Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - Why Rich People Hate Influencers (Inside The Nantucket Influencer War)

Episode Date: August 3, 2026

Nantucket's "No Influencers" Sign Started a Gender and Class War, Here's What It's Really AboutSUPPORT MY WORK: Buy a paid subscription to my newsletter at https://www.usermag.co     Support my work on Patreon: http://patreon.com/taylorlorenz Last week, the internet exploded after a small Nantucket shop posted a simple sign reading "No Influencers." What started as a local controversy quickly became a national debate about influencer culture, old money, quiet luxury, class, authenticity, and the future of social media.In this bonus episode of Power User, I'm joined by freelance reporter Andrea Domanick, co-host of The Culture Journalist podcast and newsletter, to unpack the most cursed discourse of the summer. We get into why this fight is not actually about one sign or one influencer, and who gets to define status, taste, and authenticity in America's most exclusive spaces. We explore:The Four Winds Craft Guild controversyPaige Lorenz and Dairy BoyQuiet luxury and the old money aestheticThe rise of influencer cultureWhy "influencer" has become a loaded wordThe history of influencer bansSocial media, class, and cultural capitalWhy privacy has become the ultimate luxury

He didn't commission a sign that says no filming without permission. He made the identity category itself, the offense, right? He's saying his issue is the behavior, but like the sign condemns an identity. And I think like the distance between those two things is where the gender politics enter. For generations, Nantucket has been a place where old money prioritized one thing above all else, discretion. It's a bastion of wasp culture where families who have owned $10 million houses for generations, shop at places like Murray's Tagree shop before a sunset sale at the yacht club. But this past week, the island has been hit by a digital storm.

Four Winds Craft Guild is an iconic Nantucket shop. It's been around for nearly 100 years, and it's where you can buy these beautiful Nantucket Hand Baskets that can run upwards of thousands of dollars. The shop is just down the street from Dairy Boy, the first permanent retail location for a brand founded by Influencer Paige Lorenz. So when Four Winds Craft Guild put up a sign that said no influencers, a lot of people took it as a dig against Lorenz and other influencers who have increasingly

begun to populate the island. Some people were quick to call the influencer band misogynistic. Other people lashed out saying it was ridiculous to act like influencers are an oppressed class. But either way, what could initially be read as a petty neighborhood dispute, I think actually reveals a lot about this clash between two. competing visions of status, authenticity, and ultimately, who gets to shape the identity and future of some of America's most exclusive places. Andrea Dominic is a freelance reporter and co-host of the culture journalist podcast and substack. I've been spamming her with texts about this for days now,

and I'm so excited that she's here for this special bonus episode to break down and unpack everything to do with the Nantucket influencer ban and the extremely cursed and viral discourse surrounding it. Andrea, welcome to Power User. Hey, it's so good to be here, Taylor. Thanks for having me on. So I'm curious when you first encountered this drama and if you had ever heard of the Four Winds Craft Shop before. I most certainly had not heard of the Four Winds Craft Shop, especially being from L.A., living out in L.A., but it did come across my feed, but like not as the craft shop itself, but through various takes, I think it was a little earlier this week, and then you texted me about it. But of people, the seemingly innocuous sign, honestly, I feel like it almost looks like

something you might see it like T.J. Max. I mean, no disrespect to the Nantucket aesthetic, but the sign that said no influencers and people having take upon take of whether this was funny, it's thinking that this was, you know, having problems with it, which made me dig more deep into it because my initial thought was just like, oh, that's funny and cute. And then it turns out like, not necessarily. So it is funny how the sign like that aesthetic, there is a specific name for that type of sort of like font and style has been so co-opted where like this sign I could picture as a novelty sign at Target. It's very funny. Exactly. You could even see it saying, you know, influencers too and that being like a funny thing to put in your dorm room. Exactly. So I have heard of

the four, sorry, Four Windscraft Guild. This is like one of the oldest kind of shops. I was a nanny on Nantucket. I'm from New England. And so this is like the iconic Nantucket Basket Shop. So like the whole sort of like signature item of fashion clothing that comes out of Nantucket are these like little basket bags that everyone has. And they're thousands of dollars and they're really elite. And I ultimately got this like cheap knockoff when I was there as a nanny because the real ones are so real. But this is sort of like the quintessential Nantucket shop. So I think that's worth noting. Yeah. It's been around since 1948, right? So it's like part of the history. It's part of the culture of the island. And especially Nantucket over the past decade, it's because

come a brand to itself. It's always been this sort of elite place, but I think as the kind of of prep style had resurged, there's a lot more attention on Newtuck and Nintuck. It's kind of been this place where more influencers are going and we'll get into that. Before we dive deep into the current controversy, I want to kind of go back in time because this is not, as some people believe, the first influencer ban that we've seen. The ban on influencers has more of a history than people might think. I'm not sure if people know the origins of the influencer economy, but it really got going in the 2000s with the rise of the mommy blogger. If you remember names like Heather Armstrong or some others, there was basically this group of mothers that were doing this very feminist

act at the time of like putting content about their lives and their children, but often sort of anonymously out on the internet to demystify like what life was like for women. They pioneered the influencer industry. The influencer industry has always been very female dominated. And basically sort of like grew from there. I would say almost immediately there was backlash. There were influencer bands at fashion shows, at fashion events, like people blogger bands. People did not like women around.

