaces. Vernacular surveillance on social media manifests in the ease with which individuals observe and discipline one another. This practice is an everyday occurrence, sometimes pursued for personal entertainment, sometimes for disciplinary reasons and sometimes for both purposes, of which IITW is an example.

In the context of social media, surveillance is often linked to notions such as big data collection, people’s sentiment regarding the tracking of social media use, the extent of information individuals themselves share online and how sharing personal experiences on social media increases the possibilities for surveillance (Lyon, 2017, 2022; Monahan, 2011). Then again, surveillance is not always necessarily hierarchically structured. ‘Sousveillance’ refers to a reversal of the surveillance flow, where those who have been watched become the watchers themselves, often using wearable or portable technology (Mann et al., 2002; Mann and Ferenbok, 2013), like when bystanders film incidents of police brutality in public spaces (Ross, 2020). Conversely, Marwick (2012) describes ‘social surveillance’ as (online) surveillance that travels between individuals of all social relationships, instead of ‘structural entities and individuals’. Notably, social surveillance also indicates how those who ‘engage in social surveillance also produce online content that is surveilled by others’ (p. 382). Andrejevic (2002) coined the term ‘lateral surveillance’ to describe peer-to-peer surveillance. Unlike traditional surveillance, which is typically defined as something conducted from above, lateral surveillance occurs horizontally as a form of do-it-yourself surveillance, facilitated by technological advancements that have enabled the use of surveillance tools to which individuals have not previously had access (Andrejevic, 2002: 481). Albrechtslund’s (2008) notion of ‘participatory surveillance’ takes into account the social and playful aspects of (online) surveillance, such as surveillance as a part of identity construction or friendship maintenance. Whereas in, Jansson’s (2015) ‘interveillance’ describes the pervasive nature of today’s technologies and institutions, such as social media, which have enabled and continuously affect everyday routines of horizontal surveillance.

Thomsen (2019) critiques the concepts of surveillance (and sousveillance), questioning several aspects traditionally considered essential for something to be classified as surveillance. Many of these aspects dispute whether accounts like IITW can genuinely illustrate surveillance. For example, surveillance is typically understood as occurring over an extended period (Thomsen, 2019: 705). IITW, as a content aggregator, creates a platform where short video snippets with similar themes are compiled, transforming the brief duration of individual videos into a more extended collective observation. Although the individuals in the videos may change, the target of surveillance remains consistent over time. Moreover, this aggregation alters the nature of the encounters between those filming and those being filmed. The accidental nature of the interaction – an aspect that is often not considered surveillance (Thomsen, 2019: 705) – shifts to intentional through the aggregating. While this article does not aim to definitively establish whether IITW and similar accounts explicitly exhibit surveillance, it recognizes them as a fusion of the hybridity of vernacular surveillance within both corporeal and virtual spaces. Vernacular surveillance highlights the ordinariness of the everyday practices of individuals with smartphones, contrasting with the broader, more abstract concepts of surveillance.

On social media, vernacular surveillance can lead to public shaming and other types of discipline, even as far as what could be called ‘digital vigilantism’ or ‘digilantism’ where the purpose of the discipline is punishment (Jane, 2016; Trottier, 2017). However, as Murumaa-Mengel and Lott (2023) note, many social media accounts that aggregate shaming content, IITW included, can be described as spaces for ‘recreational shaming and sanctioning’, where the act of shaming originates from humour and playfulness. In such spaces, shaming is often driven perhaps more by the need of ‘belonging and socializing’ which is attained by ‘performing the act of shaming’, than by strict disciplinary purposes. These recreational shaming practices have become normalized and internalized as ordinary every day customs on social media (Murumaa-Mengel and Lott, 2023). On spaces like IITW, with perhaps seemingly light-hearted position, the vernacular disciplining of individuals on social media may contain elements of humour and serve as amusement for those taking part in the shaming. However, regardless of the humorous aspects, the underlying tone of IITW – and similar spaces – remains disciplinary. The recreational shaming practised on IITW traverses corporeal and virtual spaces, transferring amusement and shame from public corporeal spaces into public digital spaces through the practices of vernacular surveillance.

