The "Relatable" Influencer and the "Opulent" ones.
From Antonio Garza to Quenlin Blackwell to... Katie Fang? Are we nostalgic for the 2018 Youtubers?
Pop culture meme queen and beauty Content Creator ‘Antonio Garza’ returned to us in late January 2025 for the 300th time. There’s something nostalgic about seeing her childhood bedroom in 2018, an over-stimulating editing style that could kill a Victorian child and self-deprecating humour. Her ‘GRWM’ and style are back, but she isn’t getting ready for school anymore. She’s different. She’s in her early twenties. She’s starting a video podcast with the same cloyed-but-toned style that goes in-depth about her life (like her mental health). The emergence from the cocoon somewhat feels like Antonio Garza, but she feels less relatable. Yes, she is more vulnerable about her grief, finances (more relatable), getting dropped by her social media manager and not getting enough sponsors (less relatable)1. Nonetheless, she ties it all into her nihilistic humour, but the Noob and David stickers might be starting to peel off the corners.
This can’t be the same for our favourite “relatable” Creators within this era. Emma Chamberlain went from the iconic road trip with James Charles and Dolan Twins (quirky, chaotic, fun) to her cleaning out her entire closet for a minimal, Millennial-grey-tone-esque fashion sense (grown, ‘matured’, different).
This is a new era for Emma. She’s not quirked up or turning up theatrics, but she’s settled and quiet. She’s not fucking around in her old high school town, but now Emma’s in fashion week and the met gala and has her successful coffee brand that has the aesthetics that’s screaming “Corporate Zoomer but fun”. Maybe this change just comes from maturity and life. Who knows.
We’ve grown nostalgic for the yesteryear of these Creators, the overall aesthetics and era of 2018. Several nostalgic TikToks long for the simpler times (with some even making fun of it). I do miss this time period. It was so fun and warm, filled with the ‘art hoe’ trend that got bastardised through KanKen bags and cheap paint. But I’m scratching my head about why we’re nostalgic for something less than a decade ago.
River Quintana in their Essay ‘The Cult of Yesterday’ discusses how nostalgia within Capitalism intertwines with each other. TikTok becomes an ‘eerie digital mausoleum’, constantly cycling out trends like “Y2K” and “McBling” and even the “2018 art hoe” trend to ‘resurrect bygone eras’. They become nothing but ‘hollow shells devoid of their original spark’.
“In contemporary consumer culture, reality has been dissolved and replaced by a proliferation of images and simulations. Capitalist necromancy leverages our human tendency to value and desire objects of the past, transforming nostalgia into a fetishistic relationship within consumer culture. This phenomenon occurs when the object of desire—the past—becomes a substitute for unattainable fulfilment, leading to the fetishization of vintage products and rehashed aesthetics. Retro merchandise and fashion become talismans promising connection to a romanticized past, blurring the lines between reality and fabricated desire.”
(The Cult of Yesterday)
Antonio Garza and these “relatable” YouTubers aren’t vintage. Their peak was back in 2018. But in a strange way, don't they contort into a “retro object” of the past that we long for? I’m sure Antonio Garza knows her brand revolves around “2018” nostalgia and comedy. She’s shaped a distinct editing style and humour on YouTube during her prime (allegedly). She’s not exactly trying to break open a mould for herself like Emma Chamberlain’s new sleek and calm content, but I don’t really expect her to.
This explains the rise of the new age of influencers from TikTok like Katie Fang, who’s deemed as Gen Alpha’s favourite beauty influencer. As a Zoomer, she’s watched relatable YouTubers like Emma Chamberlain, Antonio Garza, Joana Ceddia2, etc., who vlogged their everyday and mundane life. Katie Fang knows mundane content sells. Refinery29’s profile about Katie Fang illustrates this further: ‘There was nothing “special” about her content, but it’s likely why it resonates with so many of her followers, more than 80% of whom are under 25 — she was just like them.’
But she really isn’t like them. She has a New York Apartment in Manhattan that might be $6000 USD per month (allegedly, maybe, who knows?). She gets PR packages from… Louis Vuitton?. Her world is full of materialistic value and absolute wealth, full of Glow Recipe toners and bangly jewellery. It’s strange to know she got famous from her crying GRWM to work, something that’s relatable to the average working-class scroller. The juxtaposition is striking. It feels like a modern rags-to-riches story3.