And at this point, these women didn't even have cameras. But it was this idea of these women commodify their life. They're somehow like less than us and they're corny. And it's sort of expanded, I guess, over the years from there. Taylor, you've been tracking some of the backlash against influencers for a while now, right? Like there was the thing that happened in Ireland. I'm forgetting the name of the cafe.

So back in 2018, this was sort of like the first really viral influencer ban. And it was actually against a blogger, but it was Dublin's White Moose Cafe. They published this influencer's request for a free stay and basically put around blast. And by 2018, the concept of an influencer was pervasive. The term influencer has been around for decades in marketing, but really didn't sort of enter the public consciousness until 2015. 15, 2016, with the rise of the multi-platform influencer and very quickly became associated with women because, again, the whole content creator industry back then was dominated by women.

And so that was the first official influencer band. But before that, we had seen selfie bands. Oh, yeah. No selfies, no selfies, no selfie sticks, especially. No selfie sticks. They were called narcissism rods. Like, there was so much backlash. I wrote a piece in 2023, actually, because it was the 10th anniversary of selfie being word of the year,

which was it was the word of the year back in 2013. And it was so funny. to go back and read the coverage when Obama took a selfie that was national news for like two weeks. It was a moment. I remember that. Yeah. I remember the like Ellen selfie? There was this whole like Huffington Post vertical that any time a celebrity took a selfie, this was like breaking news. And there were all these people like Jean Twain, she's ironically a collaborator of this awful man Jonathan Haight now. And like there was all this moral panic saying that selfies were the downfall of society, selfies were evil, they were

try to, you know, your ban from taking selfies. And a lot of it was against teen girls. If you remember that one teen girl that took a selfie at Auschwitz, kind of funny even to say, her life was ruined after that, right? There is this like moral outrage at what is perceived as kind of like narcissism. And it's always directed around women and specifically young women, of course, Obama as well. But it was this idea of like you putting yourself in your own picture. Why do you need to do that?

Why don't you let the camera face outward? Like, why would you need to put yourself in the the picture. And this is the first time a lot of women, especially teen girls, were putting themselves in pictures instead of just taking them. So it was kind of interesting. But very quickly, I would say with the rise of kind of influencer culture, we started to see these bands. And they were always very gendered, I would say, because what they considered influencers, a lot of times it would be like a resort being like, okay, no influencers in the sense that they don't want to give free products. This is also the time that the account influencers in the wild came to fruition. Do you remember what they were originally posting? I feel like it was just like a scantily clad young women out in the wild, yeah, taking selfies. That's what it, that's all it was. Yeah. Or being recorded or like recording themselves, you know, like recording a fun musically with their friends.

So there's been all this discussion of like, you know, people saying, oh, influencer bands are misogynistic or saying, you know, hating on influencers is a way of hating women. And we can kind of get into some of this too. But I just, I really want people to understand the gendered nature of the industry and the gendered nature of the history. these bands from blogger bands to selfie bands to the early sort of influencer bands. And if you look at the media coverage of these bands, it is universally images of women, young, attractive women with a phone in front of their face that is used to illustrate these articles. The sin that they're engaged in is sort of like gender coded.

It's like this woman is taking a selfie. It's so evil. And so I just think like we can't kind of talk about these bands without acknowledging that. And then it kind of, I think people, because of the gendered aspect of it started to call it out. The industry started to become more openly diverse. It's always been diverse. But I think like with the rise of TikTok, it sort of became like everyone's an influencer because of algorithmic feeds. And so you started to see a lot more signs that just said like no filming, right? Because that's really the problem here is like people having their camera out

and other people's face when they're trying to eat or shop or whatever. So the no influencer sign goes up on Nantucket amidst the store opening of a brand that is owned by an influencer named Paige Lorenz. No relation. I've heard about this girl since like the day she started on Instagram because my middle name is Paige. My sister's name is Paige Lorenz. And my mom literally was in the Vineyard Vineyard Vine store in Colorado recently. And somebody was like, are you Paige Lorenz's mother? And my mom was like, yeah. And the woman was like, oh, my God, I follow her online. And my mom was like, oh, you must mean my other daughter, Taylor Lorenz. Because my other sister at Paige's like, no, page presence. She was like, no, Paige Lorenz. And my mom was like, oh, okay.

And then was telling us all this. And I was like, mom, that's the influencer, Paige Lorenz. But yes. Wait, that's so funny. That person must have been like, how do they not know? How does she not know who her daughter is or what she does? Of course, now she's Paige Paul. I know.

It's just funny for my mom. She was like, that's not the online daughter. I have a different online daughter named Taylor, not Paige. Yes, now she's page Paul because she's married this famous tennis player, had a very aspirational wedding. I mean, it's interesting. She started this brand dairy boy because she moved to Connecticut and has developed, I would say like this very like old money lifestyle.

Like this is what got her popular was like leaning into this old money trope and kind of presenting as somebody that grew up in Connecticut, like this very idealized view of life in Connecticut. And she lives on a horse farm. She's cooking fresh vegetables. Like it's very aspirational. So she opened a store on Nantucket. This no influencer sign is seen as sort of a dig at her.

And all hell is broken list. Basically she gave a statement, you know, that she had always dreamed of opening a store in Antarctica. She sort of gave this response on Instagram that sort of just seemed to make everything worse. And now we have like a knockdown dragout fight over this thing that is like fundamentally so stupid and silly and like The New York Times covered it. It's not just on, it's not just like a social media fight. Like it's a it's a trad media fight too.

