A lot of people might not know what that is. There’s no reason to be smugly proud about such a lack of knowledge. The only thing worse than someone who enthusiastically devours all pop culture and spews it up （wearing a T-shirt that says ‘We should all be feminists’ while queuing up for forty-five minutes to buy the latest trainers made by women in a sweatshop） is someone who takes pride in not understanding new trends. You’re not better than that. You don’t get points for deliberately trying to avoid learning about what’s happening around you. And you’ve almost certainly looked at the Mail Online in the past month, so cut the smug. An influencer is someone who has a large social media presence and uses that to endorse brands for money. No different from the heady days of the Nineties when big name actors would hawk toothpastes in other countries for mega bucks. Well, except that this new group isn’t famous for anything but their influencing. There is no talent that lies behind it, no singing or art or writing that gave them a springboard to start flogging stuff. It’s usually just thin white women （or bulky white men） who have preternaturally bright smiles and unnervingly beige homes （all the better to photograph tat in） and who try to convince the minions that they possess a lifestyle that others should desperately try to emulate. Usually the influencer also bangs on about gratitude, or living in the moment, and pretends they’ve suffered from mild anxiety or struggle with some unspecified hardship in order to present as more relatable. The platitudes that gush from these people could overpower the Thames barrier. Watching some of this stuff will make you wish that it would.
So it was a perfect job for Bryony. Job is possibly a stretch. It was a perfect fit for Bryony. She made video diaries which detailed her day to day activities （one video, with 180,000 views, revolved entirely around a trip to the osteopath） and posted photographs of herself in various bored-looking poses, using a variety of props and backgrounds. By props, I mean her stupidly fluffy carpet, her mirror wall and her walk-in wardrobe. By backgrounds, I’m talking about exclusive holiday locations, often accompanied by hashtags which suggest that she’s desperately in need of a break – #neededthis – as if the carousel of facials, gym classes, and nightclubs was leaving her dangerously close to burn out. I can only imagine that her loyal followers, many of them presumably earning crappy wages and on zero hours contracts, would nod in sympathy and praise her sensible prioritising of self-care.
She interspersed photos of such holidays with sponsored posts which looked just like the rest of her feed. These adverts were supposed to show you how to be a bit more Bryony – tooth-whitening kits, flimsy dresses available for next day delivery, a plated ring with her initials that she described as ‘a must have’。 This stuff is gobbled up by the Instagram herd, keen to fit in, desperate to be told what’s good, what works, what will distract them from their lives. But it’s all a trick. Bryony was laughing at them. Or she would have, had she been able to take joy from anything in her life. Perhaps not laughing but sneering. Because if my half-sister wanted her teeth whitened, she’d go to the best dentist on Harley Street. And if she wanted a new dress, she’d put down a grand and have it delivered in a tissue-lined box by courier within the hour. Her jewellery would never leave a green mark on her finger, it’s all from Cartier. The stuff she promotes is photographed, uploaded, and then discarded. I could just about imagine that she gives it to the family housekeeper, but could equally believe that it goes straight in the bin.
Her lifestyle disgusted me and fascinated me in equal measure. Well no, that’s not quite true. It fascinated me more. I have spent hours of my life scrolling through her curated online life, watching her boring makeup videos and logging on for her live Q&A sessions where she spends fifteen minutes at 7 p.m., nightly answering hard-hitting questions from fans like ‘how is your hair so shiny’ which she answers with the intensity and seriousness of someone testifying at a war crimes tribunal. While the internet is a place to get closer to your heroes, it’s also a place to obsessively hate-watch people you would try your best to avoid in real life. I always told myself that it was valuable research, but engaging with it for so long leaves you feeling demoralised and dirty. It’s like repeatedly picking at a scab and wondering why you end up with an ugly scar.
Bryony’s openness on social media had provided me with a lot of options. I had too many – I fell down scenarios of such complexity that at one point I was researching how quickly I could get a helicopter pilot licence. I had to reassess. While not all of my plans had been elegant, they had been effective. Sometimes the lack of style bothered me somewhat. Who doesn’t want to dispatch someone with a bit of wit after all? But it would be the height of vanity to centre all my fragile plans around the visuals of the situation. And vanity can get you caught – just ask the many killers who end up in jail because they hang around the crime scene to admire their handiwork and attract obvious attention.