I most recently pressed play on Ingrid Goes West from the couch in my new Los Angeles apartment. I moved here in December of last year, ready for sunny skies and starting a new chapter of my life. Before I moved, I followed several shiny Instagram accounts — “LA Hacks” and “LA Eats” and “LA Adventures,” so I could find out about all the hidden little hiking trails and vegan breweries. I had many fantasies about what life in California would be like, and they were almost entirely based on TikToks and episodes of Insecure and YouTuber apartment tours.
Looking at the world through the eyes of social media influencers can be fun and sparkly, but it almost always ends in a letdown. That’s what Ingrid Thorburn and Lacie Pound learn by the end of their respective media, Ingrid Goes West and Black Mirror: Nosedive. Both narratives follow young women who long to be as happy and put-together as other women they see on the internet, and are determined to achieve that happiness by any means. Cue: a dark spiral towards rock bottom.
Ingrid Thorburn (Aubrey Plaza), whose mother has recently died, is lonely. She sits in her mother’s old house scrolling social media, eating junk food, and crying. When Ingrid reads about influencer Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen) in a magazine, she’s immediately drawn to the blonde bombshell’s carefree lifestyle. Taylor’s Instagram feed boasts sandy beaches, avocado toasts, and an overall feeling of content. Ingrid is instantly and frighteningly determined to become Taylor’s best friend. In no time at all, she’s rented an apartment in sunny LA with the money her mother left behind.
For a while, it works. Ingrid steals Taylor’s dog so she can call the number on the missing dog poster and say she found it. This results in a friendly dinner with Taylor and her bougie-hipster boyfriend Ezra (Wyatt Russell), and eventually leads to Taylor and Ingrid hanging out more and more. They go shopping together. They dress similarly. They go to brunch. They drive to Joshua Tree and do drugs together. On this particular trip, Taylor posts a picture of the two of them on her coveted Insta, and we feel Ingrid’s joy radiate through the screen.
But that joy doesn’t stay for long. The consequences of Ingrid’s lies and coverups begin to resurface, and the arrival of Taylor’s addict brother (Billy Magnussen) brings to light several of the flaws in Taylor’s seemingly perfect life. “Ingrid, we were never friends,” Taylor yells at her in the third act, “You’re just some weird freak that found me on Instagram, and that’s basically all this has been.”
It’s hard to pinpoint what our goal is when we first start a social media account. Attention? Fame? Gossip? Validation? Curating an impressive version of our life for friends and family to look at? If it’s not what we start out aiming to do, it’s usually where we end up. I’m a part of the generation that went from not caring about the internet, to using Facebook as a small platform for close friends, to now being fully immersed in a world of influencers, brand deals, and ring lights all within the last 10 years. That’s plenty of time for entire livelihoods to be built off of a social media presence. Plenty of time for empires to rise — the Kardashians, the D’Amelios. And plenty of time for some of those empires to fall.
Social media can make you a star in 2021, giving influencers access to more money than most of us will ever even dream of. But it can also take everything away from you in an instant. This can happen to individuals like you or I — a quick Google search of “people fired for social media” returns dozens of examples of individuals let go because of something on their personal profiles. Many job applications, especially in the creative world, ask for your Twitter or Instagram handles in addition to your resume.
This reckoning can also, of course, be on a massively public level. Whether this be some mistake made by the celebrity, or if the internet has just decided to turn on them — online attention can be harmful. Take Demi Lovato’s recent rant on Instagram live that caused the musician to lose supporters. Or look at Laci Mosley, a black actress appearing in the reboot of iCarly who recently experienced a storm of hateful, racist comments online. And then there’s Khloé Kardashian, whose leaked untouched photos led to a discussion about the lies we tell on social media.
For Ingrid and Lacie, that lie is an enticing one that they long to live inside of, regardless of the consequences. I myself followed that lie all the way out here to California, much like Ingrid. Maybe not in pursuit of a person, but definitely in pursuit of an ideal life. Ingrid goes to the restaurants that Taylor recommends on her insta, and reads the books that Taylor quotes in her cute little captions. I seek out the coffee shops and colorful gardens I find online. I buy new clothes to try and attain that elusive “LA” version of myself. There’s something about a feed of entirely beautiful people and landscapes that invites both insecure comparison as well as a strange kind of hope. Sure, these people appear to be having a better time than me. But maybe if I go where they go, and buy what they buy, I can get there. A strange kind of ambition overtakes us when we scroll through the best parts of other lives.
That same determination is also the undercurrent of Black Mirror: Nosedive. Lacie Pound (Bryce Dallas Howard) lives in a futuristic, pastel-colored world where everyone can rate each other at any time. Your average rating is your defining characteristic — those with four stars or higher are seen as elite, and those with two stars are treated like second-class citizens. A higher rating means more respect and cooler friends. It may also mean a discount on rent in the gorgeous townhome Lacie’s yearning for. Social relevancy and internet fame literally becomes a currency in this world.
