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Can't really believe I'm recommending this here. But for a peek into the world of creative kids who move to LA to launch their budding empires on social media.

Can't really believe I'm recommending this here. But for a peek into the world of creative kids who move to LA to launch their budding empires on social media. Check out the Paris Hilton reality show "Hollywood Love Story" on Viceland. It's dark and dystopian. Not a celebration of facile overnight fame at all. There seems to be a distinct "peak" around the 50K followers mark, where no matter how hard you try, you never get past a local maximum of saturation. This looks like a great series by Atlantic editors and will read at length when I get a moment. But I'd say most creators and influencers are well aware of the demands required to scale a personal brand. For a vlogger to get a free Lull mattress and feature it in a five minute segment is a win-win situation. Cash equivalent is ~$1K or less. They still have to make rent. On the other hand, upside of popular social media presence is opportunity. From getting representation at a modeling or acting agency, to art students just out of school getting that first gallery show or sale. It can be considered de rigeur.

vvpan 8y ago
And so Hacker News gets hooked on a Paris Hilton reality show.
selfContainment 8y ago
a distinct "peak" around the 50K followers mark You have to figure that there's a standing population of subculture participants, that represent a feedback loop of engrossed imitators, all incestuously following each other, and backslapping the whole way. Gadflies keeping up with the Joneses. Famous for being famous. It's sort of like artificial trading volume in a niche crypto currency network. A handful of miners mint 30 million coins, then create a couple of hundred sock puppet wallets, to create a closed loop of transactions between, this way it always looks like there are people using the coin, and the system doesn't seem like a ghost town. As spectators and wall flowers show up, jaws drop at the occasional whopper trade between two "anonymous" users, which is actually meaningless, because it was really just one guy moving a million worthless tokens from one address to another, both of which he controls. So too with having 50K followers. When they're all just bots and pros, keeping an eye on the competition, what's that actually worth? Numbers rendered in HTML.

vvpan 8y ago

And so Hacker News gets hooked on a Paris Hilton reality show.

selfContainment 8y ago

a distinct "peak" around the 50K followers mark You have to figure that there's a standing population of subculture participants, that represent a feedback loop of engrossed imitators, all incestuously following each other, and backslapping the whole way. Gadflies keeping up with the Joneses. Famous for being famous. It's sort of like artificial trading volume in a niche crypto currency network. A handful of miners mint 30 million coins, then create a couple of hundred sock puppet wallets, to create a closed loop of transactions between, this way it always looks like there are people using the coin, and the system doesn't seem like a ghost town. As spectators and wall flowers show up, jaws drop at the occasional whopper trade between two "anonymous" users, which is actually meaningless, because it was really just one guy moving a million worthless tokens from one address to another, both of which he controls. So too with having 50K followers. When they're all just bots and pros, keeping an eye on the competition, what's that actually worth? Numbers rendered in HTML.