Where Everyone’s an Influencer
At 3:30 p.m. on a recent Tuesday, hundreds of Instagram influencers descended on Gladstones Malibu, an old-timey seafood restaurant perched high above a pristine California beach.* Their entrances followed a script: One by one, they entered the restaurant’s outdoor terrace, immediately whipped out a phone, and began taking photos and videos. One young woman retraced her steps through the entrance four times as a friend filmed her from different angles. Another held her phone aloft for a selfie while twirling a cloud of cotton candy. Others rushed to the porch’s edge to take yet more selfies. Two boys posed in similar-looking tracksuits before one stripped off his hoodie to soak in the 85-degree weather.
The DJ, —also an Instagram influencer, according to one of the company’s press representatives—was playing clean, radio-friendly versions of top 40 hits. The crowd wore crop tops, layers of mesh, lots of neon, and, for roughly 40 percent of the men, some form of Gucci,” Adam Waheed, an influencer and a comedian with 1.5 million followers on Instagram, remarked. Instagram-branded donuts melted in the hot sun.
