Gatekeeping (n.) by definition is, according to the Oxford Dictionary: the activity of controlling, and generally limiting, general access to something. Urban Dictionary defines it as: when someone takes it upon themselves to decide who does or does not have access or rights to a community or identity.

Now, some of the other Urban dictionary definitions are more aligned with the concept of “Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss”. Which, in the sLayo Dictionary (a very reputable source) means: the act of being a woman; telling men to mind their business, telling other women to stay out of your business, and looking good doing it. In other words, thriving and doing so quietly while looking good. By this definition, the whole principle of gatekeeping is being impressive but without forgoing your mystery. I think we need to bring back a lot of the mystery that social media has stripped from us today. I’m a firm believer that in a lot of instances gatekeeping is good; you do not need to know everything about everyone. Especially people you don’t know in real life. To a similar effect, everyone does not WANT to know everything about you, and if they do, maybe you should block them because that’s very odd behaviour.

That is the crux of this post. We know too much about one another. Because of this, people who are in the public eye have now become expected to let us into their lives, even though it’s actually none of our business. Not everyone that is well known is trying to influence you. Or be a “role model” to you or your children. If I’m being frank, having interacted with some of my favourite online people in real life, though a lot of them are nice, there is still a fair few people that you’d have expected to be the kindest that are actually quite horrible.

The only thing that I personally rarely gatekeep is clothing. However, sometimes I can feel the need to do even that because of the way that the girls interact with fashion nowadays (as lamented about in my blog post about personal style LOL). I don’t want to encourage the cycle of mimicry that we can find ourselves trapped in (not that I think people endeavour to dress exactly like me). That post was focused on style, but the mimicry found in Gen Z (and Alpha) doesn’t stop there. People have started to mimic entire lifestyles (see here “old money aesthetic” and how it’s causing snobbery in people who buy tweed blazers from Zara and think they’re emulating Blair Waldorf and all of her Waldorf-Astoria-heiress glory). This simply wouldn’t be possible if we gatekept more. There’s nothing wrong with some things being an if you know, you know. That is what builds communities, common interest and (most importantly) critical thinking skills.

As my modern-day Joan Rivers, Kelly Cutrone, said in this Tiktok, “What’s in this season? Telling the truth. What’s out this season? Influencers … what do they influence?” This perfectly encapsulates my thoughts on why we need to restructure the way that influencer marketing works. The majority of big influencers today don’t work with intention. Getting paid is the driving factor for them, and thus they don’t care about things like individuality, or even the authenticity that comes with only highlighting things that they truly like. What are they influencing us to do? To be the way they are, buying the exact same pieces and wearing them the same way they do. Overconsuming when you’re actually BROKE. Let’s be serious, you earn $20/hour and she was paid $20,000 for that ONE ad; do you REALLY think you can realistically emulate the same habits of consumption? To add to that, the number of influencers that actually can afford the lifestyles they portray online is much lower than you’d expect. These girls are renting their lives from head to toe. Now, this isn’t me criticising people having their own style and showing the internet how they would style certain things, but even at that, there is definitely a “type” of fashion influencer style that usually does especially well. And since people are so easily influenced nowadays, this leads to everyone looking like copies of one another; it’s all just so BORING.

There are a few influencers that I think do the whole thing incredibly admirably. One such example, and probably the best case study of a community built on IYKYK, is @brendahashtag (disregarding my personal thoughts on her at the moment). In one of her podcast episodes, she was talking about how/ why her community is so engaged. Engaged to the point of tagging her in their black and white outfits that they think emulate “Brenda”; being in their #brendahastagera, if you will. Brenda has a distinctive aesthetic, wearing exclusively black and white, but even within that, there are brands that logically align more with her community than others. Rick Owens and Ann Demeulemeester are B# brands… something like Moschino is not. I really admire how distinguished her brand is, too, because it streamlines the process of strategising (compared to a lot of other influencers that try to show face everywhere in the name of being able to show off being everywhere). She, and we – her audience – know that it wouldn’t make sense for her to be at every show (as talent) because a lot of them simply do not align with her as a brand. Additionally, in the same podcast episode, she joked about wanting to create a B# dating app. Such jokes wouldn’t even be funny if she didn’t have such a strong, like-minded community. To like Brenda, you have to have common interests, whether it be the fact that your aesthetic is the same or (in my case) you really like the the brands she aligns with; if two B# members were to meet in the wild, they’d already have a common ground to build upon.

Now, one could argue that sharing everything also creates common ground; even moreso than niche communities. I don’t agree, in fact, I think it’s a narrow-minded argument. If everything is common ground, then all ground is common. Everything loses meaning. There’s nothing more to being in that community than out of it. Also, mystery builds intrigue (I believe, at least). Why would I seek out anything you have to say if you say everything? I can see how the current state of being encourages such toxic parasocial relationships between public figures and the strangers that watch them. These audiences, though they don’t, start to think they know the creators they watch everyday. And THAT opens up a whole other can of worms; why would it not when the only tangible boundary is physical separation? You’re basically in an incredibly curated LDR!

This generation has begun to negative use that to their advantage. They know that the influencer or celebrity doesn’t truly know them; that they couldn’t point them out in a crowd, and that gives people audacity. Sheer audacity. Audacity to be cruel, to be mean, to be evil and degrading and all of the things they can’t be in real life due to real life consequences (like being punched in the mouth). Social media has become an environment to exercise catharsis of the worst emotions. Now, I DO think that having haters means you’re succeeding (they’re always secretly fans — the amount of energy and dedication it takes to be a true hater is BOUNTIFUL). Fundamentally, because of human nature, haters will always exist, but I also believe that blurring the lines concerning what should and shouldn’t be content for your audience arms these jobless people with information that they otherwise shouldn’t be privy to.