Or at least it's trad media coverage. Yeah. And it's like nobody's dying. This is not the end of the world. I saw people being like, you know, there's real oppression out there or whatever. And it's like, okay, they're probably not even enforcing this. But I'm curious with this sort of feminism discussion and misogyny, where you land on that and what your thoughts are.

Because this is something that I feel like, I was like fighting in the comments of some Instagram posts about this. A lot of people are saying, oh, well, these women are commodifying themselves. The influencer industry is inherently bigoted. You're trying to rebrand choice feminism. You know, this is bad. And it's like privileged white women can still suffer misogyny. In fact, they are sort of the targets of a very specific type of misogyny.

And there is misogyny very wrapped up in I think the way that we speak about influence. because there are men influencers and they're not subject to these bans or rules. Like when we see that no influencer sign, we understand that it's directed at people like Paige Lorenz. But like there are all these like male preppy influencer Kyle James Patrick, right? He's not getting banned from Nantucket stores, but these women are. When I wrote a big story about Kyle back in, I think it was 2017 or 2018 when he was declared the preppiest man on Instagram, he was doing photo shoots on Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard.

He commodified this lifestyle. I would say he was like one of the main like preppy. He influencers, him and this girl, Carly, and some other people that pioneered this whole commodifying New England. But like, he was causing chaos on Main Street and he embodies this like specific type of aspirational JFK-style man. I have never seen as much backlash towards him as I have against some of these women that have shown up more recently, I guess, in the age of TikTok. I don't think it was specifically about Paige Lorenz, but one could kind of understand how she argued that the sign delegitimized an industry that is like overwhelmingly. overwhelmingly populated by women. I think the issue here is that Sylvia's concern might have been,

please don't film people without consent, right? Like, reasonable, but he didn't commission a sign that says, no filming without permission. He made the identity category itself, the offense, right? And so that rhetorical choice invites every stereotype that's attached to the word, right? He's saying his issue is the behavior, but like the sign condemns an identity. And I think like the distance between those two things is where the gender politics enter. Yeah. And that is not to say, too, that like the influencer industry doesn't prey on women in its own way and push unrealistic beauty standards or whatever.

Kim Kardashian is sort of like the avatar for all of it, right, where people are like, oh, she's this embodiment of capitalism and all these. And they just exist to sort of sell things to you. It's not like being an influencers, like some inherently feminist act in any way. But as you said, when you talk about influencers as a category, there are all of these gendered meanings behind it. And I think putting up a sign like that makes it clear the type of person that you would imagine being banned under that policy, just the way that if you had a sign that said no streamers, like no Twitch streamers, you would imagine an archetype of a Twitch streamer. It's probably a male, somebody like going around being obnoxious, like clavicular or something. Did you see the Dave Portnoy response to all this? Because I think that's kind of a perfect demonstration of like some of the tensions here.

So Dave Portnoy weighed in on all of this drama in his T by the C, TikTok, where I guess he gives T, you know, he loves to weigh in on drama, internet drama. He said, I didn't get the Page Loren comment, to be honest. It seemed like it was a little overboard. I'm not sure if the no influencers sign was about her. I'm here on Nantucket, by the way. If Four Winds considers me an influencer, then I'm just going to flip flop to the other side. I don't think I'm an influencer.

I've been on this island for more than a decade. It's not about me. He said, I'm against influencers coming to Dan Tucket. Let me say that. So I'm on board with the no influencers sign, but that's not discriminating at all. Me and Four Wins, who I've never spoken to, and I don't know who they are. When we say no influencers, we're talking. We don't want influencers whose entire life is going from Coachella to F1 to Palm Tree Fest.

So yeah, he says we don't want brand trips. We don't want tart. We don't want all these people who are on a circuit of partying and don't really care where they are. They go from one party to the next. If you're going to Mike Rubin's white party, we don't want you here. If you're going to New Year's in St. Bart's, we don't want you here. It's just funny to hear him say that because this is. is one of the most like brash men out.

Like for him to be implying that like other people are trashy and tacky, but like not Dave Portnoy. Like Dave Portnoy is the embodiment of so much of influencer culture. It's kind of funny. I mean, how is he not an influencer? It's just hilarious to me, but he said that. I also think, I mean, there's the gendered aspect of it too. And I think there's a quality of like IP ownership that's like the dividing line

as well. Like, are you the type of influencer or content creator? that is able to thrive off of like their own IP or are you maybe someone who's just starting out and so you are hawking other people's products or you're just doing this like the equivalent of like what used to be like a working class day job. He's someone who's built like an enormous business around his personality. So he has a lot of influence. He's a huge audience like it's built around recommendations, social media reach.

Yet he doesn't consider himself an influencer and I think like men with influence are much more likely to be understood as like media moguls, right? Founders, commentators, public intellectuals even, or like you said, streamers, seems to be the biggest differentiation here, entrepreneurs. Well, the word influencer, there was a wired story years ago that was about just the gendered nature of the word and the fact that it is a gender neutral term traditionally, but women who are content creators are more likely to be called influencers than men who are content creators. And men are significantly more likely to be called exactly what you said, like media entrepreneurs,

founders, founders, like all of this ridiculous stuff, which of course these women are too, but that word is applied significantly more pervasively to women. You shared this one real with me from Dana Hafner and she had said, you know, I'm surprised Paige still refers to herself as an influencer. Like, aren't you now a celebrity and a business owner and an entrepreneur? Why were you even considering yourself an influencer? And I think that speaks to just how loaded this word has become because not only like implying that that's somehow lower, but also that that's something that one.

can aspire out of and grow out of to these other echelons, to these words that, yes, we do tend to more often see associated with men. If you're watching this video and you like my work, please support me on Patreon via the link below or buy a paid subscription to my tech and online culture newsletter at usermag.co. That's usermag.com. I don't have any long-term brand partnerships and a lot of my content is effectively demonetized. I've lost major brand deals for speaking out on certain issues and for challenging power. As you can imagine, advertisers are not exactly.

