Thinking of today's White House gathering of Ticktok 'influencers' and some videos I've been watching about cosmetic plastic surgery where the subjects were referred to as "celebrities and influencers."
Is this the dawn of the age of nondescript influencers whose only purpose is to implant the ideas of the ruling class on the illiterate public?
They're not statesmen or movie stars or musicians or actors or authors; they're not preachers or philosophers or inventors or shamans. They don't do anything at all except well, influence?
This seems so empty, what am I missing?
Interesting thanks. So an influencer is created by algorithmic manipulation, it's an imaginary creation by IT. Hadn't thought about that on the scale of actual real life.
"Influencers" are the virtual equivalent of biological Leninism. They are talentless, and therefore created by and dependent on, the powers who created them, and must remain loyal to retain their position.
I'd say it's even more base than that of "most loyal": they're more like rats adapting to a newly designed maze. Those that can't adapt to the maze get nothing for not reaching the end, and those that do, behave in the way the designers want.
At best, their loyalty is to money; to get money, you need more views; to get views, you need to work the algorithm. The rats don't solve a puzzle because they enjoy finding solutions, they do it for the cheese.
:) saved.
An influencer is like most troons these days.
Failed humans who were unable to actually do anything so moved into a position that leeches off of both the insecurities of the general public and their wallet.
They don't contribute anything, they just give many a sense of "belonging" because for many they lack any tangible group to be part of and despite reassurances by many humans are still social creatures that need a social network of some kind.
Social media exploits that hard and anyone making money off of social media, be that FB, Twitter, or even YT/Tiktok as a talking head, is exploiting the primal desire to part of an in group.
To be expected when anyone can have a “platform” or some teenager on social media can get lavish praise for condemning racism, talking about climate change, or parroting whatever is trendy at the moment
An "influencer" is any hired gun with an audience, regardless of what they did to get that audience. If George Foreman or Gwyneth Paltrow were using their celebrity to sell someone else's product rather than their own, they would be influencers despite also being an Olympic gold medalist and an actress respectively.
Whores. The word for them used to be whores.
Correct.
Their function is to merely amplify and relay whatever propaganda they are given to their audience.
Sometimes, in a rare display of critical thought or original thinking, they might add their own two cents to The Message, but their role is just to extend the reach of the signal.
Edit: To be more generous, I suppose you could consider them as curators, who garner an audience because their particular flavour or offering of filtering and selecting content meets the wants of the viewers.
While other channels might do research, offer insight, invite qualified and experienced experts, and provide commentary, what the former seem to do is merely show their audience "here are some things that might interest you" and leave it at that.
Same argument- "fact checkers"
"Influencer" is like "aspiring rapper" but for white people.
You're not missing anything xleb2.
Influencer is same kind of narcissistic strong sounding made up role like job creator or trend setter.
What the really are is preachers and state protected speakers.
Just like the talking heads in the media have no skills. They read from a teleprompter or cue cards and tell you what someone else wrote. They make a ton of money being a parrot.
This is more what I was thinking. This isn't "the dawn" of talentless people being leveraged to spread a message. It is the latest iteration of it. Back when people trusted TV news, you had big name news anchors.
It's literally a Faustian Bargain. You can have all the fame and money that you want, all you have to do is sell your face and name to the narrative so it can use them to deceive the masses.
Another parallel would be pornstars. No soul, no talent, just a pretty face to be used to control people.
Sort of related and maybe of some interest:
In William Gibson's novel Pattern Recognition, there is a new market niche in the internet ecology for individuals who have an above average ability to predict which trends and memes will be successful. Marketing and advertising companies hire them as consultants to help "read" the market.
In Vernor Vinge's novel Rainbow's End, there is a job role called "Search and Analysis". As the name suggests, there are people who make their living by being above average at finding information and sifting through all the noise and garbage and propaganda.
Influencer (neologism) (noun) :
Male - see Male feminist, SIMP.
Female - see Dubai Porta Potty.
I see 'Influencer' and I think OnlyFanatics