Column #18 - Now you see the boycott, now you don’t…

Ethics, in the influencer economy, are less a compass than a content format. They always point reliably, yes, but do they point in the same direction?  

A 24-year-old influencer in Washington just returned a dress she wore once and photographed twice. She also signed a climate petition this morning, and neither cancels the other one out. It’s the productive amnesia of the partnership influence phenomenon: the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at once without either one disturbing the mood board. It has simply, in recent years, industrialized the process. The influencer who spent February telling her 4.2 million followers to boycott a brand over any trending topic and who appeared at said brand’s Coachella pop-up in April, wearing a gifted look and tagging diligently, has increasingly become the business model.

Contradiction, now scalable

The influencer economy has produced a generation of taste-makers whose moral positions have the shelf life of a trend cycle: approximately six weeks, maybe eight if the discourse is slow. The boycott was content, the partnership was as well. Both require good lighting, a clear call to action, and no memory whatsoever. The gap between them was, at most, a slow news cycle. Brands have probably noticed. Why negotiate with a critic when you can simply wait, then pay ?

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Can the influencer-in-fashion industry actually run on morals alone? My answer is: no, and pretending otherwise is its own form of bad faith. A 2022 study on ethical partnership in the industry found that brands with high perceived positive impact outperform competitors on value growth by more than double. Which sounds positive until you notice the words “perceived positive impact”. Has ethical positioning become the product? The actual supply chain definitely became a separate conversation, happening in a different room with different people. Consumers, for their part, consistently say they want sustainable, ethical fashion, and consistently buy whatever is cheaper and ships faster. It’s not moral failing but textbook rational economic behaviour. 

Ethics, as perceived

And in all of this, the influencer is no victim. She built the system, or at least agreed to its terms with full knowledge of the fine print. The idea that creators are somehow coerced into brand deals by faceless corporations is a comforting narrative that conveniently removes all personal responsibility from the equation. She chose the trip, she chose the tag, she even chose the caption that said nothing. Agency does exist, it’s just inconvenient to invoke it when the alternative is a free hotel room in Palm Springs. 

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What’s the issue if not cultural? An entire generation has been told that having opinions is a personality, that visibility is the same as credibility, and that sincerity, even performed, is more valuable than consistency. The result is a landscape where nobody is actually expected to mean what they say, least of all publicly, even less when there’s money involved. Accountability has been replaced by the apology video, which has itself become a content format with its own aesthetic conventions. You cry a little, you take responsibility in the vaguest possible terms, you thank your community for their grace, you’re back to sponsored content by Friday. The cycle is so well established, and we can now call it its own production value. 

So, any morals left in the fashion influencer world? Not where the algorithm can find them. Anyway, the girl in Washington bought another dress, signed a petition, and is currently drafting a caption for a brand she’ll publicly question in November. Don’t miss the discount code!