“What’s Meant for You Won’t Miss,” an excerpt from You Have a New Memory by Aiden Arata
It went like this: Someone I met once three years ago was hiking. They packed the expensive sunscreen designed to smell like the cheap sunscreen of my childhood, and it was so effective I could smell it through the screen. Their Nordic nylon backpack glowed in a diffused dawn and the dog they could afford chased pine cones and there was so much chlorophyll in the air that if they hadn’t overwritten the forest with a soft-problematic 1960s folk ballad, I felt I could hear the trees sopping up sunlight. My barely-an-acquaintance smiled and smiled and I pictured a person walking through the forest alone, grinning, and something about how demented that is brought me peace, but not so much peace that I didn’t float over to a real estate app to browse Heath ceramic backsplashes and ebonized oak cabinetry, after which I flitted to YouTube and let a tech mogul’s tradwife show me how to open up a floor plan, and then I watched a survival tutorial on how to escape a sinking vehicle after crashing it into a lake not unlike the one my non-acquaintance was hiking to. When the tutorial turned out to be an advertisement, I sifted through my emails and then my influencer group chat for a low-stakes scam.
The other seventy members of the influencer chat would rather be called creators—a gesture at agency and expertise—but I like influencer; to me it sounds violent, Terminator-esque. Influence is a shapeless, pervasive force, difficult to pin down and thus easy to fear. We don’t know who will influence us, or when. Something might change you and you won’t even know it.
To stay in the chat, I was required to contribute three brand contacts a week—quality contacts, the moderator emphasized. No likes for likes, no affiliates. Nothing desperate. These were mercenary corporate sugar babies, open to any sponsor, impervious to the vitriol of boomers and incels and the just jealous masses. They promoted polyester milkmaid skirts and vegan hair vitamins and, once, a members-only NFT subscription service that purported to empower women in STEM by allowing them to create sexy nonfungible digital alter egos with changeable outfits. They were models-slash-actresses-slash-musicians. Their feeds were balloon arches and flower walls and thickets of hashtags. One had recently acquired an EDM DJ husband, and their wedding portraits were sponsored by a mid-tier suit rental company.
In Greek epics, between the lotus eating and the cruel conviction that return is possible, is Xenia: a social code, a standard of hospitality often translated as “ritualized friendship.” What is the influencer, if not the ritualized friend? They exist in the expanse between intimacy and celebrity—a weird, sweaty place to be—performing approachability and aspiration in equal measure. Power traders of the attention economy, they mediate the sharp sleaze of advertising into something soft and trustworthy. Gifting is a touchstone of Xenia, and the influencer chat was an endless stream of gifting opportunities: free brunches, screenings, hotels, hard seltzers, sandals, perfumes, baby wipes, body bootcamps, nonstick cookware, no-show shapewear. Mile by mile, you could get a free ride through life this way: the flight to Vegas from one contact, for example, and from others the executive suite, the slutty dress, the seafood tower. In the economy of the group chat, nothing was exclusive and everything was transferable. It was almost Marxist, this open exchange of product at the expense of the company shilling it.
The influencers possessed an admirable unshakable confidence in their entitlement to free stuff, an ability to ask for more in a way that felt generous in its asking. There was a spiritual lean to everything, no matter the product—the gift was inherently mystical by nature of being free and for you, reinforcing the law of the influencer universe: You are worthy. I integrated this messaging by shuffling through manifestation podcasts at the gym, the elliptical on its lowest setting, my eyes searching for a serene middle distance that wasn’t someone else’s tits. For the duration of a binaural loop I might break through, succumb to the belief that happiness is a discrete and neutral object, dissociated from history or circumstance or systemic oppression. Through a combination of verbal affirmations and light tapping, I could—I would—shatter through the thin pane of this life and into my destiny. I would take what was already mine. And then my unaesthetic orthopedic running shoe slipped and the machine sounded its cheerful calamity, and I was aching and normal again, and none of the resistance trainers even looked up.
Public relations girls emailed me to raise my awareness for oil-minimizing toners, multitasking eyeliners, and a perineal massage moisturizer from a company called Rosebud Femme, whose marketing team seemed blissfully unaware that rosebud is already a genital thing, and that thing is prolapsed asshole. A skincare company invited me to a Pride event honoring the dermatology community, with a performance by Adam Lambert. A face gym offered a complimentary workout, gleefully promising that “trainers will use their signature massage techniques like knuckling, pinching, and whipping strokes.” A courier delivered a three-course lunch and serum set to my apartment to celebrate the launch of a botanical skincare company. The pink gift bag was filled with rose petals; absorbed in my complimentary avocado toast, I forgot about them until days later, when they curled in on themselves and filled my kitchen with a powdery rotting smell.
