You could call it a sign of the times.
It read “No Influencers,” and John Sylvia hung it up earlier this summer in Four Winds Craft Guild, his artisan craft and antique store, where shoppers browse and buy New England sundry, like handmade basket purses that start at around $1,800.
In keeping with the island’s nautical style, the words were embossed in gold lettering on handmade quarterboard that dangled from a chain on the ceiling.
“I feel sometimes my store is used as someone’s background, a stage,” said Sylvia, whose family has also owned Sylvia Antiques for almost a century, in a phone interview. (The two stores share a space.) Visitors take photos and videos but don’t make purchases or even try to engage him in polite conversation, he said.
The sign wasn’t meant to be interpreted literally, Sylvia, 59, said. “I don’t have this hatred toward influencers,” he added. “It was more of a joke. It is a problem we should look at as a society.”
But when Sylvia’s partner, Jessica Jenkins, who is 50 and manages the store’s social media, posted a picture of the sign on Instagram, it quickly cut to the core of strongly held feelings about people who film content for a living — and others who have begun to imitate them.
Some people praised the business for taking a stand against what they saw as a pesky modern annoyance. Others were quick to criticize the way the sign appeared to exclude a specific group of people, noting that plenty of visitors to the store who do not identify as influencers might also behave similarly.
And then, pouring accelerant on the debate, there was one person who claimed that to bar influencers from the shop was akin to barring women.
That person was Paige Paul, a content creator with over a million followers whose lifestyle brand Dairy Boy recently opened a store on Nantucket.
“Mocking women when they become powerful in a new industry isn’t new,” Paul, more widely known as Paige Lorenze before marrying the tennis player Tommy Paul, wrote in a comment under the Instagram post. “It’s just a strange message coming from a store that celebrates a craft with such a rich history of women shaping the island and its economy.” (Paul did not respond to an interview request.)
Sylvia maintained that the sign was intended only as a “tongue-in-cheek” commentary on the rise of influencer culture, he said.
The post that included the sign was later removed by Instagram, Jenkins said, but the discussion about the presence of people milling about the island, taking photos and shooting videos, has continued.
“I feel that whenever I open Instagram, I see someone show me a guide of what to wear, a guide of where to eat, a guide of what to buy, a guide of how to pack for Nantucket,” said Jenkins, who is a year-round resident.
Walking around town, she said, she’s inundated with “people creating videos on corners of themselves sipping an iced coffee and looking over their shoulder and doing a shoe kick or whatever.”
Stephanie Sproule, owner of the Nantucket home goods store Bodega, said she had noticed a rise in “people just here to take their picture and to be seen on Nantucket.” She described visitors trying to navigate cobblestone streets in heels and said a friend who lived near a particularly picturesque, hydrangea-filled wharf had told her about women showing up with racks of clothing to stage photo shoots.
Last summer, a content creator named Kylie Swanson drew ire from some Nantucket residents and business owners after hosting a four-day adult summer camp — $3,800 per person — and soliciting local businesses for free goods and services.
This summer, brands like Hotel Lobby Candle and Sam Edelman have transported select groups of content creators to the island for brand trips complete with lavish gifts and experiences.
Sanibel Lazar, a New York-based writer and college admissions consultant who spent her childhood visiting Nantucket for the summer, said she too had noticed the changes.
New visitors to Nantucket, Lazar said, can expect to experience a “much more hypercurated version than, say, 10 years ago because so many people are using it as a P.R. trip destination.”
Some brands and business have begun to cater to these newcomers, she said: This summer, she noticed that a pop-up had brought in plastic, photo-ready hydrangeas, despite ample real ones on the island.
It can feel like a “fake world that’s so close to the real thing,” she said. “Brands — for photos, for social media content — they need to turn the volume up even more on the perfectness,” she added.
Amy McAveety, 23, who grew up on Nantucket and is a content creator on TikTok who regularly posts about the island, was wary of being painted with the same broad brush.
“I do feel like there are definitely influencers who come for the day or for a few days who are inconsiderate and they don’t respect the island,” said McAveety, who is spending her summer working at a local Pilates studio. “I think a lot of locals get kind of territorial about Nantucket, and so do summer people, which I think is funny.”
Sylvia’s “No Influencers” sign is the latest in a string of attempts by businesses to provide a counterweight to the power of social media. In 2023, a cafe in Brooklyn issued a ban on taking photos and videos inside to crack down on the use of the minimalist, well-designed space as a backdrop for influencers’ content. That same year, a town in Vermont known for its fall foliage was forced to close roads after posts on TikTok and Instagram led to an influx of ill-behaving visitors.
But much as the shopkeepers in Nantucket are learning, such efforts may ultimately draw more attention. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing for business.
Jenkins noted that the Four Winds Craft Guild Instagram account had picked up about 8,000 new followers since she posted the sign. “It’s come with a lot of drama, but it also brings in business,” she added.
On Tuesday, Paulposted a photo from Dairy Boy, her shop in Nantucket, with a sign of its own: “Everyone Welcome.”
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