Queer influencers aren’t just changing the game for the internet – they’re changing our community. Influencers fill a whole in the market caused by a lack of diverse representation. We also asked each influencer for one piece of advice they would give to someone who is struggling with their identity and we got some pretty amazing responses.
Lucky for us, many of these influencers opened up about different aspects of their lives, projects they are working on and so much more.
No shade y’all – we know your busy but that’s why some folks got to answer questions for themselves and others did not. While we messaged all 100 of these individuals to give them an opportunity to be quoted in this piece, only about half of them responded. While putting together this article, we reached out to 100 queer influencers making an impact in their communities. We’re talking major mainstream celebrities, artists who went on to be creators or even creative directors for big brands, and folks who’ve created their own product lines, albums, shows, and other forms of entertainment. We can’t turn on any form of entertainment these days without seeing someone who got their big break online. Sometimes for the good and sometimes…remember what happened with Milo Yiannopoulos?īut for better or worse, content creators have become part of our everyday lives. Influencers play an important role in our community because they’re creating, curating, distributing information that not only upholds our community but builds our culture. More than half of LGBT young people report having one or more close friends they met online that they’ve never met in person – that’s compared to only 19% of non-LGBT young people so we know it’s not just a generational trend. But LGBT youth were more likely to have searched for health and medical information compared to non-LGBT youth and are also more likely to seek out friendships online. Those needs don’t stop when LGBT young people grow up. In the LGBTQ community, we’re early adopters of the internet for a wide variety of reasons but one of the big ones is because our community is smaller and it’s harder to find information and entertainment that is representative of us and our needs.ĭon’t just take my word for it, the researcher’s at GLSEN discovered that “Despite experiences of bullying and harassment online, LGBTQ youth indicated the Internet is also a space that offers safer opportunities to express who they are, find peer support and gain access to resources not necessarily available in person.” This distinction is doubly important when we’re talking about influencers from marginalized groups. With consistency and high-quality content comes a large following of engaged people who pay close attention to their views. It’s to create content and curate entertaining media that sometimes features experiences, products, and services. The job of the influencer isn’t to sell you garbage you don’t want. They regularly create content about a niche interest and continuously posts about that topic online.
Influencers in social media are people who have built a reputation for their knowledge and expertise on a specific topic. No one wants to feel like they’re being swayed by something other than their own opinions. People hate the term “influencer” – and I totally get it.