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Every dollar of your support makes such a difference. Well, I think there's something about an influencer of like trying hard. It is a hustle and it is a grind and these are people that commodify their life. I mean, most influencers don't make it while the top 1% are going to say bar, San Antucket and stuff, like the majority of aspiring influencers are not even making enough to like live on. And it is something to aspire out of in the sense that, yeah, as soon as Alex Cooper, could, she started to call herself a founder. She started to call herself an entrepreneur. Because you want to be seen as building something. And even, I mean, this has been written about two of

like the language of content creator. I wrote about the original team at YouTube in 2011 that got together and developed that word creator. But previously to 2011, these people were not called content creators. The YouTube had the partner program. So people were called YouTubers, YouTube partners, bloggers, whatever. But they wanted to come up with a word that made it clear that you were creating content that you were bringing something into the world. And so I think that's why that that term creator doesn't hold the same stigma around it, whereas like influence, it's kind of like, who are you to think that you're influential? You know what I mean? And like your job is to pressure people. There's the sales aspect to it. Sales is seen as this sort of low class thing, I guess.

Like you're out hawking, you know, cheap products online or whatever sort of people associate influencers with, which is what a lot of the business is. And really I think what that comes down to also is like expertise. Is your influence because you, your physical appearance like grabs attention and therefore brings that onto the product that is trying to be sold, which is generally may or may not be your product, might be that of a third party? Or is it like the idea that you're speaking? Yeah, I mean, I think it's like men tend to be framed more as monetizing expertise. And women are more framed or even like accused of monetizing attention, even though like both are doing the same thing. Yes. So do you agree with that like,

that influencer. I think she calls herself that, but that, you know, she posted this viral TikTok that said, I think hating on influencers has become a socially acceptable way to hate on women. What do you make of, of her sort of claim? I think there's a layer of it to that. I read the whole thing as as more of a class thing, especially as, you know, it's no longer like just the small, the narrow thing of just like a girl like Coachella with a phone taking selfies, right? Or mommy blogger or somebody in front of like a cupcake store in LA. There's a lot of power attached to it. and it is something that's now a career.

I mean, we are, of course, it's getting coded as like content creator, but it's like, we're seeing like colleges open departments devoted to this. And so I think, like, you can't cleave the gender aspect from it. I think there's a class element to it because there's a lot of demystification to the work of influencing. At its core, influencers go around and, you know, they're the anti-gatekeeper, right? And even though we're like now in an anti-gatekeeping culture,

I think the notion of like cultural access is still like a really, like, loaded thing. their attention is something that can be considered very, like, day-class-a, depending on what kind of attention it is. It can be good for you economically, but we do live in a culture where, like, talking about money or acknowledging money is considered distasteful. And so I think something that's as transparent as being an influencer, where you know it's a hustle and you know what the objectives are. One thing I've been thinking a lot about in this conversation is hashtag old money aesthetic.

It's basically creating looks to have the old money aesthetic or, like, quiet, luxury on a budget versus actual old money, right? Which is the sort of like anti-consumerist consumerist take where it's, you have one really good nice sweater and like one pair of great leather shoes. You know, and the taste of old money is antithetical actually to the co-optation that's happening with influencers. Of course, it's very declasset and threatening to them because it's very declasset and threatening to actual old money, many of whom we see on Anteca because the influences are

an economic powerhouse and old money itself and like people who feel in charge of that aesthetic are like, let's be real dying out. They've also been displaced by tech titans, you know, and other people who have more power than them anyway. They don't have a lot of money left. So, you know, the last thing that they kind of have is cultural capital, which I think is really like what's central to what we're actually talking about here. Cultural capital being this taste that's so pure and anti-consumerous that it can't be imitated. Like anti-consumers, consumers that it can't actually be imitated. But what we're seeing is people walking up, taking the photo and breaking down how to imitate

it and make it accessible. Like they're democratizing with something that is gate kept that's been based on status and cultural capitals. So I think that's really what we're talking about here. Yeah, definitely. And I spend so much time talking about like the women's angle, I think, because again, as somebody that writes so much about like online hate about women. Yes, that was part of why it went viral.

It was the discourse around that. But the real reason this struck a nerve, I think is the class aspect. I think this like upper class sort of like wasp like group of people is increasingly angry at it. upset. I was looking at the comment section of this post and other posts and people getting involved. And it is, I used to work at this store Jay McLaughlin. It's like very old money like one of these brands on that brief side.

Yeah, there's like an anti-a-job, whatever, or I worked there in college and high school. And there's all these people that are sort of affiliated with just like really rich people basically that are like, yeah, like stick to them. You know, because I feel like they feel like, as one person even said in the comments, they were like, we lost the Hamptons. We lost blah, blah, blah. Like, Nantucket is one of the few spaces we have left. And it's true, right? Like the Nantuck used to be this space for, I think of even something like surf lodge, you know, Montau used to be this like old fishing town, this place for like where people, like rich people would go out to their farm and it was beautiful and pastoral.