If we kept more things to ourselves it would force people to go out and find out answers themselves. It would force them to think critically. We have an entire anthology of answers at our fingertips, but that anthology has pivoted from being Google to Instagram and Tiktok comments. The youth (I say as if I’m 48 years old) used to live, be young and dumb. Now, we’re just dumb and surviving. Touch grass!! Critical thinking, literacy and comprehension skills are at an all time low, and it’s because we, as a society, feel entitled enough to expect others to answer all of our questions. And what’s worse is they actually do! When I was 15, which wasn’t even ten years ago, if I wanted to buy something I saw someone wearing, I would scour the internet for it. Now, all we have to do is comment and ask, and then feel like we have the right to get upset with the creator if they haven’t responded immediately. If you wanted it so much, you’d look for it x

This was (and still is) my typical scouring routine — which was rarely put into use because a) I was on a shopping ban until my birthday and b) not a lot of the girls I watch are wearing clothes that I can’t identify now:

• read the caption. press more (if applicable) xx
• check comments and scroll down (you would be astounded how many people seemingly.. don’t think to do this and the previous step??? especially the scrolling for more than 5 seconds part)
• check their profile for a haul or a video featuring the same item. check THOSE comments. SCROLL
• go to their instagram. try and find a picture of the item. check tags. if no tag, check comments. SCROLL
• if I know the brand, I’ll just go on the brand’s website/ Instagram and browse.
• if none of the above works, I will screenshot and then reverse Google search (image search is the ONLY reason I have the Google app on my phone. completely underrated feature).
• try and find something similar second hand. sometimes this brings cooler results than the original item.
• if that doesn’t work, I let the leaves fall. it wasn’t meant to be, and that’s okay.
  • if I DID find it and it was sold out, but the item was too great to miss out on, I’ll write down the article name in my note full of the ones that got away in hopes of finding it second hand. no pictures required. everything on that list has been burned into my memory like my name is Spencer Reid.

All this being said, however, there are a few (extremely nuanced) instances in which the lack of gatekeeping has shown value. Namely with work and finances. In this time of illiteracy, it’s been nice to be able to easily search up career pathways and how much people have earned at different levels of their employment history. That, I don’t think should ever go back to being gatekept. Breaking down the barriers of elitism in creative industries like fashion is really opening the gate for truly creative people to be in the stratosphere of those that make decisions. For their names to be in rooms that they wouldn’t have otherwise been in. Sure, nepotism is still well and truly alive (and I’m kinda not against it… all the time) but the nepo babies are having to work much harder to keep their spots now because of all of the talent that we have access to seeing (note: nepo creatives. This absolutely does not apply to the nepo models and actresses). Without socials, we wouldn’t have access to all of these creatives’ art; their lack of access or (moreso) connections would’ve made it 100x more difficult for them to be in the same position ten years ago. That comes with its whole own set of exceptions and caveats on my end, most of which I don’t have time to go into right this very second (I will in a dedicated post if I feel so inclined), but overall it has been largely net positive for the types of creativity that we see. Creativity that is borne from innovation due to lack, rather than boredom.

Maybe I’m just saying this because it has had direct benefit in my life; being from a STEM background, I didn’t have the resources or advantages (i.e connections) that come with formal fashion education, so I had to do a lot of figuring out as I went along. Without the information available online now, I wouldn’t have known the true difference between Art Direction and Creative Direction before I threw myself into the positions, or know the treacherous pay discrepancies between commercial, editorial and celebrity styling. Of course, some of that knowledge came from doing the work itself, but without having people share the best sites to start with to look for jobs with no experience, like The Dots and Fashion Workie, I believe it would’ve taken me a lot longer to start than it did. My whole career path has been divinely orchestrated as it is (another story that I will go into detail about at a later date – you can hold me to that), but I know that doing the research at the beginning definitely aided in the speed by which it all progressed. As it says in Matthew 7:7, “Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you.” A lot of us (Christian and not) get to the ask part and then try to skip straight to knocking. It’s important to know where we should be knocking; make sure you’re knocking on the right door first, and to do that, we must seek all possible doors out, ideally before asking for confirmation on which is the right one.

My last, strongest (and shortest it seems LOL) argument for the merit of gatekeeping is that the lack of gatekeeping is ruining the food industry. What happened to word of mouth recommendation?? Hole in the wall establishments? Random, spontaneous meals at locations you can walk into and be seated at in 15 minutes??

In London especially, it feels like everyone has destined themselves to be a Tiktok food critic. It’s to the point where I will actively stay away from Tiktok recommended restaurants unless they have been recommended to me in person first. There’s also a specific editing style of food review that I will automatically run away from. My solution to this: my friends and I have an “ultimate resto guide list” in a shared note, and that is my only list of reference for restaurants to go to, no more Tiktok restaurant guides! I have been disappointed one too many times (I’m looking at you Din Tai Fung and AtSloane). The only food related videos I have on my Tiktok are recipes to cook at home! And that’s because I can adjust spices and such to my heart’s discretion. Please, let us stop recommending every single restaurant we go to on Tiktok. Sometimes just tell your friends about it and move on with your life xxx That way, YOU can go back as you please , and EYE can discover by myself 🙂

Okay, enough rambling from me. We need to bring back the joy of discovery.

That’s all.