Do you have an “Influencer Voice?”
New York-Tok is kind of the place to be—featuring some fun, albeit niche, references to the subway, a little legal drama over a sidewalk aquarium, and maybe the craziest Hinge date that left someone completely traumatized.
As a food content creator, I’ve recently been plagued by videos of people making fun of what foodies sound like. It’s a spin-off of the influencer accent, but now with key phrases like “Come with me,” “Run, don’t walk,” and “Oh my god, you guys.”
If I had to describe this voice to someone who has never heard it before, I’d say it seems rooted in a Californian Valley Girl accent, heavily influenced by Hollywood’s local royalty, the Kardashians. Throw in some elongated phrases and a nasal tone, and there you have it—foodie influencer voice! It’s so iconic that words are almost unnecessary; it could be straight gibberish, and the point would still come across.
The Etymology Nerd has kindly given us a linguistic breakdown of how the influencer accent evolved from the Valley Girl accent, incorporating macroprosody—the strategic highlighting of certain vowels to draw attention to things like standout dishes or noteworthy takeaways.
As someone with a music degree, I’d be remiss if I didn’t also talk about the cadence of this voice. If I were to analyze these sound bites through a program, they’d all more or less follow the same pattern: starting relatively low, spiking suddenly in vocal inflection, and then plateauing somewhere in the middle. String a few of these in a row, and you’ve got the foodie edition of the influencer voice.
Just to be clear, I’m not bashing the foodie influencer voice. I myself have a voice I “put on” for voiceovers, and certain vocal inflections naturally lend themselves to showcasing products. As long as the information is factual and honest—delivered in a non-hateful manner—we’re good! However, with this vocal trend now under the spotlight, I’m really interested to see whether it sticks around in the world of content creation.
From what we’ve seen, trends move fast on the internet! We’ve cycled through overly enthusiastic YouTubers and whispering ASMR artists, and once everyone adopts a particular style, a new vocal trend inevitably emerges. Furthermore, a lot of these “food influencer voice” parody videos on TikTok carry an undertone of making foodies seem naive or ill-informed, which raises an interesting question: Will creators who use this speaking style now be associated with being less trustworthy? Or inauthentic? Only time will tell!