Pay-to-Praise
In September 2019, Tara Milk Tea (@taramilktea) posted a photo to her 1.4 million Instagram followers. Standing on the edge of a desert cliff, she’s draped in a white-hooded gown in what could easily pass for some kind of cross being a Vogue cover spread and the next installment of the Star Wars franchise—very Padmé meets Anna Wintour. For a travel influencer who regularly pushes fresh content—2,116 posts and counting, to be exact—this should have been another frame in her highlight reel of globe-trotting grandeur. That is, until you read the caption.
If you happened to be one of those millions of followers, the message you got was short and sweet. Tara wrote, “For all the flat earthers out there, we found the edge of the world! Turns out it’s in Saudi Arabia. Feeling so lucky to be a part of this exciting event, as Saudi Arabia opens its doors to tourists for the first time. This beautiful country has so much to offer. I’m so grateful to be here and to see what’s to come. @visitsaudi #WelcomeToArabia #sponsoredrider”
Come to find out, Tara was not alone. This brand of emoji-fueled and very blatantly sponsored content started popping up more and more throughout 2019, as influencers C to A-list began flocking to the deserts and skyscrapers of Saudi Arabia. And if something about that seems a little off to you, you weren’t alone.
Even for the often vapid and sometimes out-of-touch world of travel influencers, a glowing review for one of the world’s most heinous perpetrators of human rights violations was a nosedive into new territory. Just describing it is reminiscent of some kind of parody, like a cross-section between the ridiculousness of a South Park storyline and the clickbaity-ness of an Onion headline. But no, this, unfortunately, did play out in real life and for a reason.
Playing the Game
News outlets started getting wind around this time of a growing movement for pay-to-praise influencer marketing, the Saudi Government seemingly hoping its way into the minds and feeds of new prospective travelers. Enacted by royal decree in 2016, Saudi’s General Entertainment Authority first began bringing celebrities and social media figures over to promote their newly launched music festival, DHL Beast—think the fun of Coachella with the looming threat of Sharia Law in the background. And in the most bizarre timeline flooding imaginable, Western influencers went along for the ride, treating this authoritarian and theocratic regime as their own desert playground while touting their camel pics and headscarf selfies. Everyone from Armie Hammer, Ryan Philippe, Teyana Taylor, and Alessandro Ambrosio made an appearance in this jaw-dropping ploy for good press.
To no one’s surprise, this really wasn’t sitting well with the masses. Saudi Arabia had already built up quite a reputation for abuse on its own, but tensions were especially high in the wake of the death of Jamaal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist whose death was ordered by the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, as a last-ditch effort to silence his criticism of the government. To go from a rallying cry against the Saudi’s reign of terror to an influencer-fueled façade hell-bent on selling a false image is perhaps most indicative of where our culture lays today, noses in the sand—pun not intended—and often ignorant towards the realities of the world for the sake of some clout and a nice paycheck.
All Hail the Influencer
While the case of Saudi Arabia is certainly more extreme in nature, it’s not an anomaly. The rise of influencer culture has seen a very real and serious dive into uncharted territory as personalities have been traveling to very clearly controversial places, hotspots for human rights abuse, censorship, and war crimes beyond belief. Back in November of 2019, travel vlogger Drew Binsky posted a YouTube video raving about his experiences in Syria, soaking up the people and culture and shining a light on the “real” ins and outs. In what perhaps might be the most ridiculous act of delusion, popular account Indigo Traveler made the trek from China to North Korea, documenting his very carefully crafted tourist experience as he was watched like a hawk from government officials, visible and inconspicuous. This came just a year after the death of Otto Warmbier, an American college student imprisoned for stealing a propaganda photo in what would become an international scandal, one that inevitably led to his death shortly upon returning to the United States.
University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier being fingerprinted by North Korean officials, accused of subversion against the state for stealing a propaganda poster from his Pyongyang hotel. Photo from GQ.
Looking beneath the surface, it’s clear to see that there’s a symbiotic relationship between the influencer and the country in question. Influencer marketing is a deeply powerful tool, a booming industry now capping at nearly $13.8 billion in estimated value. It’s become commonplace these days. We’re no stranger to seeing our favorite personalities dropping a #sponsored Hello Fresh ad on Instagram or hearing podcasters shoot off their Squarespace affiliate links at commercial breaks. But promotion for entire nations? This is a whole new ballgame.
Estimated market valuation of global influencer marketing from 2016-2021, increasing at a rate of nearly 50%. Graph from Statista.
Flipping the Social Script
As wild as it is in theory, it makes sense why a Saudi Arabia would try to tap into this market potential. Having a routinely heinous record of human rights violations means that you’ve got some damage control to do; rather than, you know, ending their abusive systems, their goal is strictly image-oriented. In a growing digital world, these regimes can effectively craft their own narrative, bypassing slams from the United Nations to instead fuel an entirely falsified image of their modern, vibrant cities open for business.
For influencers, one can also understand the lure. A sizable check depending on your rates and status is appealing on its own. But think about it specifically from the perspective of a vlogger or an up-and-coming personality. A post of you riding a camel outside a music festival in Saudi Arabia is bound to get thousands if not millions of hits, the general public understandably interested in seeing what these places so far off the grid are all about. Sometimes the temptation for a trending video or a viral pic is too big to pass up. And so continues this cycle of free press and clout-chasing.
Looking at the ethics of this is murky on a number of levels. For one, countries themselves are multifaceted, often existing with several different realities. In the case of Drew Binsky raving about the “real” Syria, much of this possibly is or can be considered true. Syria is in fact a beautiful nation of rich culture, food, traditions, and people all trying to make in the world, just like everywhere else. But when that beautiful nation is also crumbling under the Assad regime, gassing innocent civilians in the name of authoritarianism, what kind of impact does posting that video have? How does that shape the narrative of Syria, and for whose gain?
The rise of direct pay-to-praise negotiations between governments and influencers is a lot more black and white, those checks deliberately being written with the intent of pushing a false narrative and providing some much-needed PR. Depending on the spot, those seemingly innocent travel vloggers are very seriously accepting blood money amid heinous crimes against humanity. But just how long can we allow people to play ignorant?
Reclaiming Influence
There’s a line in The Social Network that stands out, the 2010 film documenting the fanatic rise of Facebook that launched the social revolution. A friend lectures a very callous and careless Mark Zuckerberg (sounds about right), reminding him that, “The Internet's not written in pencil.. it's written in ink.” A lesson out of a page in a book that even many today still seem to be missing, right?
As we’re beginning to jump back into the rhythm of travel post-pandemic, it begs the question about the kind of standards we hold our public figures to and the implications of any influence they acquire. Intentional or not, their content directly informs the image, narratives, and attitudes towards our world while fueling the minds of impressionable audiences. Having an influence comes at a cost and, therefore, should require everyone to think a bit deeper about the weight of their projections through the social media sphere.
Being now well on our way into a new decade of living in a socially-connected world, there comes a point where the excuses of the past ring hollow to the point of absurdity. Gone are the days when we could write off our bad tweets and questionable antics in the name of naivete. We’re forever beholden to live in a digital world, one that regardless of any degrees of separation is forever written in ink.