Methodology and data

The main method used for studying the IITW account was digital ethnography (Hine, 2015). In online environments like IITW that showcase vernacular surveillance and disciplining practices that have become normalized throughout the internet, digital ethnography can be ‘used to develop an enriched sense of the meanings of the technology and the cultures which enable it and are enabled by it’ (Hine, 2000: 8). I used unobtrusive observation (Hine, 2015) to explore the ‘mundane aspects of everyday existence’ online (Hine, 2015: 164). Unobtrusive ethnographic observation ‘draws on data which can be found and observed’ rather than from something that requires ‘active engagement from research participants’ (Hine, 2015: 159). To study the mechanisms of vernacular surveillance and discipline on IITW, I relied on ‘ethnographic approach of immersion’ (Kanai et al., 2020). Without access to those filming the original candid footage, or those being publicly shamed on IITW, immersion enabled me to study the visible expressions of vernacular surveillance and disciplining practices that were displayed on both the posts made on IITW and the hundreds of comments made on each post.

The data was comprised between April and August of 2023 by writing detailed descriptions and notes about the posts and comments made on IITW, and of my own reflections on spending time on IITW and with its content. Promotional posts and those featuring memes or other non-candid content were excluded from the analysis, resulting in a total of 51 posts. However, I had followed the IITW account for a few years beforehand. The actual collection of the research data was therefore preceded by a phase during which I became familiar with the account, its community and norms.

The data also consists of manually collected comments that had more than 100 likes from each of the 51 posts. As a result, a total of 700 anonymized comments were included in the data. Posts on IITW attract thousands or even tens of thousands of likes and shares, and hundreds or thousands of comments. The level of audience engagement varies from post to post and depends heavily on the type of content displayed in the published videos. So, instead of a specific number of comments, I chose to collect the comments according to their likes to prevent the data from becoming distorted in a way that would give equal emphasis to popular and non-popular content and discourse. The comments were analyzed in relation to the posts to which they were made, in order to determine the disciplinary or non-disciplinary discourse generated by the content of the posts. Secondary data consists of the content of the IITW website. However, it is important to note that social media is in constant flux, and so is the IITW account; therefore, this research is anchored to the specific time frame in IITWs history during which the data comprising was conducted.

The analysis of the posts and comments allowed me to group the content on IITW into four categories: bikini-clad women on a beach, influencers taking up space, inauthenticity and humoristic videos. This categorization was based, first, on the popularity of the posts and the scope and content of the discourse they generated, and second, on the volume and similarity of the posts. Therefore, the categories have significant overlap and many of the videos posted on IITW fit into more than one category concurrently. For example, the posts in the category of the ‘bikini clad women on a beach’ tend to attract more engagement and generate outrage in the comments more evenly. In comparison, the posts in the ‘humoristic videos’ category do not gain such popularity, even though they too overlap with the other categories. In addition, of these four categories, the ‘influencers taking up space’ category could be divided into several other categories and as such contains many of the videos posted on IITW. However, after the initial analysis it became apparent that the discourses of discipline are rather similar throughout all the posts in the ‘influencers taking up space’ category, hence removing the need to split it into many smaller categories.

Although the IITW account on Instagram is public and its content is readily available to anyone with access to Instagram, many of the posts on the account are published without the consent of the individuals featured in the posts, many of who can be recognized from the posts. This data thus distinctly exemplifies how the binary between public and private content online as something ‘clearly recognizable’ is practically non-existent (Markham and Buchanan, 2012). Researching public shaming on social media, and often researching anything on social media, calls for situated ethics, where ethical reflection is carried out in a way that addresses the ethical implications of each research dataset individually and responds accordingly (see Gliniecka, 2023). I am acutely aware of my position as a researcher studying something, that has been made public on social media without consent. Thus, to avoid any potential continuation of shame, posts made on IITW will not be described in detail. Instead, general descriptions will be used. Direct quotations from comments will also be omitted for ethical considerations. Instead, short examples and paraphrasing will be used to describe the comments made on IITW. In addition, upon completion of the research, all data collected will be destroyed.

