Step aside, influencers – we're now in the era of de-influencing
npr.org
npr.org
1. A new default presumption of skepticism of products pushed by influencers; rightly applying the mental model of ads to influencers.
2. Recognizing when someone informative and making videos for the love of the game hits influencer level following and switches from fun to profit.
3. A new culture of reviewing the product against competitors which is where you get the videos "skip the $40 lipstick and go with the $10 drugstore brand instead." The motivation being saving money not anti-consumerism.
4. Recognizing shopping as both an emotional addiction and coping mechanism and helping people who suffer from it recognize it and kick the habit. Again this isn't some big anti-consumerism take as it is mental health.
5. Influencers themselves getting turned off of the relationship they have with their partners and waking up or hitting the tipping point where how they view themselves and what they do stopped vibing with the reality of it.
6. And then there's folks being anti-consumerist in general but they're by far not the main focus.
If anything 6 are the tag-alongs capitalizing on the trend to push their alternatives. And they're doing it in good faith so no judgement — doing mother earth's work. The NPR article has flipped the framing to put them at the center and the rest as the "not so pure" side of the trend. But you should know in advance that this an extraordinary claim because the population of people who don't want to be taken advantage of or save money who are orthogonal to the environmentalist movement is far far larger and that would be a huge shift visible outside the hashtag.
Either way, it's influencers trying to tell people what is normal/good, and audiences eager to be influenced by them.