How Hulu's Jawline Quantifies Social Media Fame

Hulu’s new documentary Jawline, from director Liza Mandelup, is a look at online teenage celebrity as both a business and a heartbreaking soul quest. The film mostly follows Austyn Tester, a 16-year-old dreamer trying to grow his social media following as a way out of small-town Tennessee life. He spreads positivity on broadcasts, has photo shoots against generic brick walls, and shows up to local malls in planned meet-and-greets for a dozen or so young female fans.

Austyn is one of a horde of teens attempting to capitalize on their online image in a bid for fame. Online personalities like his grow unavoidable by the day, a new breed of young, would-be stars whose cultural presence is felt almost solely within the confines of teenagers’ cellphones. It’s a whole new kind of fame that defies the traditional norms of celebrity. As Austyn's manager Michael Weist puts it, we are currently in a “social media gold rush”.

But the film is more concerned with the Austyns of the world, the naive young people trying to break into a deceptive ecosystem that makes the nebulous goal of fame feel as close as their fingertips. For Austyn, quantifiable goals might include moving to LA while he daydreams of what it would be like for his monthly $46 social media payout to become $1000 per day. You “get famous and the money comes,” his passive chicken-or-egg philosophy goes. It’s bleak stuff, but it’s also an intelligent and sober take on the distance between teen dreams and reality in the modern age.

What makes Jawline so effective is how it quantifies this fast-food version of celebrity. Weist pushes his clients for regular posted content, while working backdoor angles with social media executives to earn his clients an all-important verification. The name of the business is consistency in order to produce results, a ceaseless flow of content to maintain and grow a fan base. It’s about making as much money as possible before the online stars age out, of getting enough likes and follows to achieve a higher status. But how much is enough remains an unanswered question.

Austyn is only in the beginning stages of developing such a following. Over the course of the film, we see him land a minor gig on a tour as an opening act for larger names, performing to packed houses of sobbing girls donning homemade shirts with phrases like “I love you, big daddy” and waiting for their chance to hug their favorite YouTube boy. They aren’t screaming for him yet, but Austyn blossoms in front of the crowd.

Weist later assesses Austyn’s metrics for the audience, giving the impression that he's never even heard of him. Austyn’s 22k Instagram followers don’t particularly impress him, but he has more concern with the percentage of followers that like the most recent posts. Assessing his metrics, Weist states “I wouldn’t touch him.” (Weist has 16.9k Instagram followers on his verified account, with his most recent post receiving 120 likes.)

This assessment comes after Austyn has returned from a tour as one of the small-time opening acts for more popular teen social stars. Back in Tennessee, he is unfulfilled and dejected.. He feels no more famous than he did before, and stops posting despite the advice of his successful peers. What Austyn expected from the tour, be it sizable growth in his following, or simply more money in his bank account, remains unspoken. The closest thing to a tangible goal that he expresses is ultimately out of his control: He wants to land another tour.

What Austyn’s distant dreams bring to Jawline’s very raw surface is how accessible social media fame seems to young people. The simplicity of likes and follows makes celebrity feel like something that can be granted, rather than attained through methodical work. When he stops working for it and his all-so important metrics drop, it’s not Austyn’s lack of initiative that's Jawline’s tragedy, it’s that he can’t see that the mystique of easy, online fame that he had been promised was a lie.

As the idea of fame grows increasingly intangible in the greater culture, Jawline grimly quantifies it, exposing the inevitable shelf life of this kind of notoriety.

People are talking about Jawline in our forums. Join the conversation.

Chris Feil is a freelancer writer and co-host of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. His previous work can be found at Vulture, Vice, Paste, and The Film Experience. Follow him @chrisvfeil on Twitter.