Analysis

Post it on IITW

Instead of disrupting governmental power relations through surveillance enabled by technological progression, or something simpler like for example Googling a Tinder date, accounts like IITW, and many like it, transform vernacular surveillance into a tool for norm cultivation through vernacular disciplining. Social media is replete with accounts and sites dedicated to disciplining people for various offences, such as aggregating screenshots of misogynistic behaviour online (see Hess and Flores, 2018; Shaw, 2016) or videos of people driving badly (see e.g. Idiots In Cars, n.d).

The main content posted on IITW consists of videos, most of which appear to be secretly filmed, of people filming themselves or people being filmed by others in public spaces. These videos are often captured from a distance by bystanders, with the filmed person unaware that they are being observed or recorded. This represents moments of vernacular surveillance, where something about the person’s behaviour has attracted enough attention from a passerby to prompt them to stop, watch and even pick up their phone to record, possibly for amusement or with the intent of exposing the individual to a broader audience.

On IITW, there is an underlying tension between the sometimes conflicting – and somewhat gendered – rules governing public behaviour and those regulating how individuals present themselves on social media. These rules are simultaneously upheld and challenged by both the audience and the account itself. The aesthetics of social media – the posts, and the people behind them – are a collaborative creation, shaped by the interactions between content creators and their viewers. Blank (2013) refers to the ‘internet-based aesthetic’ as one built through ‘variable repetition’ of ‘unspoken, communally sanctioned and malleable values’. Social media is a neighbourhood like any other, where imitation through observing others establishes the appropriate way of existing in one’s community. In this context, the ‘motivations that dictate many behaviours in corporeal and virtual formats are essentially the same’. (p. 112-113, 116-117).

The discourse on IITW about those featured in the published videos if often similar to the cultural discourse surrounding selfies. Consequently, IITW and its audience associate selfie-taking to influencers and influencer culture. Selfies – or self-portraits – are central to social media culture yet frequently criticized. Selfies often evoke negative connotations about the selfie-takers themselves, and about how, where and why a selfie should be taken (Burns, 2015; Tiidenberg, 2018), and how many selfies are simply embarrassing (Caldeira et al., 2021). On IITW, what attracts the passerby to secretly film someone is typically an action that conflicts with societal norms of public space, while simultaneously aligning with the aesthetic values that are celebrated on social media.

Public shaming on social media as a ‘norm-enforcing tool’ (Solove, 2007), operates within this hybrid space, blending the corporeal and digital worlds, as well as vernacular and institutional practices in unique ways. Although IITW operates on a commercial platform and functions as a commercial account, with content selected based on its popularity among the audience, the hybridity central to IITW is the hybridity between corporeal and digital spaces. As Blank (2013) explains, ‘hybridization exemplifies the process by which “real world” discursive practices significantly influence, and are reciprocally influenced by, virtualized discursive practices’ (p. 107).

IITW exemplifies this hybridity by taking actions intended for the digital realm and capturing them in physical, public spaces. This duality is enforced through the act of candid filming, submitting the videos for public scrutiny and publishing them on social media. Whether or not the individuals in the videos are committing any severe transgressions, the process of recording, submitting and publishing serves as acts of disciplining that reflect and reinforce the intertwining norms of both corporeal and digital spaces.

The influencer category

Lyon (2007) describes how classification plays a central role in traditional surveillance, deeply intertwined with power dynamics. It involves grouping identities into categories, which simplifies and solidifies their characteristics, thereby making actions against them not only easier but easier to justify. As with any other type of classification, those used for surveillance are not developed on a neutral basis (Lyon, 2007). Vernacular surveillance tied to content aggregators like IITW categorizes individuals into a limited number of (often reprehensible) attributes. Influencers operate outside the realm of IITW, and only an extremely tiny percentage of them ever appear on the account. However, when individuals are perceived as influencers on IITW, they are often perceived by the audience as representative of all influencers. Since IITW focuses on occurrences in public spaces, this generalization, however, tends to focus on influencers from specific niches, such as fashion or lifestyle and thereby reinforces particular stereotypes about influencer culture.

