#influencer culture

[kropotkindersurprise]

Finally I understand the appeal of this guy. [source]

[hussyknee]

Tfw you colonize half the world for spices and three hundred years later this is where your civilization's ended up.

[thebibliosphere]

You said the phrase "the mysteries of publishing" and honestly that's wild to me. I knew the publishing industry was shitty, but I had no idea it was also mysterious/secretive because the vast majority of what I know of it has come from you and Brandon Sanderson, and both of you are very up front and open about your gripes with publishing

There's always been systemic gatekeeping from traditional publishing (lack of diversity in publishing is not an accident, it is intentional), and there have always been a few jerks in indie-pub who intentionally give out bad-faith advice to try and sabotage the "competition," but they get called out by the community pretty quickly.

Where things can become (unintentionally) mysterious, is when people look at all the information available to them and freeze because they don't know where to start.

Indie and self-publishing is daunting, not just from a creative aspect, but administrative as well. It can be especially difficult if you struggle with executive dysfunction or other information-processing issues.

But if you take your time, ask questions in writing groups/forums -- reach out to author friends if you have them -- or even just contact customer service, you usually get it figured out.

This recent trend-- and it's gotten really bad over the pandemic-- with people conflating being an author with being an influencer, (and some do both well, but many don't.), and there's an almost MLM (multilevel marketing, not men-loving-men. Just clarifying seen as how this is Tumblr 😅) vibe to the way some of them are pushing their platforms harder than their work.

And people think, hey, this person has a million followers on TikTok; they must know what they're talking about!

So they sign up for the "classes" being promoted by these influencer management hubs, and while I am sure some of them are legit, if a lot of them are getting the same emails I'm getting, it's the bare minimum shit that you can find on google.

Maybe if you're lucky, they'll talk you through figuring out international royalties. Chances are they'll just regurgitate David Gaughran's 'Let's Get Digital: How To Self-Publish And Why You Should' -- WHICH YOU CAN GET FOR FREE-- and frame it behind girl-boss empowerment vibes spun through the lens of being a boss-babe author.

When truthfully, this person probably earns more from your clicks and views than anything they've written. There's more money to be made in the hustle of appearing successful and pretending like this wealth of information is secretive and unknown.

And I want no part of that.

[cjbolan]

Paul Atreides in Dune 2 was a perfect allegory for Gen Zs/Millennial influencers criticizing celebrity culture. Tried to take down people in power only to instead become just like them.

Young people don’t want to remove people in power. Young people just want to replace them.

[letsyapthenightaway]

HOW MANY TIMES DO I NEED TO BEG THIS MAN TO RELEASE MORE MUSIC?!

I had the biggest crush on Sam and Colby since Vine omg

[my-chemical-mermaid]

I keep getting Temu ads everywhere and their tagline "Shop like a billionaire" is the most out of touch slogan I've ever heard and immediately tells you everything you need to know about what kind of demographic they want to capture

They want the influencers whose whole brand is overconsumption and luxury while still trying to seem like a relatable everyman and the type of audience who likes that kind of content.

[jacks-weird-world]

*✧・ﾟ:* *:・ﾟ✧*:・ﾟ✧ .・゜゜・. ・Jackuno:influencer. LOL

💫

[shamebats]

It doesn't help that I'm famous for a thing I started when I was a kid. I think of what it would be like if everyone was famous for a thing they did when they were thirteen: their middle school band, their seventh-grade science project, their eighth-grade play. The middle school years are the years to stumble, fall, and tuck under the rug as soon as you're done with them because you've already outgrown them by the time you're fifteen.

But not for me. I'm cemented in people's minds as the person I was when I was a kid. A person I feel like I've far outgrown. But the world won't let me outgrow it. The world won't let me be anyone else. The world only wants me to be Sam Puckett.

I'm aware enough to know how fucking annoying and whiney this all sounds. Millions of people dream of being famous, and here I am with fame and hating it. I somehow feel entitled to my hatred since I was not the one who dreamed of being famous. Mom was. Mom pushed this on me. I'm allowed to hate someone else's dream, even if it's my reality.

- Jennette McCurdy, I'm Glad My Mom Died

I'm stuck on this part because my mind instantly went to "family influencers" and how many kids outside of Hollywood, who aren't officially acknowledged as actors or performers, are living this exact reality right now, but with even fewer protections.

