With the proliferation of social media influencers leveraging their personal lives to build followings and sell products, it’s become increasingly difficult to know where the line between public and private life is. In response, users of the social media website Reddit have created a phenomenon known as “snark pages.” In a way, they’re sort of like fan pages — except here, the so-called fans are often posting complaints about their favorite influencers.
Journalist Jessica Rauchberg joined The Show to discuss, citing an example involving influencer Remi Bader.
Bader built a massive following by reviewing clothing for plus-size women. But then, one day, she cryptically announced she would no longer be talking about her body issues online. Subsequent reports confirmed that Bader had gotten weight-loss surgery, but she hadn’t told her fans about it. The so-called “snarkers” on Reddit were livid — they took Bader to task for what they viewed as deceptive marketing.
Rauchberg said in the minds of the snarkers, influencers are more than just people.
Full conversation
JESSICA RAUCHBERG: We don't know them as people. We don't know them as individuals. We know them as brands. And so, when brands are dishonest with us, they lose all credibility as some kind of outlet we would want to consume from. And so, that is exactly what happened with Remi Bader and why many people began to “snark” on her. It's not because she as an individual received this procedure and had a lifestyle change, but it's because her brand shifted and she wasn't honest and upfront with her followers why she made that change.
SAM DINGMAN: But this seems like a very interesting subtlety here, which is that as you were just pointing out, we don't know people like Remi Bader as humans, we know them as the version of themselves they're presenting on TikTok or whatever it is, but the reason that we connect with them there by and large is because it seems like we know them.
And so, if I'm hearing you right, what upset the “snarkers” is the sense that if Remi Bader had come on and just as authentically as she had tried on clothes, said, “I have decided to make a different choice for my physical health and well-being that is going to mean the nature of what you see here is going to change.” People would have probably been supportive of that, but the fact that she seemed to her viewers to be being deceptive about it is what prompted the “snark."
RAUCHBERG: Yes, and that's what makes “snark” complicated. There’s no right way to “snark” and there's maybe some wrong ways to “snark.”
DINGMAN: Interesting. So it's, it's one of those things where on the surface, it can seem like an exercise purely in being mean, but the “snarkers” by and large, seem to see it more as holding people to account.
RAUCHBERG: Yes, “snarkers” see it in their own account to try to act like the Better Business Bureau, but again, different “snarkers” have different ideas of what is right and what's wrong, and so it is still very imperfect.
DINGMAN: Yeah, so that brings us just to this very tragic case that happened right here in Arizona. This is an influencer named Emilie Kiser. Tell us what happened.
RAUCHBERG: So Emilie is a parent influencer and lifestyle influencer based in the Phoenix area. And she had about, or has rather, about 4 million followers on TikTok, and she really built a following about her life as a young mother.
But she's come under the microscope over the last couple of weeks after it was revealed, her eldest son, Trigg, died after a drowning incident and there's a lot of speculation and a lot of controversy about Emilie and her family.
And so it brings another conversation about, is this something you can “snark” about? Do we need access to this particular moment in Emilie's life? This was her brand, being a mom, vlogging and documenting, “my mornings with a newborn and a 3-year-old and all the things that I do to get them ready and set up for their day.”
OK, that was her brand, but this is also something really, really personal. And even if we feel like we know Emilie, we do not actually know who she is beyond the curated videos she posts on her TikTok and her Instagram.
And so she actually has sued Maricopa County's police department to prohibit media outlets or just everyday people from trying to get access to their reports on what happened.
DINGMAN: So let me make sure I understand this. What happened is that because there was so much interest in the death of her son on the part of “snarkers” and just her fans in general, there were people, presumably some of them “snarkers,” who were going to the Maricopa County police department trying to get access to information about the death of her son.
RAUCHBERG: Yes.
DINGMAN: And so she has filed this lawsuit as a way of trying to control the amount of access that people are attempting to get to what is obviously a very private situation for her.
RAUCHBERG: That is correct, and I think this is a really interesting situation because in my research on Emilie's story and following the news after her son's untimely death, this isn't just necessarily an issue amongst “snarkers," it's also an issue amongst her fans.
And after the news started to surface, I would see on my TikTok for you page just these videos of people making compilation videos or what we might call a fan cam, so stitching together different posts that Emilie had made to sad music or people recording themselves crying and tagging her in the comments
I don't really see Emilie's decision to, or whoever made this decision, to sue the Maricopa County police department as a way to stop “snarkers.” It's also a way to create privacy for her family during what is an unspeakable tragedy. And this, I think, opens up a sort of an ethical debate.
Do we need to have access to everything about influencers, no matter how much it seems they're inviting us into their lives? Her “snark” page did get shut down though, I believe, or it's on pause.
DINGMAN: On Reddit? The page got shut down.
RAUCHBERG: I believe so because of the speculation around this event. And so I actually think it's her fans who are maybe creating more controversy here than the actual “snarkers,” who when these kinds of events happen, there was another incident with another lifestyle influencer, Candice Miller.
Her husband died last year, and on some of the “snark” pages on Reddit that would talk about her, they, actually moderators on the platform, created rules about, “This is not something to talk about. It's not ‘snarkable’ content.”
DINGMAN: Well, I have to say, Jess, this all seems so delicate.
RAUCHBERG: Absolutely. You know, “snark” makes sense when you're calling out influencers who use unrealistic body filters and portray a representation of themselves that's not accurate. In terms of parent influencers and family vloggers, I think this is showing them that there's a lot of risk to what you do.
I mean, folks are looking to what's happening with Emilie Kiser and her family as a sign that maybe this is not the way to go. So this offers a lot of things to chew on in terms of “snark,” but also how people use digital labor to work and make a living.