During data collection, the front page of the IITW website (https://influencersinthewild.com/, n.d.), featured a large video playing on a loop, spanning the entire width of the site. In the somewhat blurry video, a group of women clad in swimwear were on a small boat, cruising through turquoise waters in the sunshine. One of the women was at the bow of the boat, kneeling on the floor and posing with her back towards a camera held by another woman. There was a text on top of the video saying, ‘Get Famous, NO Talent Required’. This emphasizes the role of gender as a key factor in shaping the category of influencers showcased on IITW.

Although on IITW there are videos featuring just men, man/woman couples and groups of all genders, they are not the majority. Of the posts collected, 37 feature female-presenting individuals as the primary subject, while 8 posts feature male-presenting individuals, and 6 posts present both genders in equally central roles. Hence, during the compilation of the data, it became clear that the posts made on IITW predominantly feature women. Moreover, posts in the data featuring men did not often gain as much traction as those featuring women in the central role. Thus, disciplining men for taking up space in public as a perceived influencer is not the entertainment the IITW’s audience craves for, even though Instagram statistics indicate that the gendered differences within Instagram’s userbase are rather minimal (DataReportal – Global Digital Insights, 2024: 307).

Dubrofsky and Magnet argue that ‘surveillance practices and technologies’ are used to ‘normalize and maintain whiteness, able-bodiedness, capitalism, and heterosexuality, practices integral to the foundation of the modern state’ (Dubrofsky and Magnet, 2015: 7). Moreover, vernacular (and institutional) surveillance on social media is not isolated from gender, rather ‘female users and other users from marginalized and stigmatized groups are differentially targeted as objects of surveillance and victimization in social media’ (Nakamura, 2015: 224), as exemplified by IITW. However, as Gill (2019) describes, the term surveillance has not been explicitly used in relation to the ‘surveillance of women’s bodies and of their appearance’ as a ‘long-established topics of concern’ (p. 152-153).

Duffy et al. (2022) describes ‘influencer antifandom’ where social media accounts or online websites are created for the purpose of relentlessly scrutinizing influencers, many if not most of them women, for their perceived inauthentic, fraudulent and/or phony self-presentations (p.1658–1659). Although IITW does not discipline individual influencers, and is perhaps more intended as light-hearted fun – as the existence of the board game illustrates – it is a disciplinary space where the targets of the discipline are often women. According to Burns (2015), selfies are typically associated with femininity, and with characteristics stereotypically linked to women, particularly young women. The discourse surrounding selfie-taking and individuals who engage in this practice frequently involves the policing of women’s behaviours when they film or photograph themselves in public. In contrast, self-entrepreneurship, which is often connected to being an influencer, along with the sometimes aggressive self-promotion that accompanies it, is viewed as a masculine domain (Duffy and Pruchniewska, 2017). Although combining ‘entrepreneurial selfhood’ where women are ‘empowered to write the stories of their own lives’ with postfeminist ‘construction of women as active, desiring sexual objects’ (Gill, 2019: 151), could make social media influencing an acceptable career choice, doing it for the imagined audience, turns the visibility inherent in social media influencing seemingly sour on IITW. This reflects the broader societal trend of disciplining women for occupying both the feminine space of selfies and the masculine realm of self-promotion, making it unsurprising that women are so prominently featured on IITW.

However, even though the account and brand are named ‘Influencers’ in the Wild, not all the people who appear in these candid videos are what could be called ‘actual’ influencers. Often, simply taking pictures of oneself in public, or being filmed by someone in public, is enough to get recorded on a stranger’s smartphone and featured on IITW. Although social media has enabled ordinary people to gain fame (as influencers) in a way previously unattainable (Khamis et al., 2017), on IITW the people secretly captured filming themselves in public are perceived as either influencers or acting like one, or ordinary people. The process of transitioning from a passerby observing someone’s actions to secretly filming them and submitting the video to IITW culminates in the public scrutiny of the published video by the account’s audience. By thoroughly studying the behaviour and appearance of the featured individual in the video, the audience decides whether the person qualifies as an influencer. The distinction is essential, as the audience is more inclined to perceive public disciplining as justified when the individual featured is considered an influencer. In contrast, the covert filming of ordinary individuals and the posting of such videos on IITW are frequently met with strong criticism. Commenters accuse IITW of engaging in mean-spirited shaming or of sharing content that does not belong on the account. Afterall, IITW is for disciplining influencers, not commoners.

