Liz Moody

If everybody else is getting a salmon sperm facial, do I need a salmon sperm facial?

And then the influencer needs more content the next week.

So she's off doing the new Korean skincare that she found and she posts that.

And you're like, wait, is that actually what I need?

And so on and so forth.

People need new things to talk about all of the time.

So they are more incentivized to find more and more things in this attention economy.

There are two other main impacts of social media that I want to get into.

The first is we see in real time the reward that beauty gives.

We see people getting more likes, more comments if they are more attractive.

We see the comment sections where everybody is like, drop the skincare routine or like you look so amazing.

Pretty privilege has always been real.

There's research around people getting more raises, more promotions, more opportunities at work.

Obviously, there are dating benefits, all of that.

All of that has been real for pretty much forever.

But we have never historically been exposed to pretty privilege on a daily basis in the way that we are right now.

It is all over our feeds that pretty privilege is winning in this attention economy, that pretty people are the people that we should spend our attention on and pretty people are the people that get listened to.

And we all have an innate biological desire to be seen and to be heard.

And we're like, OK, I need to be pretty to get that.

And then the second thing is related, which is that many of us are posting on social media.