And now it's just like hedge fund billionaires having white parties and people get influence, influencers. Like it has been so if commodified by influencers, right? And this is true for so many of these traditionally luxe kind of even somewhere like st barts has been sort of transformed and i think nantucket because of how difficult it is to get to him because of how small it is like it's really hard to even go there if you don't own a house it's not like there's big hotels all over you know you have to pay to rent a house which is billions of dollars so there's this barrier to entry and i think even then it's been burst by this like so-called new money of influencers of people like page Lorenz and maybe her tennis star husband whatever and i think that's what they're feeling

resentful over. I think that's exactly it. I mean, I think it's important to remember that when we're talking about all this, like, this isn't primarily a conflict between rich tourists and the working class, right? Which it may have been before. Like, it's a heritage retailer selling four-figure craft objects versus like a highly successful creator with a lifestyle brand. So I think a lot of this is largely like an argument that's actually like within the affluent consumer economy, rather, about the proper way to perform privilege. Which is why I think people are so angry at influencers being quote unquote discriminated against or this idea of people being like, well, influencers aren't an oppressed class.

Like, how dare you compare yourself to like LGBTQ people or something? You know, and I wouldn't say that's what they are doing, to be clear. Maybe some are. Who knows? But I do think that there are these class dynamics at play. And I do think that actual sort of like old money people look down on new money people. And that's the tale as old as time. And these influencer people are so at odds with that.

I was actually, there's a big drama at one of these Northeast boarding schools. Similarly, where a lot of students are making TikToks now and growing careers as influencers, and a lot of the legacy parents, whatever, are like really infuriated by this. And it's, I think, so interesting, there's this one girl that went to the school that I saw on TikTok, but she was just talking about how, like, this younger generation has a very different expectation. And to them, actually, they understand sort of attention as economic power. And they don't have a lot of these views, I think, that, like, maybe these older rich people have. So I think there's that like divide as well.

I think it's a lot of older views of money. Whereas like Paige Lorenz fans, I don't think they see her as less than or something. And I don't think, I think a lot of them also, even if when they come from generational wealth, aspire to have cultural capital through online influence. Yeah. I think the nature of what determines cultural capital. A lot of like also what what's at stake here, I guess for the warring parties or acknowledging that cultural capital isn't this thing that it maybe used to be.

especially like in context of the Nantucket lifestyle where it's like discretion. Wealth should appear inherited, effortless, tasteful, like almost non-commercial, right? So influencer culture kind of like violates that code. It shows the labor of aspiration. I think that's like a lot of what it comes down to. It's like announcing like here's where you eat. Here's what you wear. Here's they acquire the look.

It's culturally new money. Yeah. I also think of these content creators like Stod guy or Johnny Hillbrandt, who's PE guy. And I think there's also this. class of people were like Johnny was a sole cycle instructor. Stod guy was like, I can't remember, just like some like random 22 year old, but neither one of these people actually come from generational wealth. Neither of them are actually from that like old school WASP class. They kind of came into it through mocking those people, but mocking them so effectively and sort of having these niche

signifiers that they actually became accepted into this realm. I actually think Tinks really pioneered this even before then where she would do like rich mom, blah, blah, blah. I think she's more sort of in that world than these two men. But the PE guy, he's getting major deals. He's getting and shot guy, right? He did a partnership with Loro Piana, which is like this old money's kind of staple. And so I think, again, that younger generation views it all very differently. And I think if you told some 65-year-old woman on Antucket about a Loro Piana brand deal,

like, probably be like, that's ghost or something. That's terrible. But it's like you can all sort of like larp your way into the WASP culture now, too. And I mean, that's ultimately what Kyle James Patrick originally did, like the original, like, preppy influencer, one of many. He is a working class guy from Rhode Island that does not come from old money, but sort of mimicked that look. Thanks to the internet, a lot of this stuff is a lot more accessible. Same with e-commerce. I think of something like Murray's Tagree shop that sells the classic Nantucket Reds. I remember when I was a nanny on Nantucket, like you could only, this is before

they had e-commerce. Like you had to go to Nantucket to get real Nantucket Reds or maybe you could buy them on the vineyard, maybe too, a little bit. I think there was a Murray's there, right? But you had to go to these places. Now you can just order that online. You can Google. You can honestly, like, ask ChatGPD, like, what are some old money staples, right? You can very easily gain sort of the aesthetics of this lifestyle. The last thing that's being protected is maybe like these physical spaces on Nantucket, right? It's like, don't come into our craft store unless you're, I don't know, true old money. There's an element of like privacy and discretion that I really associate with old money. And that's like something that I think is very on the endangered class

species on us. I can't help with the. about like Pierre Bordeaux and like his sort of like class distinction arguments. But there's established elites, the basket stores and all that they want their taste to appear like heritage, right? And natural, the influencers are exposing all that basically is like a reproducible set of purchases and poses and cultural capital by turn gets like converted into tutorials. And that I think is the real pain point. The showing how to be and like, I mean like you were saying how Kyle James Patrick basically just was able to kind of like absorb all that even though he wasn't like from that and and become of it. I do wonder as we're all surveilled and as privacy becomes even more aspirational how this stuff will be viewed.

I think the term influencer ban is honestly a little, it feels very 2018. Also anybody can be an influencer. It reminds me of like when Jack Wagner did the verified only photography booth in LA where like it was 2017, you had to be like verified to take a picture in front of the pink wall or whatever. But it's like at this point, because of algorithmic feeds, anybody can be an influencer and like, anybody can walk into the basket shop and be like, here's the secret basket shop on Nantucket, blah, blah, blah. And it can go viral and reach three million people.