While a substantial portion of the videos has a disciplinary tone, the ‘humoristic videos’ category contains more light-hearted posts. Although humour can be derived from many of the posts on IITW and laughter, puns and jokes are common in the comments, the posts categorized as ‘humoristic videos’ differ from other categories even when there is overlap. For example, a candid video of elderly women filming themselves dancing in public could be categorized as an ‘influencer taking up space’. However, the utter delight expressed in the comments differs so significantly from posts featuring younger individuals, that the posts cannot be placed under the same category. Additionally, the humoristic category contains posts that could be described as ‘fail videos’. In these the people featured in the videos are, for example, getting run over by a large wave of water or are seen stumbling. These videos typically appear to have been filmed with the featured person’s consent or even by the person themselves. While some posts in the humoristic video category do of course attract negative comments, overall, this category contrasts with the more disciplinary or critical content. The commenters do not perceive the humoristic posts as disciplinary as other posts made on IITW. Therefore, the people in the posts, the candid filming and the act of making the post itself evade shame more readily.

Looks like an influencer, acts like an influencer

Even outside the less disciplinary posts, not all comments on IITW ridicule influencers. In addition to the occasional non-malevolent humour, many of the commenters also tag their friends in the comments to join in on the fun. Comments made to defend the person seen in the posts made on IITW are not unusual and debates in the comments between the defenders and accusers or ridiculers are relatively common. Yet, a disciplinary rhetoric frequently prevails.

The category where this disciplinary rhetoric is most pronounced is the ‘bikini clad women on a beach’. These posts feature bikini-clad women filming themselves at beaches or pool areas. Eight of these kinds of videos were posted on IITW during the collection of the data. In these videos, women often engage in twerking or other actions for the camera that can be perceived as flaunting their sexuality, either near or in the water. Posts featuring bikini-clad women at the beach elicit the most unanimous reactions from commenters, indicating a clear consensus regarding the reprehensibility of the actions depicted in the videos.

In the combination of the posts and comments on IITW, shame clings to the public bodily presence and visibility of the people featured in the published footage. Afterall, shame or the lack of it is a common theme in the comment sections in many of the posts in any category. The commenters exclaim that the individuals featured on IITW should be ashamed of their presence, or that others feel ashamed for them, including the commenters themselves, or that the individuals should be publicly shamed in a more punitive way than just posting anonymous footage of them on IITW. However, the bikini-clad women on a beach seem to be the most shameful – or shameless. Many commenters express difficulty in understanding why the women in these videos do not feel shame, believing they should. Commenters might exclaim ‘what would her parents say’ or ‘I would be so embarrassed if I were her’. Thus, the behaviours exhibited by these women are deemed inappropriate for a public beach setting. Commenters on IIITW ridicule the ‘bikini clad women on a beach’ by implying that their (and their genitals’) close proximity to the water contaminates it with ‘chlamydia’ or ‘pink eye’, or alternatively causes the water to have a pungent ‘fishy smell’. Additionally, the commenters claim the women all look the same and that they increase the amount of ‘plastic in the ocean’. IITW thus works as an example of how the use of sexuality as a strategy for advancing one’s career in social media influencing is generally disapproved of, often viewed as a ‘violation of gender-coded norms for professional decorum and respectability’ (Duffy et al., 2022: 1667).

