Much of internet culture has been one long sales pitch to people who want to carve out their own piece of the attention economy.

The World Wide Web gave us access to an audience of just about anyone, anywhere; social media showed us that anyone can make themselves a minor celebrity if they play their cards right, and the monopolization of said social media over most of our screen time encouraged these celebrities-in-waiting to play by the rules of their platform to get the exposure they desired.

The result is a pattern that has been taking over the posting style of Instagram and TikTok recently, with countless lifestyle influencers and creatives trying to cash in on an aesthetically pleasing formula that the algorithm rewards. It involves posting images, preferably as a carousel, with text over them, almost always in pastel colors or white. The post might involve a collage, and of course, it has to have a picture of the creator in there somewhere. If it doesn’t name drop some trending vocabulary, such as being kinda chic or maximizing whimsy, it probably promises some listicle-based wisdom about a topic that the creator wants to claim they have authority in. Whether telling their audience what to read to take a break from the doomscroll or advising on how to navigate a particular decade of life, they have the definitive guide.