> It’s hard for me to see influencers of today as organic users of the past.
They're not, and never have been. Nor are they innocent - they're corrupting and destroying the platforms they're on. And, for all the talk on authenticity, they're the direct opposite of it.
I remain bewildered by the continued social acceptance of this work. We're talking about people who openly accept and refer to themselves using the term "influencer" - a word that's directly synonymous to "manipulator". How much more in-your-face do they have to be about telegraphing malicious intent?
Addictive brainrot is a powerful force. Like cigarettes. You could put a skull and crossbones on the packaging and call them "Marlboro Tumors" and people would still line up to buy them. Social Media consumers know what they are doing is bad--they can't stop because they are addicted.
Maybe. But perhaps unlike cigarettes today, the entire Internet is structurally conspiring against people.
I keep comparing[0] advertising[1] to a cancer on society, and that analogy applies to influencing in particular too. Thing is, a lot of those influencers, aka. "content creators", actually do create good content on a regular basis[2]. Yes, this is kind of what makes this advertising vector effective in the first place, but it gets harder to make people think about how they're being manipulated when they can rightfully say they watch it out of genuine interest and get real value out of it.
Which is why I bring up the cancer analogy. Many cancers induce the body to route more blood towards them, which also benefits the healthy cells in the vicinity. From the point of view of such cells, the tumor is great - it blesses them with plenty. But of course we know, that benefit is short-term and localized - eventually, it leads to premature death.
I see the work of influencers to be like this. They pull in money and use it to produce exciting content, making the platforms thrive - or at least it seems so, for a while. In reality, they're slowly but surely burning the platform out (and over longer timescales, also public consciousness).
[1] - Well, particular subset of sales, marketing and advertising. AFAIK there's no good term that describes it; the closest one I found over the years is "marketing communications".
[2] - Especially if we consider entertaining content as good, too. Which, honestly, I think we should - humans need and value entertainment.
I hope you're right but every year, people are more zombified by their phones than the year before. There is no evident end in sight. No candle burning out.
I think they knew; the dangers of smoking were well-known more than three decades ago (I still remember learning about them as a kid, maybe 7-8 years old, and getting super worried about my dad; my attempts to reprimand his behavior were not well received...). Thing is, many (most?) people have various habits/addictions which they realize are unhealthy long-term, but at any given moment, those worries are hard to act on while being easy to put aside. "I'll need to stop smoking before it kills me." "I should probably drink less coffee." "I should start exercising regularly." "Next week, I'm taking a break off stims." Etc. Thoughts that pop up every day, yet years go by and no change happens.
I suppose "I should spend less time on my smartphone", "I spend way too much time watching Instagram reels", etc. are now part of this group, too.
They're not, and never have been. Nor are they innocent - they're corrupting and destroying the platforms they're on. And, for all the talk on authenticity, they're the direct opposite of it.
I remain bewildered by the continued social acceptance of this work. We're talking about people who openly accept and refer to themselves using the term "influencer" - a word that's directly synonymous to "manipulator". How much more in-your-face do they have to be about telegraphing malicious intent?