This discourse highlights the complex hybridity of social media as represented on IITW. Behaviours deemed reprehensible in a public beach setting, sufficient to warrant posting on IITW, can be celebrated on other social media spaces. For women, displaying sexuality on social media (Caldeira et al., 2021) and engaging in gender display (Butkowski et al., 2020) are something that can attract likes and followers. However, IITW effectively brings the public beach environment to social media, revealing aspects that may have been edited out of the secretly filmed person’s own posts.

Another significant category found in the videos posted on IITW is the ‘influencers taking up space’ category. These posts feature videos where people are disturbing others or simply taking up space. This category overlaps with the posts featuring women in bikinis filmed at the beach and is a recurring motif across various types of content. For instance, some videos depict persons halting traffic to create dance videos for TikTok or invading someone’s personal space to capture the perfect angle for a selfie. Disciplining individuals for taking selfies in inappropriate locations or at inconvenient times is not uncommon. Instances where taking selfies has been judged inacceptable include people taking selfies at Auschwitz (Noyce, 2023) or with children during volunteer activities (Laywine, 2021), both of which have drawn criticism for their insensitivity and lack of awareness regarding privilege.

Sometimes, simply filming oneself in a public space is sufficient for a person to be perceived as disruptive. The person might be enjoying themselves – such as filming themselves dancing at a gig or whilst having fun with friends – without any intent to disturb others. Yet, something about their presence compels a stranger to film them from a distance and submit the video for public scrutiny. Commenters often refer to the featured person’s movements as ridiculous, likening them to a ‘dog in a heat’ or birds ‘laying eggs’. Women perceived as older (which seems to mean over 30 or 40) are ridiculed and criticized for wanting to make social media content – like younger women. In these the commenters judge the (women’s) bodies seen in the corporeal world as somehow off, or too much. However, those who showcase skill, such as acrobatics, tend to avoid the strictest criticism from the commenters. Such skills benefit even the bikini-clad women facing the most criticism. Alternatively, people identified as models by the commenters, rather than influencers, tend to escape disciplinary actions more readily – since they are seen as performing their professional roles rather than merely taking selfies. Thus, IITW’s audience evaluate the appearance and actions of the filmed person’s body as a body that is either allowed to ‘take up space’ without judgement, or not.

The ensuing debate in the comment sections oscillates between those labelling these ‘influencers taking up space’ as narcissistic and those defending them as individuals simply living their best lives who deserve to be left alone. Those defending the person featured in the post might exclaim how amazing they look or that the commenters do not know the context of the situation in which the ‘influencer’ is ‘caught in the wild’. However, even when defending the people perceived as influencers, some commenters refer to influencing as something that is essentially seen as shameful by making comments such as ‘normally I find these posts embarrassing, but this one is wholesome’. Others mention the even more reprehensible individuals by writing ‘this is better than the pictures of their crotch’. At times, the focus of the disciplinary gaze shifts from the perceived influencer to the person filming them secretly. In these instances, it is not the influencer’s behaviour that is deemed shameful, but rather the act of filming without consent, redirecting the shame back to the observer.

Regardless of whether those featured on IITW are perceived as influencers or commoners, it is the camera – held by the individual or by someone else on their behalf – that captures the attention of strangers, labelling them as selfie-takers. Burns (2015) describes how the prevailing perception of individuals taking selfies is that they are narcissistic, selfish and lacking self-control. Selfies are associated with vanity and sexual impropriety, and are essentially perceived as trivial, thus rendering those who take them as lesser individuals. Regardless of whether the persons featured on IITW are disrupting their surroundings, as Burns (2015) explains, the act of taking selfies is commonly viewed as anti-social. Selfie-takers are perceived as overly preoccupied with their appearance and attention-seeking behaviours on social media, often neglecting their environment (Burns, 2015).

