Remote work expanded during the pandemic and made life more manageable for many employees. Employers are increasingly requiring office returns, often without clear justification. Some people blame internet and influencer culture for the shift, arguing that curated videos of remote work abroad created a perception of laziness. Influencers have monetized many experiences, turning tourist sites and public streets into content backdrops and disrupting normal enjoyment. A Reddit user accused influencers of 'killing remote work,' but that claim is overstated. Multiple other factors explain the resurgence of in-office expectations beyond influencer content and employer perceptions.
Naturally, our hypercapitalist, increasingly oligarchical work culture wasn't going to let that slide for too long, and now everywhere you look, people are being dragged back to the office, often for no identifiable reason besides "because I said so." What's behind this trend, exactly? One Redditor placed the blame on internet culture, but the real answer is much less complicated. A worker blamed 'lazy' influencers for ruining remote work.
The worker has since deleted their Reddit post, but it delved into a familiar bugaboo of our modern times: Influencers turning absolutely everything into a monetizable piece of content, and often ruining it in the process. It's happened to tourist attractions all over the world that are now basically unenjoyable unless you're there to film a TikTok. Tried walking down a large city street anytime recently? Prepare to dodge influencers filming "aesthetic" outfit-of-the-day posts against the urban backdrop.
The theory goes that all those videos we saw the past couple years of people, who always seem to work in marketing, doing their jobs from beaches in Bali or a mountaintop in Switzerland, gave employers the wrong impression: one of laziness. The Redditor theorized that employers saw all this and acted accordingly. "Influencers killed remote work and I hope they rot for it," they wrote.
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