The Blogger Effect

Wilfred blazer (similar)
Zara tank (similar)
Zara shorts (similar)
JW Pei handbag (similar)
Zara sandals (similar)
Mango sunglasses
Linjer rings (c/o) (similar)
Mejuri earrings (similar)
Location: Exchange District – Winnipeg, Manitoba

The word blogger has all but disappeared in the modern lexicon, replaced by influencer, a catch all term for anyone working on any social media platform with some kind of audience. Blogger simply implied that an individual wrote a blog, whereas influencer suggests that the individual in question can convince their audience to do or buy things. It is, in essence, a new term for salesperson, specific to social media. I admit that it does sound much more glamourous than it actually is, and I suspect that’s the point.

I will always think of myself as a blogger, rather than an influencer. The truth is, I’m still not particularly sure that I am influential, and there’s no real way to quantify that. My goal isn’t to make sales, it’s to take pictures, to write and to put those two forms of work together in one place: my blog.

But whatever you call it, working in social media has an undeniable effect on our behaviour. After over a decade of maintaining Coco & Vera, I hardly know who I would be without it. I don’t know what my wardrobe would be either, except to say that it would, undoubtedly, be different. That’s the blogger effect. When everything you do might potentially be presented to an audience, the way you do things changes. While I don’t think that I shop just for the sake of photos, I do know that I acquire clothes that serve no practical purpose in my daily life, simply because I love them – case in point, this dress. Before I started my blog, I was practical in my approach to dressing, despite loving beautiful things. In university, I didn’t own a single pair of pumps, because I knew I wouldn’t wear them.

…that statement seems utterly unbelievable now, but it’s true. If a truly special occasion came up, I would borrow a pair from an (often reluctant) friend for the evening.

While I try, for the most part, to capture outfits that I actually wear, I suffer fits of whimsy and indulge them liberally because this blog gives me an excuse. Why else would I set up a French cafe in my apartment for a single morning? Before I became a blogger, the idea of moving my furniture around seemed more work than it was worth. I would have laughed if someone told me that someday, I would routinely rearrange my possessions, many of which I would acquire because of their photogenic nature, for the sake of a since snapshot. It’s not that I was lazy, I just wasn’t rushed – when we bought our first home, I decided I could live with a green accent wall and did, for years, because I didn’t know what I wanted as an alternative.

Maybe I would have changed in these ways even if I weren’t a blogger. It’s impossible to know at this point. But after the eleventh (!) anniversary of Coco & Vera passed last month, I’ve found myself thinking about it – and I think I owe a lot of whom I am now to the blogger effect.

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