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How sustainable is this before it starts to destroy trust and integrity in the friendships between these kids. As an adult, I would not like my friends to be pr
by zakum1 8y ago
How sustainable is this before it starts to destroy trust and integrity in the friendships between these kids. As an adult, I would not like my friends to be promoting products to me rather than expressing their real preferences and insights. How much more toxic is this in teenage years when relationship skills are being formed?
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y agoThis is not for friends at all. You have one account for these kinds of things and another one, often private, for real friends. Of course many of your friends follow both accounts but they understand very well it's a kind of job and, in general, are supportive. You're not selling things to them like in MLM.
- tsumnia 8y agoRight, someone with 8,000 followers is not "friends" with all of them.
- j-c-hewitt 8y agoIt's MLM reinvented with more child labor.
- wlkr 8y agoHardly, from what I understand. There's no initial financial outlay beyond phone, internet, and time - which they already have - and as far as I can tell there are no commitments or personality contracts. Will it last like this, though? I doubt it. I expect the near future will being middle-men driving down the already low prices and demanding increasingly more of the advertisers in terms of what they can and cannot post, who they are allowed to work with, etc.
- usrusr 8y agoBut the analogy is still tempting. How much of the attention heaped upon influencers is coming from people who hope to get some back for their own rise to influencerdom? Still closer to plain old high-school popularity, but now with a dangling carrot of a career possibility.
- bilbo0s 8y agoThey are not promoting to their friends. Most have different accounts for talking to friends. The accounts with 8 thousand, or 20 thousand, or 50 thousand followers are obviously not all close friends. They are people following the child's internet persona.
- ionforce 8y agoBut what if you're a crappy social media maven and you HAVE conflated your fake friends and real friends? What if you had no real friends at all...
- wmeredith 8y agoThen you likely learn a tough lesson. This is called growing up.
- gone35 8y agoYeah: the account 'for friends' is called "frinsta" (or something) nowadays.
- 394549 8y ago> Yeah: the account 'for friends' is called "frinsta" (or something) nowadays. rinsta = real instagram = public, heavily managed to project an image, for acquaintances and others finsta = fake instagram = private, informal, for real friends https://thetechieguy.com/what-is-finsta-and-rinsta-and-why-do-teens-have-these/ https://thetechieguy.com/what-is-finsta-and-rinsta-and-why-d...
- village-idiot 8y agoWelp, I feel old.
- mrhappyunhappy 8y agoDon't worry buddy, my guess is 95% of us are in the same boat.
- nradov 8y agoIf it teaches kids to distrust by default what they see online then that would be a positive.
- Larrikin 8y agoBlind trust in everything on the internet is equally as bad as assuming that everything from the greatest collection of human knowledge is a lie. Skepticism and critical evaluation are the skills that should be encouraged.
- wmeredith 8y agoEh, give the kids some credit. This is the modern equivalent of bringing candy from home and selling it at school. Kids these days are likely far better than you and I at sussing out a social media hustle.