The general sentiment emerging from the comment sections on IITW reflects a pervasive sense of defeat, with commenters expressing fatigue over the societal trajectory that is, according to the commenters, exemplified by influencers. Common theme among posts featuring pornographic aesthetics or environmental disruption are commenters denouncing influencers as representative of what is wrong with the world. These ‘tragic’ influencers ‘desperate for attention’ display how social media has made the world crazy, self-centred and in need of a ‘large meteor-strike’. Some commenters protest how humans in the future were supposed to ‘have flying cars’ and be ‘smart’, but ‘instead we have this’. Dobson (2015) explains that societal attitudes toward young women on social media can suggest that for young women to ‘seek appearance feedback publicly’, which often means taking selfies and can be linked to influencer culture as well, is to have ‘no value to society’ (p. 145). Moreover, selfies are often described as a ‘metonym for social media and social media use’, suggesting that the problems associated with social media could be resolved through changes in individual behaviour (Tiidenberg, 2018: 107-109). This perspective is evident on IITW, where influencers embody the essence of social media, and social media, in turn, is regarded as detrimental. For the commenters on IITW, the (woman) influencer’s body seen in the publics goes beyond the body by representing the decline of society.

The look of (in)authenticity

The surveillance of women’s bodies is easily noticeable in celebrity culture, now intensified by social media, where the ‘forensic dissection of cellulite, fat, blocked pores, undepilated hairs, wrinkles, blotches, contouring and hairstyle/sartorial/cosmetic surgery’ flourishes (Gill, 2019: 153). Influencers are constantly monitored for their apparent (in)authenticity in various aspects. Accusations often arise that influencers use Photoshop or plastic surgery to enhance their features to unattainable levels (Duffy et al., 2022). Moreover, audiences might also thoroughly dissect influencers’ engagement in activism. When the authenticity of an influencer’s participation in activism is found lacking, they may be accused of exploiting the rhetoric of activism for views and likes. For example, young (white) women posing at Black Lives Matter protests have faced scrutiny regarding the sincerity of their participation in activism through videos posted throughout social media, including on IITW (Banet-Weiser and Glatt, 2023: 505. Sobande et al., 2022: 1581).

At the centre of the influencer antifandom examined by Duffy et al. (2022) is authenticity, or the perceived lack of it: are the influencers truthful, or are they simply performing perfection. Influencer antifandom can criticize, for example, the promotion of unattainable beauty ideals or doing things specifically for monetization, sometimes by simultaneously upholding normative gender ideals. However, by amassing footage of what is perceived as influencer behaviour in public, IITW does not appraise the reprehensibility of individual influencers promoting inauthenticity, but the influencer culture. With the caveat that the influencer culture targeted seems to be primarily the beauty and lifestyle faction of said culture.

In the data, posts aimed at disciplining individuals for distinctly displayed inauthenticity are relatively few. The category of ‘inauthenticity’ contains only a handful of posts, three in total. However, one of the posts contains a particularly viral video that for a time circulated in many social media and other online spaces, and the person and their actions featured in the video got severely judged by what seemed like the whole of internet. This post and the other posts showcasing inauthenticity reveal situations where individuals in the video are filming something for social media that is intended to give an impression of something that is in clear conflict with the reality. However, the inauthenticity of the situations depicted in the videos posted on IITW is not self-evident; it is contingent on the analysis conducted by the audience, which is influenced by the constructed category of influencers and influencer culture as inauthentic.

Although posts explicitly featuring inauthenticity are not the most frequent, IITW is intriguing in how it is affixed to the general perception of social media as inauthentic. The posts on IITW often capture the moment before a seemingly perfect social media post, revealing the behind-the-scenes reality that contrasts with the polished final product. For instance, a social media post featuring a bikini-clad woman’s buttocks on a picturesque sunny beach, may crop out the photographer hovering behind her, as well as the sunbathers on mismatched towels nearby. The passerby secretly filming the person captures them from the incorrect angle, further highlighting the complexity of the perceived inauthenticity of social media criticized by IITW and its audience.

