And then there are wavy-haired momfluencers turning child-rearing into a series of airy tableaux of sponsored organic content. These influencers gaze at us through the camera's lens with so much heart-bursting love that it's easy to forget that what they are actually looking at is their own faces on their phones—their digital doubles—as they coach us all to reach for our own best selves, our body doubles, in the never-ending house of mirrors.

XREF: Relates to broader critiques of influencer authenticity and the mediated self, connecting to Lacanian mirror-stage ideas or Jia Tolentino's work on the internet's mirrored self-image.

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, loc. 592