It's the same type of abuse except the child acting is now also happening inside the family home, where there's nobody looking out for these children. Nobody is making sure that the countless child stars on Youtube, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook aren't being neglected, abused, overworked and exploited.

So many young people must be going through this right now. This book is not just a commentary on Hollywood. This is about how neoliberal capitalism is failing children by actively rewarding their parents for exploiting them.

I wouldn't be surprised if we see many more such memoirs come out in the future, stories told and written by kids whose entire childhoods were documented on social media, sometimes starting from their birth.

[voidingintotheshout]

Not Welcome Here As Anything But An Audience

A poem.

One thing

that just occurred to me

about people

who are famous online

is that all of them

are young

and all of them

are lean.

That makes me sad.

Like,

maybe,

this is something

that I’ll feel differently about

tomorrow.

But the more I think about it,

the more

I feel

like all of the influencers

on all of the platforms.

TikTok,

YouTube,

Instagram.

They come

from a diverse

series of backgrounds,

but they’re all

young

and they’re all

lean.

It seems

less

like a community

that I

can be part of

as someone who is not

young

or lean

and more

like a popular crowd

that will tolerate me

as merely

a spectator

to their pagentry.

[bookwormstarwarsfan]

I have been "studying" internet culture with a great interest for a time now, especially the classic influencer culture. And recently my IG got FLOODED with USAmerican momfluencers, the types who are doing absolutely nothing special, just recording the most avarage mom life they fake a little bit either to look perfect or to look miserable for a little bit of rage bate engagement with just enough advertisement of useless expensive stuff, cultish religious quotes, guilt tripping of normal moms and borderline childabuse contents to be incredibly harmful to society.

And it started to be annoyingly too much, so I started to block all these accounts to tell the algorithm that it's enough. But of course like any social media, it got the opposite idea with flooding my timeline with even more, and it took a few weeks of enormous amount of blocking to finally make them go away for most of the time. And then I was like, wait, how many were this? 712. I blocked 712 momfluencers, all of them with blue ticks and tens or even hundreds of thousand of followers, and they do nothing else than showing how they are vacuming the floor, dressing up their kid or they baby must have amazon lists. And apparently they are probably just a few percent of all momfluencers around the world?!

I just didn't understand how are they able to not just exist, but even get a profit out of it, there is simply not enough people who are interested in them to support the engagement they need. I just can't see that few million people following more than a few account of the basically same content. Like okay, they buy some bot followers, but the advertisers want to see the real ones too.

And last week I got recommended a 'Jesus for all, 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦❤️, relatable mommy tips, linktree here' again, and I opened the comment section out of curiosity (how on Earth this bland nothing reel can have 200 comments already?!) and it was 90% just blue ticks. The same kind of momfluencers as OP with blue ticks just commenting hearts and you go girl and other nothings, almost 200 of them. And since then before blocking Sharon or Brie, I check a few of their comment sections to find mostly only their fellow internet mommies commenting (unless if it's a ragebait of course).

And now I understand! They are now imbreed, just like AI art lol. Of course lot of avarage people are still following them, but they are mostly maintaining each other in terms of engagement, which is not hard considering that there is apparently thousands of them. I hope this means that this pyramid scheme will crash soon, but it's just so ridiculous how they are basically creatinf fake content to the people who are also creating fake content to them lol.

[djhamaradio]

I do not have a brand because I am not a corporation.