Social media largely revolves around the aesthetics of oneself and one’s life, carefully curated to create the image one wants others to see. Taking a selfie is not something one just snaps, getting the perfect image requires complicated effort (Abidin, 2016). Caldeira et al. (2021) describe how selfie curation can involve anything from seeking the perfect location and lighting to taking numerous pictures, editing them and ultimately deleting many of them – or all of them. This practice is not limited to influencers; regular social media users also engage in curation. Instagram, in particular, demands both ‘beauty’ and authenticity. The ‘Instagrammable’ look is associated with specific demographics – primarily white, young and thin – and emulating this aesthetic is often necessary for success on the platform (Caldeira et al., 2021; Foster, 2022). In addition, to find success on social media, this curated presentation needs to portray authenticity (Caldeira et al., 2021; Foster, 2022; see also Duffy and Hund, 2015). As such, Instagram can be viewed as a neighbourhood where adhering to the collectively defined rules ensures acceptance (Blank, 2013). Thus, even if one is not interested in becoming popular on Instagram, in theory, one would know how to do it (Caldeira et al., 2021).

When ‘influencers’ are ‘caught in the wild’ on IITW, the act of watching is wrongly timed. Typically, those judging content such as selfies as either authentic or inauthentic (see Duffy et al., 2022) conduct their analysis by scrutinizing the published images. Selfies are evaluated based on criteria such as whether they were taken during a natural moment or posed, and the extent of manipulation involved (see Lobinger and Brantner, 2015). Catching influencers, celebrities or even royal families manipulating their selfies by examining the photos for distorted backgrounds has become a popular pastime (see Rhoden-Paul et al., 2024; Ryan, 2023). However, on IITW, the origins of seemingly casual and perfect social media posts are revealed through vernacular surveillance, exposing the truth behind the perfection. This reality is then judged as inauthentic and publicly disciplined.

What connects all the videos posted on IITW posted for disciplining purposes is a camera. The camera wielded by a person transforms many situations into something perceived as inauthentic and hence reprehensible. Having fun in a bar is not the same as filming oneself having fun in a bar. Noticing the camera encourages bystanders to reach for their own, further perpetuating the cycle of observation and scrutiny.

Conclusions

IITW exemplifies the position of the vernacular, of the intrigued, appalled or amused passerby, equipped with easily accessible technology and social media affordances, which facilitate the everyday vernacular methods of surveillance and discipline that uphold cultural and societal norms. IITW and similar social media spaces specifically extend this hybridity of the vernacular practices to include the convergence of the corporeal and the digital. What captures the attention of the bystander in the physical world is brought into the digital realm for collective judgement by the internet. However, IITW introduces an additional layer connecting the corporeal and digital. On IITW, the hybridity of vernacular surveillance on social media completes a full circle: a person filming themselves for social media in a corporeal world is exposed on social media by someone secretly watching them in the same corporeal world. This creates a complex interplay of rules for both realms.

By either accepting or rejecting the shaming practices showcased on IITW, the commenters exemplify the need of ‘belonging and socializing’ that is affixed to those participating in recreational shaming practices online (Murumaa-Mengel and Lott, 2023). Commenters who oppose the individuals and actions grouped into the created influencer category position themselves as the category’s counterparts. Although the commenters themselves use different social media affordances – following, commenting, liking, sharing and posting – their practices do not cross the line into what they perceive as shameful. The categorizing as a feature of surveillance is in flux only on the outer fringes of the category of the influencer on IITW. While the details on what is acceptable behaviour, or what makes an influencer are sometimes debated in the comment sections, the condemned core of the influencer category stays the same.

During the period of the study, it became apparent that although posts featuring men did exists, the majority of the disciplinary discourses were targeted towards women. The surveillance directed at disciplining and regulating women’s bodies is a regular occurrence online. However, the mechanisms of vernacular surveillance and disciplining of the bodies of women on IITW fluctuates between the corporeal and online spaces. The women performing in the corporeal world for the imagined audience of social media break the norms of visibility in the corporeal world by striving to adhere to the visual norms of social media.

At the same time, according to IITW and its audience, individuals featured on IITW represent a detrimental impact of social media on today’s society. By linking the imagined influencer category to the negative discourses surrounding selfie-taking practices, IITW creates an image of a self-centred, out-of-touch and excessive social media culture. This is at times reflected in the background music chosen by IITW for posts. Not least in the decision to use the chorus of the Taylor Swift’s song Anti-Hero: ‘It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me’.