And I think that's why we're seeing more phone-free spaces. You know what I mean? And this like desire for privacy and this desire to be anonymous and have, you know, have anonymity because it is so rare. So weirdly, if they had just put up a sign that said, no filming, like people would have been on board. People would be like, oh, love it. Oh my God, so quaint.

Like the Nantucket shop that doesn't allow phones. How aspirational. But because, like you said, they had to make it this category, it's like, now it's this divisive thing. Right. Exactly. When I'm sure his intention, his, the, yeah, that John Sylvia's intention was actually the former.

I'm sure this old man, like, hardly pays attention to the internet. And it's like, what have I done? There's also this layer, you know, this layer of irony that shouldn't be, like, lost on anyone that, like, his story's probably getting it, like, more attention than it has ever had before. I think they know, influence your thing, whether it was his intention or not is going to just dog whistle to a certain kind of person regardless. And there's almost a layer of, was this all the intention the whole time?

I don't think it was, but I was going to say it's also very funny or weird to me that like the shop's initial post got taken down by Instagram. Probably because people were reporting it. People were so mad about this. It's really funny. Also, yeah, the irony of him going viral and this shop going viral unintentionally when like the whole thing was like, hey, we kind of want to keep a low profile, like no influencers, please leave us alone. And it's like now you are literally caught in the national news

viral cycle. You are the subject of endless discourse on every platform. I think there's also something that just like really bothers me about the discourse of all of this of sort of how quickly also people criticizing this culture immediately participate in the exact sort of attention economy that they're hating on. And it all just becomes sort of commodified into drama, which obviously I'm doing as well with this podcast. But I'm not out there being self-righteous about it. And I think that's what, like, bothers me to is the self-righteousness of some of it. It's like somebody saying feminist language is being used to protect a sales model built on women's cheap labor.

And it's all about like sort of like women in India, you know, that are working in the sweatshops that are making the sheen clothing that these women are promoting. It's terrible. I agree with that. I think that sometimes these discourse cycles immediately become also a way for people to hop in and get attention and kind of weigh in on things and do kind of this attention arbitrage. And there's a lot of people that are criticizing influencer culture that are also seeking to commodify attention by sort of having, you know, the most like, oh, did you think of this group? Did you think of this appraisal? And like, you thought this was bad, like, let me cancel this person to sort of get cultural capital. And I just, that also to me is just like hilarious because it's like kind of an indictment of the whole culture that is no influencer sign is sort of like against.

Right. Which like, let's look like the root of all this is just have a sense of humor, guys, you know, again, not to take away from like the actual depth that's been like actually very satisfying to unpack here and it's like very legitimate, but it's also there's something about the self seriousness of like take upon take and whose take is more righteous than the others where it's like let's just not pretend like this wasn't a tongue in cheek silly thing that was not an actual ban when like women are actually like being banned in countries around the world from entering shops and doing things. So you know, just reality check there. Totally. Although I will say in the influencer

bans like and if you look at some of the countries like I've reported on, Was it Malaysia? You know, there are actual women being prosecuted under influencer bans Saudi Arabia. And these women are prosecuted for doing TikTok dance videos, you know? Like these are countries without free expression. So yeah, this is not that at all. But I think, again, it goes back to this idea of who is an influencer and who is targeted. And so often it's just like a woman with a cell phone.

I want to go back to what you brought up earlier with saying like this whole thing feels very like 2018. Because there is a degree of inescapability. of the influencer or like content creation. Like everybody has to be a content creator now. It's not some like elective, aspirational, like young starlit thing that the derogatory iteration of it has made it out to be. I mean, certainly us as journalists, like,

have to have a degree of like being an influencer, unless your whole brand is like not having social media and not doing that. Well, then you're a billionaire. But the thing is, is like LinkedIn alone. Like you have to have a brand. Everybody has to have a brand. Whether you are a mid-level junior sales person in Minnesota, like you have to be on LinkedIn. You have to be like, we all have to commodify ourselves these days.

And yeah, I totally agree with you. Like I think these distinctions are very meaningless, actually. Not just because anybody can go viral, but because all of us have to have a personal brand and all of us. Whereas influencers were sort of like the first to put themselves on the internet in this really intense way and have their privacy obliterated. Like this goes back to a lot of the themes in my book where I talk about like influencers are effectively just sort of like, the power users of social media and much like sex worker, like sort of like, there's this idea of like everything starts with sex work and then trickles down. Like I think of this with influencer culture and especially I talk about this with like

mass surveillance of whatever influencers are sort of subjected to today that that user behavior will trickle down and those socioeconomic pressures that they deal with will be put on all users. They're power users of the platforms. So they're going to experience these issues first, but it will it will affect all of us. So I think like the way that influencers use the internet in 2018 to promote themselves and the way that they built brands online is something that we all have to do now. And that's just part of getting a job and operating in our system. Yeah. I think unless

you're a heritage basket shop that's been around for 80 plus years, you're pushing 90 years, it's just something that you like have to play in now. And I think that's sort of like the reality that like needs to be acknowledged here. Not pretending like being an influencer is some niche thing or like even some elective thing, right? Which is, yeah, I know I saw when when I was fighting with some person in the comments of one of these posts because I just like getting involved in discors. They were like, well, you, oh, yeah, like, you're an influencer, whatever. I click on this person's page. They're an influencer. They're a blue check influencer. This is like influencer and influencer and influencer violence here. Like, we're all out there. We're all,