I rarely emailed back, and initiated contact even less—not because I thought it was wrong, but because I was daunted by the challenge of writing a chipper email. But then someone I knew was in Italy again, and someone I didn’t know had fireworks at her wedding, and someone I hated had everything, and I filled out address form after address form for sheet masks and jawline-sculpting gum and self-cleaning litter boxes. Sometimes I responded to offers and sometimes I was the aggressor, supplicant and complimentary. I’d love to test drive for content consideration! In the moment I hit Send, I truly believed that I was going to post whatever they sent me. I pictured myself as someone aspirational: a flat lay, a self-deprecating caption. And then the product or the event arrived and it was a lipstick the cool mauve of a corpse, or it was a dinner at which I sat next to a public relations girl and sampled terpene-infused cocktails until the public relations girl, loaded on terpenes and recently single, dissolved over mention of Valentine’s Day and wept into my mushroom risotto.
What is the influencer, if not the ritualized friend?
Historian and archaeologist Ian Morris draws from Marx, Mauss, and Lévi-Strauss to distinguish gifts from commodities thus: While a commodity is “an alienable object exchanged between two transactors in a state of mutual independence,” a gift is “an inalienable thing or person exchanged between two reciprocally dependent transactors.” What defines a gift is the relationship between the transactors—their dependence on one another. When the time came to post, I inevitably betrayed the bargain. I typed thank you 
One could spin this as righteous. There’s a righting of the scales in a tiny scam: quiet justice in a world of MLMs and health insurance premiums. When talking about influencers, there’s an impulse to default to words like shameless. But what’s so great about paying for things? What’s so great about shame? It’s fair to say that influencing is, overall, perceived as the purview of women; women have long created industries at the edges of economy and have long been derided for it. To use one’s beauty or affability or capacity for intimacy for the acquisition of power, and then to be shamed for that power, is an experience that predates gift economies. (In the epic times of Xenia, women were gifts.) And anyway, the rhetoric of manifestation—the rhetoric of happiness—is all about the diffusion of shame. Sometimes, like when I was emailed about an oil heiress’s vegan clothing line, I simply wrote back, pervert.
But public relations girls talk. The address forms no longer led to packages. When I requested products, the responses were laced with suspicion: What outlet is this for? or more pointedly, Oops! This list is full. I risked excommunication from the influencer chat. These were the stakes when I received an email from an upscale sportswear company that promised a free outfit and spa day at the brand’s wellness house. A doorway: a way back to where I belonged, where everything was free.
The Sunset Strip is one of those Los Angeles neighborhoods where no one from Los Angeles actually goes. It’s embarrassing, overpriced, preserved in the amber of the early 2000s, all giddy consumption and dead-eyed sex appeal. It’s where the girls stay in the LA episode of Sex and the City, and where the boys cruise in the opening credits of Entourage. There’s the Coffee Bean where Perez Hilton once regularly camped out to draw cum stains on paparazzi shots of struggling women, and the Hustler store, and a jarring number of sixty-year-old men with ponytails and fake British accents who won’t date above twenty-five. The Sunset Strip was the natural choice for an eight-bedroom, nine-bathroom, $24 million party house, which was, in turn, the perfect place for a sponsored influencer wellness retreat.
The invitation instructed me to wear only branded clothing to the event, so my first stop was the brand’s flagship store in a Mid-City outdoor mall. The mall was overstimulating, the store’s second-floor gifting suite inexplicably but delightfully overrun by influencers’ off-leash purse dogs. Stained and wrinkled clothes splayed across the dressing room floor. The public relations girls smiled grimly through it, sifting through cardboard boxes of leggings in plastic envelopes. I tried on a series of humbling $70 mesh yoga shorts and opted for turquoise leggings and a matching sports bra. My public relations girl stuffed my street clothes into a branded tie-dye tote, along with a hat, scrunchie, and socks.
