- What area in LA are you guys in?
- Pasadena.
- K-Town.
- I literally lived in Pasadena
for five years, which is so funny.
- [Aimee] So cool how we're doing this.
(they laugh)
- My name is Aimee and I am the founder of Song of Style.
I'm an influencer.
I have my own clothing brand under Song of Style.
And I'm super excited to be chatting with you guys
during quarantine.
- I am Tess Holliday.
I'm a plus-size model, mom, author,
and founder of the self-love movement
#effyourbeautystandards.
- My name is Blair Imani.
I'm a Black, bisexual Muslim woman.
I'm a historian and author.
And I use my platform on social media to educate people
about things that they might not learn about
outside of a college classroom,
because everybody deserves to have a quality education.
- Hi guys, my name is Deon Hinton.
I'm a model and creative based in New York City.
I create content around the realm of men's fashion,
self-love and mental clarity.
I actually joined Instagram in 2012.
It was July 12th, 2012, and it was just an escape for me.
Instagram was a way for me to create a new world for myself.
On Instagram, on social media,
you can be whoever you want to be.
That's my motive, to showcase the softness
that Black men hold, but also -
- Yes!
- The firmness and the beauty within all of that,
because that's really what it is. It's beautiful.
- I have a question for Tess, if I may.
I find so often that it's like folks who are
new to platform or, like, younger folks,
or like just folks who are, like, have a younger platform,
for example, that get the attention.
But then the trailblazers such as yourself
kind of get railroaded.
And so I want to know from you, like,
how has that experience been
and how social media prioritizes, like, newer accounts
over folks who, like, made those newer accounts possible?
- I started using my platform to highlight that
there weren't enough people of color,
that there weren't enough non able-bodied folks,
that there wasn't enough queer representation.
And you realize that it was like a can of worms
that I couldn't even imagine,
but the blessing for me in all of it through social media
has just been that I realized that I could use
my platform and privilege to help others
that weren't getting the same opportunities.
And so for me, I'm okay kind of taking a seat back
as long as someone's heart's in the right place
and as long as they're like, you know,
actively trying to make the world a better place,
then Instagram can prioritize them.
- For me nowadays, I'm just trying to balance, like,
how do I not be chained to the algorithm?
What's the newest thing,
while still remaining true to myself and having, like,
maintaining my platform.
- Love that.
- Do you guys ever struggle with that?
- It's definitely frustrating,
especially because I know that my audience
is going to engage more, especially on Instagram
or social media when I don't have a lot of clothes on
when I'm talking,
when it's like a cute selfie,
when it's something that is very superficial.
But if I'm posting about the police brutalities against,
you know, people of color
or how reverse racism isn't real,
people just kind of ignore it.
- I liked that the film kind of had...
The documentary kind of was suggesting solutions
and how us as influencers,
as people with a large platform,
what can we do about it.
- If I can really quick,
I'd like to tell you all, like, it's a brief story.
But, so I'm like, I'm always preaching,
like anti-bullying and, like, loving people and you know,
all the good things.
I've found myself doing this thing where, like,
I get really annoyed when people, like, ask me questions.
Like, it's kind of like a teacher that tells you
to read the syllabus when you have a question.
Like, they're angsty with you
because every other student has asked them
that same question, and it's on the syllabus,
but it negatively affects the students
or in this case, my followers,
when I get frustrated with them because of 18 other people
that they have nothing to do with.
And so that happened, like,
I think it was, like, maybe a couple of minutes
before I watched the documentary,
and I totally am glad I made the right choice,
especially after having watched it and seen, like,
the reenactments in "The Social Dilemma."
Cause I, like, posted my response to the person,
which was a little sassy and a little frustrated.
And I was just kind of like, what it ended up being,
it wasn't just me being like, ha ha, look at this.
Like, they felt really shamed, and I removed their name
from the post still, but they still felt
like, you know, attacked.
What bullying looks like is not always somebody like,
you know, coming up to you and intimidating you.
Sometimes bullying can be literally as nuanced as
you thinking something is funny
and that other person feeling attacked
and like, you know, unheard.
- I have been through my fair share of cancel culture.
There are literally Reddit pages dedicated to
why I'm quote a horrible person.