and this person, I believe, paid for their check mark, which is hilarious. But like, we're all subject to these forces. And I think that's why it just doesn't hit as as hard. Like, it's so silly. It's so silly. It's so silly. It's like you can't ban influencers. It sucks. We all, we all have to do it. And increasingly old money people have to do it too, or their kids at least. And so I guess like that that does make me kind of wonder what will happen to Nantuck. or like these bastions of old money, these like the boarding schools, like the very, like this culture has been eroded for so long, like WASP culture has been eroded for so long. It doesn't have the power for good, which is good in a lot of ways in America because they've

been displaced by, yeah, like tech billionaires and new money and everything. And I just, I wonder how much, yeah, what's going to sort of happen to it. I think that maybe it's just going to go extinct. Yeah. I think it's really, no, I think it's really important here to talk about like Nantucket, like in its own sort of like class and like calls. cultural capital context, right? We're not just talking about like, this isn't gentrification, right?

I almost see this as like weird lateral, like digital gentrification maybe where the island's entire economy is built around influence. It always has been to an extent. It's always had a certain like aura to it. I live in LA. I've never been to Nantucket. I went to school on the East Coast, but like I've still, I've never been to Nantucket. I like, I just, but I understand what it is.

There's a connotation when I hear people say I'm going to Nantucket for the summer. You know, I'm like, that tells me a lot about their family or whatever. And I don't, again, this is just knowledge I've obtained through cultural osmosis, right? So, you know, it's like influencing people to desire Nantucket to buy its like objects, imagine themselves inside this lifestyle that it is historically connoted. It's a light, it's like OG lifestyle brand, right? So, you know, I think, I think decides this very like classed element that we've been talking about, I think when you look back at the two sort of like public protagonists at the heart of the situation,

And like, the fight is really about who gets to wield that influence going forward and, like, whose version is allowed to look respectable. A lot of it's, like, about authenticity, too, I think. I know. And Natuckin has always had such a strong brand, as you say. I mean, they have their own color scheme and look and everything. It's going to be interesting to see. I also wonder if the allure of the place, if it'll be lost a little bit, too, just with the arrival of all of this stuff. I saw a lot of people being like, oh, now, you know, the only place we have left is like North East Harbor.

remain or these places that are even more obscure and old money and almost dilapidated because they haven't been, I don't want to say gentrified because it's not gentrification. Let's come up with a term for like, what is this phenomenon or like the lateral gentrification, digital gentrification. It's like a demystification. I mean, I went to Banff in Lake Louise, which is so scenic in the Canadian. It was 2015. It was like right before peak Instagram and it blew up and then it became so expensive and it

became this thing and brands moved in. Brand trips are going there. And like there's something that happens to places that are really. really old, beautiful places that can like turn into this and you see this happen to random Swiss towns or whatever, right? This kind of cycle will likely happen to Nantucket as the internet kind of infiltrates the island, I guess, and like it reshapes these places because it is kind of like the dynamics of the internet reshaping these physical environments and the money that comes from like

the internet reshaping them. How do you think of my reshaped Nantucket? How is it already like changing it besides just like the visibility of the people, you know, the new money people who are going there and the phones they have now? as they were. I think it's the new money people that are going there. I think it's the norms that are changing on the island. These people want different things. They want different experiences. They don't want the old money. Again, it's not really gentrification because this is a rich person's place and it is just catering to a different group of rich people. But I think a lot of like surf lodge, right,

or Montauk, where in Montauk, it was like a shitty beach shack town, right? But then you have these new money people that want the Instagram opportunity. They want the balcony where you can take the picture. They want the Instagramable steak or whatever. I don't know. It's like they want to be able to show off the lifestyle as well and sort of package the lifestyle for public consumption. And I think Thantucket hasn't traditionally packaged itself for public consumption as much. And I think now that these people are coming, you're seeing that happen a little bit more. Again, it feels like that actually already happened to most of the world back in 2018 when we were getting all the Instagram walls everywhere and stuff. But like, maybe it's just sort

of coming to these more elite spaces a little bit later. I don't think they're going to get like Instagram walls. But I mean, you can see this even with country club. There was something in town and country a while ago, but like there used to be this strict no filming role. And you have a lot more of these young people filming each other when they're pulling in on the yacht or whatever. And then they realize actually this is helping to drive young people.

They were trying to get young families to join the Great Harbor Yacht Club or whatever. And so you can take your phone out and you can do this. And maybe you have the meta glasses on when you're sailing and suddenly you're filming everything. And just, you know what I mean? There's this shift happening. It's sort of like in pre-revolutionary France or the nobility. like had no money, but they did have noble titles. A friend was like, I was talking to you earlier, like made a good point about this.

But you sometimes have new money like marrying into noble families or like, straight up like selling the random title that they had. Like this is kind of similar. I feel like, you know. All they have left is their nobility is their titles. All they have left is like some shitty old cashmere sweaters and I don't know, a Nantucket basket and a $10 million house, I guess, on the island. It's interesting too because I mean, I think I, again, just from

afar, like, I think there's a large connotation of, like, leisure, with Nantucket and privacy and rest and escape and again, like, sort of like discretion. There's a perpetual labor to influence and to at least just this broader, like, creator culture of like always being on your phone. And I, that's sort of the noise of that like spiritual and otherwise is sort of an interesting layer that I feel like is antithetical to what all that stands for that's being thrown into the mix. I also think that like there is a working class story here that's like much bigger than the sign.

