Vesna McMaster - Stoke

If you’re an online influencer there’s no respite from the tyranny of posting. Every situation dissolves into a potential source of content. You can never stop stoking that fitful flame of public interest. Stop posting and the followers die down, and so does your income. How many ways can you film your budgie? How many recipes with rage-bait mistakes can you make? How many clothes can you ‘style’ before you start losing your mind and wearing three skirts at once: one as a skirt, one as a poncho, and one as a headdress? The spiral of desperation starts leaking through the screen. The little side-gig that was so cool becomes a nightmare of relentless clips and soundbites. One day you scream No More, disconnect, and pretend you never had a life online. Until one day someone mentions your budgie is cute and you absently murmur ‘he used to have 200K followers’. They look at you like an unexpected item in the bagging area and you quickly change the subject. Only a faint smell of unease lingers in the conversation.