Invasion of the Influencers: ‘Widow’s Bay’ has its demons; Amity its ‘Jaws

Islanders say neither sharks nor ghosts worry them — it’s the content creators on shore who are ruining their summer. As Dairy Boy founder Paige Paul plants herself in the center of the conflict, correspondent Alex Hannaford drops anchor on the simmering culture war just off Cape Cod

Bookmark Comments Go to comments Bookmark popover Removed from bookmarks

N ANTUCKETT, Mass. — It’s 7:45 am. Inside The Landing Cafe, just a few steps from Hyannis Harbor, blonde 20-somethings in Parke sweatshirts carrying identical canvas bags are milling about, eyes glued to their phones, waiting to board the Nantucket ferry.

There’s a rough hour-long ride ahead — the storm clouds portend choppy seas and 47 mph wind gusts. Ironically, I’m heading to the island to find out about a storm of a different kind — one that’s been brewing between social media influencers who use the island as an idyllic backdrop for their content, and locals and second-home owners who have been regulars for years.

In Apple TV’s summer hit Widow's Bay , Tom Loftis, the mayor of the fictional New England island, played by Matthew Rhys, desperately wants to turn the cursed, isolated town into a thriving tourist hotspot like Nantucket. But arguably, Nantucket, where old money and new money have long collided over dock space and dinner reservations, has something more insidious going on: the creeping sense that the very thing that sustains it might also be destroying it.

This all erupted in the past few weeks when John Sylvia, a 59-year-old antiques dealer whose family has sold nautical curios on the island for nearly a century, hung a hand-painted quarterboard from the ceiling of his shop, Four Winds Craft Guild. In gold leaf, it reads: "No Influencers." But when Sylvia’s partner, Jessica Jenkins, 50, who manages the store’s social media, posted a picture of the sign on Instagram, the message quickly blew up.

“Influencers have ruined every place from Kyoto to Paris,” wrote one commenter. “You cannot see anything at an art museum because of the line of people taking multiple selfies and blocking paintings.”

Then, Paige Paul , an influencer who commands over a million followers and recently opened a clothing store, Dairy Boy, on the island, said that given that the influencer orbit is dominated by women, Sylvia’s sign was effectively "barring women.”

“Mocking women when they become powerful in a new industry isn't new,” she posted.

The battle lines were drawn. In her shop, Paul hung up her own sign in response: "Everyone Welcome.”

Nantucket has indeed become ground zero for this very 21st-century collision, the kind playing out in any place where tourism has tipped from economic engine to existential threat. And social media content creators, or influencers, make themselves easy targets — visible, stereotypical in presentation, and invariably young and female.

The “No influencers” sign earned Sylvia a New York Times visit and he told the paper it was meant to be tongue-in-cheek — a joke about visitors who treated his store as a stage, filming without buying anything or even making conversation.

But the comments under the story were more blatant in their condemnation.

“So-called influencers are the scourge of the modern world today,” wrote one.

What happened on Nantucket exposed the fault line between those who see influencers — and by extension modern social media — as a societal irritant, and those who see the hostility toward them as the real elitism.

There’s an old saying on Nantucket: tourists come to the island with a dirty shirt and a $5 bill — and don’t change either. Greg Creedon says that’s been the case since the 1960s.

Creedon, 74, moved to Nantucket with his parents when he was four weeks old. His grandfather was superintendent of schools here. A retired tech worker who now works part time handing out tourist pamphlets, he meets me off the ferry and agrees to show me around.

We hop in his pickup truck and immediately hit traffic.

“There are places on the island where it's almost impossible to drive,” he says, and then goes on to describe Nantucket’s “commercial pattern” much as anyone who has seen the Spielberg classic Jaws once or twice might expect.

“You open Memorial Day, you have a slow month in June, then the Fourth of July hits and it’s off to the races until the middle of August,” Creedon tells me. “By then, a lot of people are really cranky. By the time kids start going back to school, the tourists start drifting away and we begin that long trip down into winter.”

Creedon sums up the influencer issue in his own inimitable Nantucket islander way: “Pointless tourism.”

The problem that those who sympathize with Sylvia’s “No Influencers” sign have is that they feel the island has become a destination to be photographed rather than lived; consumed rather than experienced.

They feel that these new, younger visitors, arrive with itineraries built for engagement metrics rather than engagement with the island itself: they clog the ancient cobblestone streets for the perfect selfie, treat century-old shops as backdrops, and leave behind a trail of photographic breadcrumbs for the next wave of the young and Instagram-obsessed to follow

Creedon describes it as a version of the bucket list — but on steroids. As we approach Dairy Boy, a line of young, mostly women devotees, snakes down the wooden staircase from the front door and along the street. It’s one-in-one-out, and I count 17 people waiting for their chance to peruse the beachwear, pajamas, workout shorts, colorful zip-up fleeces, and Wellington boots inside.

One of them, Hannah Moser, 26, has come with four friends. They’re vacationing on Cape Cod, but have ferried over to Nantucket for a night. “I heard about Dairy Boy on TikTok,” Moser tells me.

Her friend follows Paige Paul’s account, but Moser says the shop also appeared in her feed. Most people, she says, order the clothing online, but as she and her friends were on the island for the day an...

Indexed and credited by AIPROPX. Originating outlet: The Independent. Open at source →