I bought a Sprinkles cupcake on my way to the car and ate it sitting in traffic. According to the scholars of epics, another thing that separates gifts from commodities is that the gift is inalienable: On some level, it never leaves the giver. It follows them around, an extension of their identity. Every item I’d been given was marked with the brand’s logo, so when I put the outfit on I became the brand incarnate. In a haze of sugar and smog, I idly ran my hand along the inside edges of my purse until I hit a soft mass: two sports bras liberated from the dressing room, snuck past the event staff even though they were already free. I wiped the crumbs from my fingers on them.
The party house was actually two buildings, all concrete and glass, a minimalist contracting budget posing as minimalist design. There was a long driveway with a valet stand and two podiums, marked Air and Earth, a public relations girl behind each. I gave my name at Earth and was told to check in at Air. I walked six steps to Air, said my name again, and was instructed to go to Sea.
When talking about influencers, there’s an impulse to default to words like shameless. But what’s so great about paying for things? What’s so great about shame?
Between the buildings was a courtyard with a small stage on which six-foot-tall letters spelled out the brand name. There was also a coffee cart, and a white Jeep parked drunkenly across some grass. Women climbed on the Jeep in their sportswear, writhing, posing for photographs. Beyond them I found the Sea podium, where a public relations girl pointed me to one of the buildings.
In places of great wealth or beauty, I always felt like a fraud. I have short legs and buccal fat, and walking past the Jeep I was struck with panic that I would be tested on my wellness. Anyone could walk up to me at any time and ask me to do the splits. This was something I admired about my influencer peers: their ability to show up and fit in, to audience-test parts of themselves until they landed on something profitable. One girl’s main account was the most successful of several exercises in identity, and her lesser projects remained public out of pride or apathy: a page devoted to a cat that she later relinquished in a bad breakup; a podcast page that hadn’t posted in three years; a cooking vertical with a smattering of shots of meal-prepped shrimp tacos, the plates angled on a dark and unclean sofa and encircled in portrait mode migraine auras. She didn’t seem to consider these abortive endeavors failures; instead, she used them to comment emojis on her main account. An outsider might say she lacked depth or integrity, but she’d never asked for depth and integrity. I, however, had asked for wellness and attractiveness and influence, and came up lacking.
My spa day turned out to be a fifteen-minute chair massage. My massage therapist was soft-spoken, worried about applying too much pressure. I hadn’t been touched by a stranger in twenty months. After the massage, I let the therapist press various products into my palms, promising I’d promote them, warm from her hands on me, grateful.
Scam accomplished, I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. I’d been too embarrassed to ask the group chat if anyone was attending this event; I wasn’t even sure I wanted to meet them. I meandered to the gifting suite, hoping to secure a free yoga mat or more socks before driving home. A woman with an undercut and an earpiece stopped me. I couldn’t go in that way, she said. I was supposed to be at the pool party.
On the other side of the building, sixty hot people had somehow known to bring bathing suits. They lounged in the grassy yard, kicked their legs in the sleek, narrow pool. At the pool’s edge, a woman floated on Nike Air roller skates. A man in a taupe Speedo twirled, arms raised, before swan diving into a perfect downward dog. A DJ played the sort of benignly clubby beats you hear in car commercials. There were strategically placed mirrors with lines of people waiting to angle their bodies in front of them, phones raised. There were communal selfie sticks and event photographers wearing all black and wielding DSLRs. You could be photographed at any time, so guests paused mid-walk to perform headstands. They cheated out while they talked, like actors on a stage. They listlessly played table tennis on a branded table, pausing when they raised their branded paddles, smiling hopefully over their shoulders. Maybe the bathing suits were in the gifting suite. I tried to get in from the pool entrance, and another public relations girl told me the suite was “on pause.” I should stay for the sound bath.
At a tent labeled the Mindful Masters Lounge, I signed up for an intuitive reading. At the pool bar I received a gin cocktail featuring an alkalizing mushroom powder that tasted like mud, and a chickpea quinoa salad bowl catered by a prestige health food store known for its $24 smoothies. The store was originally established in the 1960s because the founder believed that if people were better nourished, they would no longer tolerate war.
I watched a team of public relations girls greet a recent Bachelor contestant and her on-again-off-again fan favorite boyfriend. They were beautiful in real life, beaming for photos by the branded photo backdrop. In life, as online, everyone seemed sunny, flat, puppy-fun. Did I? I had a valet ticket and a sports bra and a cocktail. I was an ambassador of wellness. I sat alone in a patio chair and watched the gifting suite gatekeeper deny entry to another group of guests. I ate my salad, which was full of bitter greens.