I made a remark that played into stereotypes for Black men,
about five and a half years ago.
And it was something flippant that I said.
And at the time I didn't really realize the full impact.
I didn't realize how loaded what I said was,
especially as a Caucasian plus-size woman,
and I apologized for it,
and not because I was being asked to,
but because I felt like as part of my growth
over the past few years,
I could truly understand what I said
and what I did, and the ramifications
of what happened in that moment.
And that's when I really started to understand
cancel culture in a different way.
It would just be really nice if we allowed more space
because you never know what someone's going through.
And no one actually knows anyone's heart.
And yeah, I have a lot of feelings on cancel culture.
Cause social media is such a scary place.
- The thing is accountability
doesn't have to be public all the time.
Accountability is not meant to be humiliating.
It's not meant to be degrading.
It's not to be this horrible act.
You shouldn't have to be blasted
in order to feel like you have to
hold yourself accountable for something.
You can do that in private.
I feel like if anything, that's probably where the most,
you know, accountability stems from.
You know, understanding, sitting with yourself,
and being like, you know what?
I fucked up.
And now I have to think about how
I'm going to move past this.
That's completely okay.
- Aimee, what have you had a hard time navigating?
And I guess maybe the down sides of being an influencer
and one of the first ones?
- I am very open about it with my community,
about how I talk about therapy
and that it's not a shameful thing.
Online, on my Instagram and my social platform,
I have this very curated image
of what hashtag #lifegoals was
because that's literally what people kept on commenting.
Your life is goals, dream, hashtag #goals.
Those happiest moments that were captured,
that period was probably one of my darkest moments.
I was basically going through a mental breakdown.
I did not feel like my authentic self.
And I also felt like I was portraying this image
to my audience that was just literally
1% of what my life was.
So, I posted a video on my YouTube channel, saying,
I feel depressed.
Like, it's not just glitz and glamour.
And I was very honest with my audience.
It was a huge relief to let people know that,
hey, what I'm showing you,
this carefully curated images or feed that you see
on my Instagram, it's not just all that.
There's also, like, the dark side of me as well.
- The thing that I just found the most interesting
and my favorite part about "Social Dilemma"
was the fact that they asked the million dollar question.
What's the problem?
You know, who is responsible for this?
And I think everyone that was involved in the documentary
honestly felt the same,
that there's not one particular person that is to blame
for everything that goes on behind the scenes
of social media.
- All right, you know that I'm kind of the newbie here.
And I just really have to say that it's so exciting
that, like, folks who I've followed for such a long time,
like, that y'all are just like down to earth, dope folks
who, like, are just the same people, like,
on social media that you are in real life.
Like even in the in between.
- Wow, I have to share that.
- Same!
- Insane, literally, same.
What I wish people knew about being an influencer is
understanding that we don't have all the answers.
I don't think any of us ever claim to be, you know,
Wikipedia or an encyclopedia or to be able
to tell the future of what's going to happen.
I'm just here to simply to, you know,
guide the conversation,
to help you think about what you may feel about something,
not to tell you right from wrong.
That's not my responsibility.
It wouldn't be right for me to tell you that it is.
- What I wish people knew about
being a social media influencer and using social media
is I don't really see much of a point
in having a large platform if you are not actively
using it to help others.
Because we got to this situation in many different ways
by just thinking about ourselves and greed and all of that,
so, which "The Social Dilemma" highlighted
very perfectly.
- What I wish people would know about
being an influencer and also social media for work
is they have to hold those people in power
accountable as well, to make sure that we're not being
just used for tokenism, right?
We're not just checking the diversity box.
Like, okay, we have one Asian girl
in this whole group of influencers,
so we check the diversity box.
No, we actually have to go deeper.
- I wish people understood that they don't see everything.
They see what we invite them to see, like Tess said,
but they also put their own story into it.
I just want it to be better because
the good things that make social media fun to use
are so good, and the bad things can be managed
and can be pushed away.
So it's about leaning into that.
And I think staying hopeful about the fact that, you know,
this social dilemma, it's an opportunity to make it better,
not to just look at it and say, oh well,
we have to get rid of it
because it's not going anywhere.