Nantucket's economy depends heavily on hospitality and tourism. Industries like accommodations and food service, recreation, retail, and others, act as a driving force in Nantucket's employment base, providing as much as 50% of all local employment, but only 36% of local wages. So that's like the larger disparity that we should be looking at here. Like influencers are maybe like accelerating the pressure on Nantucket, but they didn't invent an economy that turns, the island into a playground for people like who don't have to live with its consequences, right? I mean, if anything, they're exacerbating, I guess, you know, by making it sort of like making

these disparities maybe more extreme. I guess there's there's always been obnoxious rich people as well on Nantucket and somebody said like it's interesting that they're not putting like a no bankers sign because like there are these entitled investment bankers that come up and start screeching at the local employees and treating local workers with disparate with disrespect and a lot of these people having worked retail in a lot of these communities, they're so disrespectful to you. I think of even I was as customer service representative at Vineyard Vines after college hilariously in Stanford, Connecticut.

And so I would do the customer service calls at night or whatever. Somebody call, you know, like my polos ripped or whatever. And it's like the vitriol that people would have. And this was like back in 2009, you know, people and the way that they will speak to you or be like, oh, you know, you speak very good English. I'm like, I'm a young person from. Connecticut working in Connecticut. But it's like this idea of just the way a lot of these people treat service workers and

the way they view that class hierarchies even within these spaces. So yeah, I mean, I feel, feel bad for like the workers of the plays that don't want to be filmed and Nantaku will always be exploitative as all these kind of resort towns are. I don't think like influencers are going to bring the class revolution or anything like that, especially not Paige Lorenz. Yeah, and understand their little detail of the road. It's like, I mean, this should be as like no surprise to anyone, but like monthly rents far exceed what low-age workers, like the people that are probably actually propping up this island, people who live there year-round can afford on their own. And I think it was something like, let me see my notes.

Right. And like, homeownership is out of reach for something like 90% of year-round residents. So again, lateral. I want to emphasize lateral here. Like this isn't, you know, I think, again, I think influencers are like sort of a convenient. Like I don't want to go so far as to say scapegoat. I think we're talking about different things here. But like, let's keep our eye on like the larger picture here.

Yeah, well, it's like rich on rich crime, basically, or like rich on rich discrimination or whatever you want to call it. It's not really discrimination. It's the new, new, money, old money. Exactly. Yes. Somebody could probably make a very good and sexy film about that, actually. So like, who's the new Ryan?

I feel like a new Ryan, Philippi, Rees Witherspoon Energy would be great for this. Totally. Yeah. I saw one content creator who was saying that she had spent time on Nantucket and people were asking her these sort of subtle questions to suss out her social class and kind of dynamics and see where she stood. And of course, she's putting this all on TikTok hilariously, but she was saying that like one question that you would get a lot of like people being like, do you garden? And it was sort of their way of asking, do you own a house? Because if you don't own a house on the island and if you're just renting, then you wouldn't be gardening. And so there's just like all these weird little inter rich like hierarchical kind of designations.

I remember when I was living as a nanny on Antucket, I was in Sconset. at some point and then in sort of in town and the other and the people in sconset had all these kind of views of people renting houses near town of being lower class and we're talking 10, 15, 20 million dollars homes, you know, but it's like there will always be these ways that people seek to establish hierarchy over each other and I think influencers are now growing a wrench into all of it, but those class dynamics and intra class dynamics again, I don't want to call it discrimination because it's really not, but it's just viewpoints, I guess, about each other will always be there. It'll be interesting to see somebody should write a short story, like a speculative

fiction piece about like what will Nantucket look like in, I don't know, 15 years when all the influencers have taken over. Yeah. Well, I think it'll look like the Hamptons. I think it'll just be, again, like any other old money place, Aspen, my family's in Colorado. And Aspen 20 years ago versus Aspen to even Aspen when I went to college versus Aspen today, it's not even the same place. And so, yeah, I think it's just, this is how it goes. And it's not gentrified, but it's certainly like it becomes a thing. Lateral gentrification is like the best term I think I can come up with right now. It is.

I think it is. I think it's lateral gentrification. Internet gentrification. Yeah, digital gentrification. I don't know. Digital gentrification might be something else, but yeah. Yeah, maybe that's like gentrifying online spaces. But it's something about like the internet.

Well, thank you so much for joining me to break all of this down. And can you tell people where? to find you if they don't. Hopefully they already know because I feel like we have a strong overlap. But yeah, where can people continue to follow you and find your work? Yeah, thanks so much for having me on. I could talk about this kind of stuff all day. It's fascinating. If you're not familiar, I co-host a podcast on Substack and wherever you get your pods called The Culture Journalist, a Coojo for short, alongside Emily Friedlander. We've had Taylor on multiple times. Always love having her. And you can find that at the culturejournalist.substack.com. You can also follow me

on Instagram. I am at calamity. Dre, DRE, like the doctor. It's such a good podcast. I'm such a fan and thank you so much for coming on. Appreciate you, Taylor. Thank you. All right. That's it for this special bonus episode of Power User. If you like my work, please, please support me on Patreon via the link below or buy a paid subscription to my sub-sac newsletter at UserMag.co. That's UserMag.com. You'll get access to one of these bonus episodes every month along with access to my weekly live stream bod. You can suggest topics for future episodes, chat with me, and more. Again, that's usermag.com on substack, usermag.com,

or support me on Patreon below. I'll be back soon with a brand new episode of Power User. See you then.