We like to talk about how being an influencer is not a real job and requires no actual talent. The tagline of the "Influencers In The Wild" board game is "Go places. Gain followers. Get famous. (no talent required)." Those who call influencing their day job are actually trying to lobby for people and governments to recognize it as an actual job by striking and unionizing.
A researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, Emily Hund, stands in their corner and urges them to unionize in her book The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media. Influencers should "recognize themselves as the cultural laborers they are and organize accordingly," she writes.
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She explains how, after the economic crisis of 2008, many stable kinds of jobs disappeared. Making money through social media, therefore, became a viable option. "The influencer industry is both a symptom of and a response to the economic precarity and upheaval in social institutions that have characterized the early twenty-first century," Hund explains.
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There have been attempts to unionize from online creators in the past. In 2016, there was the Internet Creators Guild that aimed to help creators protect themselves in the "cut-throat" world of brand deals and confusing contracts.
It shut down after three years, mainly because big creators didn't "feel the need for support from a collective voice." TikTok creators are flirting with the idea, as well, but nothing has come out of it yet.
