We Have Much More Than An Influencer Problem. We Have An Image Problem — And We’re Selling It

To the editor: The dispute between an influencer and a family business that has been on this island for three generations has already been answered, many times over, by people who know John and the Sylvia family. I don’t need to add to that pile. But the response has been so unanimous, and so satisfying, that I worry we’ll mistake it for a resolution. It isn’t. It’s a symptom.

For a few thousand of us, Nantucket is a community. We defend each other through thick and thin. We know each other’s families in a way most places have long since forgotten. That’s not nostalgia; it’s the actual standard of this island and reveals itself every February.

For millions of other people, Nantucket is something else entirely. That other Nantucket is what makes this a logical place to open a flagship store by influencers. It’s what brought the Kardashians here a few summers back. It is a brand, it is enormously valuable, and most of the people buying it will never see the side of the island we live in.

It helps to remember that the human brain is essentially a prediction machine. We don’t perceive the world so much as forecast it and correct for errors along the way. This is why optical illusions work — the same gray square reads as different colors depending on what surrounds it. We see what we’ve been trained to expect.

People arrive here having already decided what Nantucket is. They’ve watched the reels on the ferry over. The set is dressed, the lighting is chosen, the script is written, and they are simply stepping into a scene that was staged for them decades ago.

So what, exactly, has been staged? Scroll through the influencer accounts online. It is excess, alcohol, and visibility, front to back. There is no mention of a year-round community, no suggestion that this is anyone’s home, no hint that behavior might carry consequences past Labor Day. I had never heard of a Cru-cumber martini until I went through a few influencer accounts. Now I understand it is a destination unto itself. What gets communicated, over and over, is that anything goes out here — that money talks, and that class is something you can buy. We have become Vegas on a small island out to sea.

Here is the uncomfortable part, and the reason I’m writing at all: this is not only something being done to us from the outside.

The Chamber of Commerce has reels on YouTube that are nearly indistinguishable from the influencer posts we’re all complaining about. We have magazines that originate on this island, supported by advertising from local businesses, selling the same aesthetic and the same promise. Every one of those choices was made by someone who lives here, or who depends on the people who do. Who call themselves Nantucketers. We did not merely fail to stop this image of Nantucket. We built it, we funded it, and in a good season Nantucketers cash the checks.

Which means the real question was never what to do about one influencer. It’s what to do about ourselves. Where is the conversation about the imagery we produce and pay for? What are we actually asking of the people we invite, and are we asking anything at all? Is there a version of marketing this island that mentions, even once, that people live here?

I’m glad the discussion has started. It’s overdue, and it’s happening at the one moment of the year when everyone is here to have it. But if it ends where it began — with a pile-on aimed at a single person — we’ll have missed the point entirely, and we'll be back here next summer with a different name in the headline.

Nantucket is still ours to describe. It won’t be forever. Right now, millions of people are being told what this place is by people who are very good at telling stories, and we are helping them do it. At some point the story stops being a distortion and simply becomes the truth about the island — not because anyone conquered us, but because we sold it to them a frame at a time.

It’s time we look ourselves in the mirror and continue this discussion before the island turns into nothing more than what tens of millions of people already think of it.

Shawn Cabral