Lacie tries as hard as she can to become likeable enough and raise her rating. She practices her smile in the mirror, contorting her face into manic grins. She posts a picture of an aesthetically-pleasing cookie despite hating the taste of it. She makes an effort to strike up small talk in the elevator and speaks politely at all times, avoiding rude language.
When Lacie gets an invitation to the wedding of an old frenemy Naomi (Alice Eve), she sees her chance to move up in society. Naomi is a gorgeous, blonde influencer-type who answers video calls while doing yoga. She’s a 4.7, and all of her friends are high fours as well. This could be Lacie’s big ratings boost so she can finally get the house, the respect, and the life she deserves. So she sets off for the wedding, only to run into every obstacle possible along the way.
A missed flight leads to a tense interaction with customer service, which leads to Lacie’s rating being temporarily cut in half. That low rating only allows her to rent the cheapest electric car, which isn’t fully charged and has no adapter. She’s forced to abandon it and hitch a ride with an easygoing trucker. By the time she’s close to the wedding venue, she gets a call from Naomi — don’t bother coming. She can’t have someone with such a low rating at her wedding, “old friends” aside. But Lacie is determined at this point. She’s worked too hard, and Naomi treated her too badly in high school for this to happen.
A wedding can be such a feminine, pristine, wholesome space. It’s something that young girls are conditioned to think about from childhood — what kind of dress would you want to wear? What’s your song going to be? Add weddings to the list of things that women are expected to do perfectly in life. And these days, ceremonies are a hotbed for aesthetically-pleasing, Instagram-ready visuals. So it makes sense that both Lacie and Ingrid would have breakdowns at a wedding, showing up in grimy clothes and runny makeup to scream and let out all their pent up rage. Ingrid’s film begins with this image. The bride is some other social media icon that Ingrid devoted all of her attention to. So naturally, Ingrid shows up and pepper sprays her in the face, screaming, “Thanks for inviting me, you fu***** c**t!”
Lacie’s narrative, meanwhile, ends with this meltdown. All of her time spent forcing a smile and holding her tongue, trying to be universally liked, flies out the window as she forcibly grabs the microphone and makes her chaotic maid of honor speech. Her cheeks are stained with mascara and her clothes are ripped. As she rambles about her and Naomi’s fake friendship, the shocked wedding guests throw “1 Star” ratings at her like daggers. Her plan to rocket to the top of the ratings and get her dream house goes out the window as she’s dragged away from the wedding screaming, her rating as low as it can possibly be.
Both of these narratives see protagonists long to be as content and admired as the people they see online. It makes perfect sense that all of the main characters are young women. Women are held to higher standards every day, especially on social media. We’re expected to post only the best versions of ourselves, contorting our bodies into awkward angles so we can show off what we want and hide everything else. It’s worth noting that Lacie and Ingrid don’t entirely fit our Eurocentric beauty standards for women. Plaza’s half-Puerto-Rican features and Howard’s fuller figure contrast the skinny, blonde, pale influencers of their respective films. Of course, all of these actresses are conventionally attractive — this is Hollywood, after all. In a sick, cyclical fashion, scrolling through Plaza’s Instagram brings me the same jealousy and desire that her character feels towards Taylor Sloane.
Both Ingrid Goes West and Black Mirror: Nosedive are satirical and appear to be highly exaggerated. Nosedive’s internet dystopia especially seems over-the-top, linking social media followers directly to moving up in society. But in 2021, a regular teenage girl could make $1000 on a TikTok of her skincare routine as long as she has enough followers. Noting your successful Instagram account on a marketing application might land you a job. Doing well online gets us not only the admiration and attention we all crave – it also leads to opportunities we would never have access to otherwise. In a saturated market where millennials and zoomers have accepted that they may never own property or find solid job security, many of us chase digital success instead.
Maybe influencer-level-fame is the new American Dream. Or maybe it’ll fizzle out in several years, if apps like TikTok lose their lucrative potential. Regardless, it’s one of the riskiest get-rich-quick paths you can take in 2021, especially as a young woman. Watch your videos go viral and you might get brand deals, millions of followers, and heaps of praise. You might be the next Taylor or Naomi. Or, you could dip your toe in the social media waters and find out just how rough they can be. Hate comments, death threats, racism, sexism, leaked photos, and an impossibly high standard to hold yourself to. That’s part of what Lacie learns as she stares out of a jail cell after disrupting Naomi’s wedding, coming to terms with what exactly she’d been chasing. It’s what Ingrid will very quickly learn after her suicide attempt goes viral at the end of her film. The last frame of Ingrid Goes West is Ingrid smiling at her new follower count, but the viewer knows she will soon experience an inevitable reckoning.
