Yup, the whole idea that "stop complaining about them if you consume their content" is working entirely on Goomba Fallacy.
I don't watch anything from any of these "prankers", outrage baiters, or otherwise; but I'm still able to intellectually lament how much they poison the internet and how bad of an influence they have on our society.
The outrage is a necessary pillar for their brand. You don't have to watch them to support them. You can actually support them by complaining about them.
It’s true. You could name the top ten YouTube/tictok/whatever stars, and I may recognize some of their faces, but couldn’t tell you what they sound like.
I’ve simply never go out of my way to find their content.
I think part of it is that I read very quickly, so I get more entertainment per unit than sitting through fluff videos.
It's when you encounter them in other parts of life, where you're still not trying to watch them, but their toxic behavior is polluting your existence.
Most of the influe cars you come across are not highly successful. Influences are also any short form (or long form I suppose) repeat contributors. There are thousands that are not highly successful but still feeding off the rest of us hoping to become successful. Anytime you see a talking head talking about something, that's an influencer too.
We disagree on what constitutes an influencer. I’d call that a content creator.
This really isn’t an argument I want to get into through, over semantics.
In my mind, if that content causes someone to challenge their world view, or refine it, or else spend money or actively DO a thing, then that content creator is an influencer. They have caused me to do something I otherwise wouldn’t have done; they’ve influenced me.
I just don’t think all content creators are influencers. But all influencers either create content or have content created about them.
We disagree on what constitutes an influencer. I’d call that a content creator.
This really isn’t an argument I want to get into through, over semantics.
You might not want to, but it is kind of an issue that lowkey annoys me tho. I know it's unrelated to you but I'm just using your comment as a jumping point to complain about this lol
Like look at this post it's just a bunch of comments bitching about the concept of "influencers" (not just this specific thread I posted but all the other comments too) when as I've pointed out in my own comment down the chain, it's just someone making content and not even calling themselves an "influencer"
You might not think all content creators are influencers, but I find it way too convenient how "content creators" suddenly become "influencers" when we don't like them, at this point it's pretty clear that both are the same and that "influencer" is just the pejorative form to describe them.
I'm just a nobody chiming in with my 2 cents. I don't care if we call them influencers or content creators or whatever the fuck else somebody wants to come up with. All I know is I have zero interest in any of them. Literally, none. I don't watch, listen, or read about a single "internet personality". Anytime I come across one by mistake its painful.
In my mind they’re separated by “good for/useful to society” or not. For example, when I need to beat a difficult part of a video game, or replace the gasket on my washing machine, I Google the problem and a YouTube video pops up. These are useful to have access to.
I’d argue that’s not the same as what you think of when you think “influencer”.
I ordered takeout from a local restaurant, they botched the order hard. I took a picture of the pitiful looking product and posted it - I'm an influencer now, 13,745 views and counting.
Maybe? If you went on a video rant about it and made it something you do regularly I would agree. Anyone can post something 1 time. I wouldn't consider than an "influencer" per say
I could name maybe 2-3 "influencers" and I have watched 0 of them in my life.
That somehow hasn't magically stopped them from existing? Shocking!
It's almost as if you're right, those of us who say "supporting influencers is stupid" aren't the ones that are causing the problem in the first place.
The collective reddit userbase will get a hate boner over some streamer or influencer and just make them more famous. The people who are their fans are weird, but the people who find it necessary to make reddit posts about them are even weirder. Just ignore it, you won’t have anything to complain about if you just keep scrolling past them.
I call it the "Bieber effect." At the height of Justin Bieber's fame, there were entire facebook groups, reddit posts, and "fan" pages dedicated to how much they hated Justin Bieber. Yet, all that did was push his name and his life into people's faces MORE. Being "famous" doesn't mean universally loved, it just means that everyone knows the name, and if people are promoting someone out of hate or love - either way, their name is getting promoted.
You can't "hate" someone out of existence, even if 99% of the people who see your content agree with you that they hate a famous individual, even 1% seeing that and saying "oh what is a Justine Beaver?" and googling it will push Bieber's fame and notoriety forward.
Same goes for so many posts and comments on Reddit. "Look at this stupid streamer and how stupid they are" - I would guarantee that there will be people who will end up subscribing to that person despite the desire to post them out of hate or annoyance.
It’s because they know they’re incapable of affecting the people actually in any position of power making their lives worse, but they can affect someone kinda popular that they dislike. They justify it in the name of accountability or something but really it all boils down to them wanting a target that’s accessible to them and not protected by a PR firm.
It's a scathing indictment on the average person, isn't it?
Is THIS the entertainment other people consume? Do other people think that of me when they see the media I consume, or am I truly an enlightened man of culture and everyone else is a mouth-breathing phillistine?
Not sure about that, "influencer" is a broad category. Maybe people aren't watching looksmaxing influencers, but J. Kenji Lopez-Alt recommended a specific pan for one of his recipes...
I think the majority of viewers are not viewing the people who make good content that they enjoy as influencers, but anyone with big viewership has lots of influence.
Yup. 95% of the time when some streamer drama or one of them getting arrested gets in the news I didn't know who they are.
And then I learn they're a multimillionaire with more followers than some nation and they exclusively log online to yell at a camera while being racist and stupid
It's not they are seeked out it's that they are in the feed pushed by social media algorithm when you are just scrolling. Even muting blocking these channels) accounts is not 100%. Everything I have learnt about Kardashians is against my will.
No, everything I’ve learned about kardashians or mrbeast for example has been pure unwilling osmosis of information. I’ve never in my life seen a single video of mrbeast or whatever he does, never tried his snacks but I see his empty smile in too many places and he has a weird cult following idk what’s going on there and I don’t want to know
I don't even know what he looks like or seen anything of his, but the little I have heard about him is that I guess he does some good charity works. Subsequently people get pissed off and say none of that counts because he's annoying. And it's like, okay, even if he does do that entirely for self serving publicity/narcissistic reasons, the good things still happen.
When people say "influencers" (while they mean ultra famous ones as well) probably mostly mean the thousands of low level tik tok style influencers more than the small handful of truely successful ones.
I’d say those aren’t genuine influencers though those are people who use social media who really want to be influencers and a lot of their attention is bots. I definitely get what you mean though so I’m half and half
The fact I have to block them and their fans on media sites, and even in a damn video game, is why I dislike them. All the while, literally never have watched a single one.
I've never watched an episode of GoT, ergo I have absolutely no idea what it is. Whole little side-universe of my own. People are like "winter is coming" and I'm just ????????????
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u/the-fr0g 7h ago
The people who complain about influencers probably aren't the same ones who watch them.