A Puebla school has decided to take advantage of the social media trend and provide its students with a degree in becoming an online influencer.

This is the not first school to offer such classes. In 2019, an online Italian university announced a three-year course on becoming an influencer, saying, “The figure of the influencer, despite not being officially recognized as a profession, is increasingly in demand by companies.” The University of California Extension in Los Angeles also offered an online course in 2022 called “Personal Branding and Becoming an Influencer.”

Influencers are online personalities that use their own personal brand or “influence” to encourage followers to buy certain products, stay at certain hotels, and live a certain kind of lifestyle. They make deals with companies to promote their products and the few that are extremely successful can make six-figure salaries. While being an influencer may seem simple from an outside perspective, these educational programs insist there is a lot more to job than just putting up selfies online.

Creating a personal brand, finding and sealing deals with companies, excelling in digital media, and increasing followers are all things that influencers have so far had to learn on their own. These new classes and programs insist they can help aspiring social media influencers skip steps and get to making money faster.

The announcement for Puebla’s program has become its own viral sensation with social media accounts across Mexico mocking it ruthlessly. Some critics said that image of a young man carrying his books that can be seen on the advertisements for the program does not exactly fit the image of a celebrity influencer, or even represent good visual advertising. On Facebook and its website, the Greenfield School currently provides no further information about what might be included in the unusual course of study.

With reports from Plumas Atomicas and CBS News