Glamour and opulence might be a driving force within celebrities and actors, but being the “common” person drives the Influencer and Content Creator world. It’s why I find the online icon ‘Quenlin Blackwell’, who made her start during the Vine era so interesting. Quenlin’s videos and personality are relatable, yes, she’s funny and bizarre. But her range extends to fashion and even modelling, evident in her gorgeous appearance at the 2025 Oscars. She exudes a certain kind of opulence as she lives in Los Angeles, one that is niche, but not too striking. It’s evident in her interview/cooking show ‘Feeding Starving Celebrities’ where Lil Yatchy called out her borrowed clothes from Celine Dion Runway. She’s like the everyday person, except when she isn’t. Quenlin Blackwell is the perfect Influencer.
But the line is shaky between opulence and relatability. New York Influencers are ‘boring’ discourse is making circles as one TikTok creator called them ‘boring as fuck and carbon copies of each other’. They are. A profile fom The Wall Street Journal about Davis-Ross4 highlights how she’s ushered the peak “New York Influencer” from her talent-managed company called Ponte Firm, who works exclusively with social-media influencers. David-Ross is the ‘Dr Frankenstein for the influencer marketing era’. She ushered the stereotypical blonde white girl who does workout classes at ‘Alo Yoga’s invite-only gym’ and ‘dines at the hottest restaurants and always seems to have a perfect blowout’. These influencers live an ‘algorithmically covetable Manhattan life’
Davis-Ross says that for their fans, following influencers is almost like watching a reality show: seeing who their favorites are hanging out with, what events they’re going to, if they’re moving to a new apartment or going through a breakup. “You’re watching these women in their early- and mid-20s growing up,” she said.
Davis-Ross said that Ponte Firm represents talent as young as 23 who are making over seven figures a year, and that the company is a profitable business with an eight-figure yearly revenue. Influencing is a full-time job for the majority of her clients; a few have office or other jobs
(WSJ Profile)
The hate for this sort of Influencer is abundant. There’s an entire Reddit page dedicated to hating New York Influencers titled r/NYCinfluencersnark. Regardless, these Influencers come across my feed once in a blue moon. It might be a fit check with the same, chunky golden bangles that’s worth more than my bank account. They might be making their organic, low-calorie breakfast. Sometimes they have a vlog about their day, scrambling to go finish their to-do list that’s really just writing a few emails and grocery shopping. Their video shows them working, but just barely. They feel like a terrible echo of the A-list celebrities in terms of wealth. Jenny G. Zhang’s Essay on influencers, specifically the corporate “day in my life” influencers, highlights my qualms about this.
What these three cases illustrate is the real paradox of many influencers, especially the ones who originally built their brands as “normal” people. What differentiates our modern-day online celebrities from the real celebrities of yore is the veneer of relatability, all the better to cultivate parasocial relationships with their followers. They get familiar, they overshare, they reveal vulnerability in front of the camera, and fans delude themselves into believing they really get each other on a personal level…
This relationship can tolerate some degree of glow-up and money and opportunity on the side of the previously “normal” content creator. But there’s a fall-off cliff, past which a creator no longer appears relatable to the viewers whose collective eyeballs contributed to their success. It’s even worse when they have the gall to act as if nothing has changed, like they remain the same striver they were in the beginning. That is the real betrayal felt by the former fans of creators like Hubs…
(Jenny G. Zhang’s Essay)
Content creation and social media run our world, regardless of whether we like it or not. Influencers and their branding ranges from relatability to opulence and even nostalgia at times. Trying to strike a balance is difficult. Some might even lean into opulence, but I highly doubt it within this era of conservatism and quiet luxury. So where do we go from here? What is the next step? Do we find our answers in the dusty corners of the internet? Do our influencers become more relatable as their bank accounts get fatter and fatter? Maybe Content Creators take a new step altogether into the world of pseudo-but-sorta-legit-journalist who does interviews with actual celebrities. Regardless, let’s just hope that our social media hub doesn’t burn to the ground (please Elon)
hi oomfies <3 had so much fun writing this as I’m starting to learn that I’m loving writing more about pop culture and the internet. would love one day to write a piece about the newsphere within stan twitter (pop base, buffys, etc.). this piece a bit different to what i usually write but hopefully it works out??? anyways send this piece to your chronically online friend, tell me what your favourite Antonio Garza video is and don’t forget to scream at the void.
I’m sure that Antonio Garza hates getting shoeboxed into the ‘relatable’ Youtuber (as seen in her past Youtube Video here), but regardless, she’s become associated with it.
Gone but not forgotten.
She’s been at Content Creation for a long time now, all the way back to 2020. I’m not saying that she doesn’t deserve this success, far from it.
The whole piece is definitely interesting and I totally do not support those who want to read it to use Internet Archive to read the full profile.