I lost my job recently and had to log back into my LinkedIn account. The whole thing felt forced and weird because I never use the app and I never post anything and suddenly I posted an alert showing I was open for work. The whole process felt weird because everyone in my network seemed to be confused because everyone on there is an ace at networking and using their personal brands to show people what they have going on in their work lives and I felt like a faker. Same way I feel when I am told I am not effectively branding my radio show and my escapades in the record digging world to become a vinyl influencer (not sure if that exists). The whole thing has me depressed because I get the feeling my inactivity is not helping with my job prospects. And no matter what advice I read on Forbes or whatever blog about personal marketing I’m never going to be good at it. I lack the brand consistency or whatever it’s called because ultimately I am not that committed to this world of personal branding. The article above from the wonderful folks at Vox reminds me that this is one of the legacies of late market capitalism everyone is merely a sellout but we don’t have interests or passions anymore everything we do or say has to be leveraged for likes and followers. The thing I find most intriguing about this world is the pervasisveness of hucksterism, and just pure fakery. I find people employing awful vague corporte phrases like maximizing productivity to describe their day to day lives.I find people posting shit about how one can leverage their brand to build a following that will lead them to make a living off social media. it is all disgusting but more than anything speaks to just how much consumerism, and capitlism in general has infected every sacred facet of human life. We have all become brands, and as brands your ultimate goal is to sell, sell and sell. Sell agressively, sell even if it means lying and sell with your consumer in mind. I look at myself I truly joined social media to connect with friends, at some point I left Facebook because my conservative family had joined and thewas now on they had an issue with my Halloween costume (Me dressed as a member of De La Soul and my girlfriend at the time in. slutty Nun costume), so I deleted the account and stuck with IG. On IG aI liked sharing music banter, odd ball humour and rap references with my small cast of friends who get it, and I use it to let people know when my radio show is on. My show is decently popular and I dont make a living doing it, I do DJ gigs on the side and I make decent guap doing it but would absolutely never do that for a living. The DJ gig funds the record collecting, and the radio show is a creative outlet that is all it is. I dont give a shit about branding, even though in a sense I am acting like a brand but I am not selling you anything. I put myself out there simply to say hey check out what I am doing and let me know if you fuck with it other than that no biggie. I aint out here saying if you listen to my radioshow your dick will grow bigger, all the chicks will like you and I am offering somekind of solution to one of lifes ills. My purpose is simply to say hey dont know what you doing but tune into my non-commercial uninterrupted absolutley amteurish radio show where you get to hear me play funk, soul, jazz and african music, for its on sake and not to sell but plugs or lawn mowers. The branding shit is particularly insidious because it makes us forget that there was a time when people congregated because they shared deep interests outside of the capitalist objective, think about stamp collectors, book clubs, bowling leagues and in my case a group of guys who drive around the midwest frequenting record stores spending huge amounts of hours scouring dollar record bins for prized records (This is also a dying art but I digress). I think at the heart of it social media has democratized aspects of the creative world. I just want to live in a world where I am not a brand.

[alethianightsong]

Each GTA game is a satire of American culture so GTA 6...

might be a satire of the mid-2010s and influencer culture. Lucia might've been in jail for 5-8 years, long enough to come outta jail and asks, "Who are all these skanks with the phones?" and Jason goes "Oh yeah, you haven't seen many influencers in prison. These people get so popular that they're paid to peddle crap to their fans." "Sounds dumb as shit." "Well, they make millions. The sexy ones can scam 1000s of dollars from their fanboys & get away with it" which naturally leads into some side-missions consisting of Lucia faking being an influencer or maybe she and Jason help an influencer take out the competition.

[commanderpelia]

I hate trend cycles so much because it makes people think that they have to wait until something is popular to be allowed to wear it. I saw a girl on instagram last night say “I’m so glad red is back” like????? What do you mean “red is back” it’s the fucking color red it’s like THE color???? Most other colors can’t exist without it!! Do you hear yourself? Why do you think you have to wait until a bunch of girls in New York wear red shoes in their tiktoks for you to be able to say you like wearing red? Shut UP!!

[ghostsandgod]

Influencers....

[wishfulpainting]

I’m getting so bothered by influencer culture lately. It never used to be an issue but since the pandemic I’ve had such a hard time enjoying anything surrounding it.

The constant ads and sponsorships is insulting at this point. I loved when someone truly enjoyed a product that they ACTUALLY USED, which would then lead to the brand reaching out to start a partnership with them. Now they accept anything and everything and constantly shove it down our throat every 15-30 mins, even tho it’s so obvious that there constant flow of sponsorships is for money purposes only, not because the product has built an actual reputation or they enjoy it. If they are not shoving an ad down our throat, they are complaining out loud to us about not being sponsored by certain people, begging brands to send them free shit, etc.

I heard a very popular influencer say and I quote “I love this hair brand so much and talk about them all the time. I swear to god if they don’t give me a sponsorship I’m going to start telling people it made my hair fall out” hahah??? How tone deaf can you be? Honestly speechless.

Most of us are struggling to pay rent or put food on the table, and then we go online to find any sort of entertainment from the real world only to hear these people talking about their brand trips, how $20k for ONE TikTok is not enough for them, or seeing them living a lavish lifestyle we couldn’t ever have and bragging about it to us peasants… I’m over it. I hope in the future this culture evaporates ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[jadablaccbabyyy]

Heyy guys ! I need help spreading my music, if yall can give my music a listen.

LAE LIFE ON ALL PLATFORMS

I HAVE MORE MUSIC