Skip to main content
 

It was another busy day for the crew of the Rest-Ashoar, a lobster fishing boat that works the waters off the rocky coast of Winter Harbor, Maine. The captain, Jacob Knowles, had gotten up at 3 a.m. on a brisk October morning and took his vessel 10 miles into the ocean. Even while doing the grueling work of commercial fishermen, the crew was engaged in another job: filming a video for TikTok and Instagram.

Mr. Knowles is one of several people in what are considered blue-collar jobs who use social media to offer a window into their lives.

“When we think of influencers, we think of a blond woman wearing a two-piece outfit, holding a designer purse and posed on a hotel balcony,” said Alice Marwick, an associate professor of communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill whose research focuses on social media.

When TikTok took off, its short-form videos were rawer, more unfiltered, and people could go viral just because they were able to say interesting things to the smartphone camera or had an unusual lifestyle. “That’s where we’re getting these blue-collar influencers,” Marwick said. “We know these jobs exist, but we don’t really know what it’s like behind the scenes.”

The New York Times