Ghost Startups, Sexfluencing American Dream 👻

Some of these ghost startups don’t even have inventory on hand. They order the merch from other stores depending on the orders they receive. And what happens when shoppers sully such a brand’s image for being fake? Its architects simply rename it, start over, and continue to source from the exact same places. 

Frustrated shoppers have remarked that these “scams are getting so sophisticated” that they display fake photos and videos of their showrooms and workers on their IG pages to trick shoppers.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing illegal about these activities. 

A lot of stores in the U.S. have been doing this for years. They order wholesale clothing from overseas and price it up 200% for resale. These small IG businesses aren’t scamming you, you’re just learning the inside of the retail industry. How the exact replicas of certain products can be found on other retail sites for comparable prices is a defining quality of capitalism.

These “ghost startups” are constructing a fashion monoculture. Consumers are basically buying and wearing the same clothes, just sold to them from different boutiques. 

Unlike their parents, young people aren’t just maintaining existing connections online to navigate the pandemic. They’re forming entirely new ones. 

A recent study found that seven in ten Gen Zers now believe they do not need to meet in person to forge professional connections. More Gen Zers are growing their professional networks online, from scratch, than ever before. New research shows that 3.5 million messages between students and employers were exchanged on Handshake over the past 12 months.

Even big employers like P&G, Ford Motor Company and Microsoft have now turned to digital recruiting strategies. During a virtual recruitment campaign, P&G organised conversations with LGBTQ+ icons and TikTok influencers. Over the next two weeks, P&G received over 500 applications.

Virtual mediums also help level the playing field for people of color, women, LGBTQ+, and people with disabilities. Many such people report feeling more psychologically safe online versus in person.

Performing online sex work is an increasingly omnipresent trend: women who’ve cultivated some sort of digital following are sent money by men in exchange for videos, photos, or even a text back. For years women have been getting DMs from men asking them to show them their breasts (enough that it’s become its own meme). Ask any influencer — even those who are under 18 yet — how many times they’ve been asked by strangers to send them lewd images, and they’ll tell you it’s a lot.

What’s surprising is how seamlessly a DM slide has become a business arrangement. How influencers and regular people alike are using this as a meaningful stream of revenue. Thanks to a pandemic that left many people at home substituting screens for IRL intimacy influencers are turning sex into a side hustle. 

One such influencer, after being approached by foot fetishists on Instagram, launched an OnlyFans account devoted to pictures of her feet for a monthly subscription fee of $12.99. She made more than $1,000 in the first few days. 

Another Twitter influencer, 24-year-old from Denver charged only $10 for monthly subscriptions to her OnlyFans content, which is mostly pictures and videos of her ass plus JOI (jerk-off instruction) videos. 1,500 people signed up on her first day.

For a lot of these women, “sexfluencing” has now started to feel like the American dream. 

If the American dream is getting paid for doing what you love, and what you love is to present an idealized version of yourself on the internet, then the difference between “influencing” and sex work is only a matter of spectrum.