The influence economy had only existed for a decade; the first generation of online personalities was just now aging out of the hot-girl market. A low-voltage resource anxiety ran through the pool party: What comes next? To rely on the market is to rely on one’s marketability. You saw it in their faces. Anti-aging procedures purport to aspire to a more youthful version of the recipient, but the filled and Botoxed faces of the pool party were a study in posthuman beauty. They were literally anti-age: divested from time. An anti-aged woman could be twenty or sixty years old and occupy the same class of uncanny glassine appeal.
I felt it in the group chat, too. Lamenting her frigid audience engagement, one member purchased a doodle puppy and launched a new account the same day, with its own family-friendly brand voice: Follow me for daily pupdates. A true gift economy, Morris argues, “is above all a debt-economy, where the actors strive to maximize outgoings. The system can be described as one of ‘altering disequilibrium,’ where the aim is never to have debts ‘paid off,’ but to preserve a situation of personal indebtedness.” The puppy’s account was small but growing.
A few photographers huddled around the gifting suite entrance, among them a familiar face—a friend, kind of. We’d never interacted in person; we’d spent at least a year as characters in the LA Creative Cinematic Universe, exchanging story replies and eye contact across the gravelly courtyards of natural wine bars, slouching toward human connection. I messaged him, are you at an incredibly chaotic yoga influencer event rn? and he responded, LOL.
In places of great wealth or beauty, I always felt like a fraud.
I realized, with horror, that I was about to be witnessed. Here I was: lilting my voice and asking about the brand’s new magnesium spray, rolling on my spandex and driving an hour for a fifteen-minute massage.
My friend found me on the patio, and I instinctively crossed my arms to cover the noisy teal yoga outfit, the lengths I went to for an afternoon of aspirational grifting.
“How are you?” he said.
“Humiliated,” I said.
My friend had been working the VIP lounge; apparently I’d been with the bottom-shelf influencers the whole time. He told me they’d made him change his clothes so as not to stand out, and to crop out anyone who wasn’t wearing the brand head-to-toe. This was a three-day event, apparently, orchestrated to get the brand a few months’ worth of content. Yesterday a teen had gotten wasted on mushroom cocktails and yelled “I am awakened!” during group meditation. The photography team was instructed to delete that content.
My friend also told me that the gifting suite was closed because all nine bathrooms inside the party house were completely backed up with shit. The entire house smelled like shit, in fact. It was coming up through the shower drains. I asked if he was fucking with me, and he wasn’t, and we stood in silence for a minute, looking up at the uncaring glass exterior of the second floor, the wavy reflection of the party.
My friend who wasn’t really my friend shuffled off to document three women with matching braided pigtails and I walked around the pool alone. I watched a woman evade the fridge steward, absconding with two fistfuls of Lärabars. I returned to the Mindful Masters Lounge to find that the Bachelor alumna had taken my intuitive reading slot. I sprayed myself in the face with sunscreen just to feel something.
A woman with a headset—there were so many women—announced that the sound bath was about to begin. Guests drifted to the DJ booth, which had been set with crystal singing bowls, and lay flat on the floor in neat lines in their matching yoga sets. The woman with the headset was our healer. The vibe was cheugy Heaven’s Gate.
The healer started by announcing her Instagram handle. She told everyone to breathe. I filled my lungs with air. I sighed as instructed. A thing about scamming: either you get away with it because you’re clever, or you get away with it because no one cares. Because you don’t matter. There’s an aching, godless loneliness in that.
“Imagine you’re a star amongst the cosmos,” the sound bath healer said. It’s so easy to lose respect for that which gives itself freely. I stepped up to an available mirror and took a selfie.
What’s the point of an odyssey? To go home. I walked out of the pool party and into the courtyard. I couldn’t get to the valet: a black trailer of porta potties blocked my path, backing slowly into the narrow driveway. A security guard waved me out of the way, onto the stage, where I stood elevated in the shadow of the giant letters and watched public relations girls guide the toilet truck, fanning it with their hands.
It was getting cold. A few drunk guests heckled the public relations girls. They were anxious about the photo ops, the aura readings, the yoga mats. When would the bathrooms be open? And the gifting suite?
“Soon,” the girls soothed them. “You’ll get yours soon.”