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This article feels like an advertisement for Emma Chamberlain. This whole "influencer" IG culture is like fast food - no content or substance. It does seem lik

This article feels like an advertisement for Emma Chamberlain. This whole "influencer" IG culture is like fast food - no content or substance. It does seem like we may be hitting some kind of peak as people realize that devoting one's time to following random strangers' vain photos on the internet doesn't actually increase one's well-being.

rezeroed 7y ago
Absolutely. Every Tom, Dick, Harry, and average Joe is a self-anointed so-called life coach, fitness and nutrition expert, relationship expert, financial expert. I don't use instagram but twitter is crawling with these mediocre poseurs.
basetop 7y ago
It's not just the "influencers". It's the entire media system. 99.99% of traditional media and social media are just fillers with no substance or value. And we are nowhere close to peak. Look at the hysteria developing on traditional media and social media for the pending "royal" birth. But then again, who am I to judge. I'm on a social media complaining about social media.
- kabacha 7y ago
  > 99.99% of traditional media and social media are just fillers with no substance or value. I absolutely and completely disagree with you here. 99.99% media is filler? Just look over the things you read through out the day and tell me it doesn't have more substance than a picture of a girl in an obscure outfit captioned "it's cold outside today". Today I read about game of thrones theories about newest episode, read news about a terrorist being stopped in France, upcoming events in my town, checking what people selling on facebook market and what's the current employment state in crypto world etc. etc. I can actually explain substance and value in all of these posts. Can you explain value in the instagram post? Other than some questionable social-well-being-acceptance pseudo-science? To claim that 99.99% of all media and social media is like the absolutely absurd instagram influencer posts is just completely and utterly silly.
- asdff 7y ago
  I wonder what you read if you think nearly all traditional media is filler with no substance or value. I pay a dollar a week for NYT and I still feel like I'm stealing from them.
notyourday 7y ago
It just demonstrates in spades how out of touch the marketers, brands, etc are with reality. The "new" influencers are the teenage/early college women that are hot. That's why they have a "following". There's nothing else to it. The older ones are tripping out of the most desired demographics because they are in their late twenties. That's why the "old" style is out.
behnamoh 7y ago
I have mixed feelings about this "influencers" phenomenon. On one hand, one might say these people really don't add any value to one's life and as a result, we should design mechanisms that rids the social media of such phenomenon. On the other hand, in a free market/world people are free to do whatever they want and follow whomever they find interesting. So, maybe it's just another "phase" of human evolution in the bigger scheme of things; one that should be experienced by a few generations in order for them to really realize what's important and what's not. Ask yourself this: how were all these foods invented thousands of years ago? People probably died of suddenly eating something they were not supposed to consume, and through trial-and-error, they finally realized what's healthy for them and what's not. The "Influencers" thing is just like that, only this time it deals with peoples' minds rather than their bodies.

rezeroed 7y ago

Absolutely. Every Tom, Dick, Harry, and average Joe is a self-anointed so-called life coach, fitness and nutrition expert, relationship expert, financial expert. I don't use instagram but twitter is crawling with these mediocre poseurs.

basetop 7y ago

It's not just the "influencers". It's the entire media system. 99.99% of traditional media and social media are just fillers with no substance or value. And we are nowhere close to peak. Look at the hysteria developing on traditional media and social media for the pending "royal" birth. But then again, who am I to judge. I'm on a social media complaining about social media.

kabacha 7y ago
> 99.99% of traditional media and social media are just fillers with no substance or value. I absolutely and completely disagree with you here. 99.99% media is filler? Just look over the things you read through out the day and tell me it doesn't have more substance than a picture of a girl in an obscure outfit captioned "it's cold outside today". Today I read about game of thrones theories about newest episode, read news about a terrorist being stopped in France, upcoming events in my town, checking what people selling on facebook market and what's the current employment state in crypto world etc. etc. I can actually explain substance and value in all of these posts. Can you explain value in the instagram post? Other than some questionable social-well-being-acceptance pseudo-science? To claim that 99.99% of all media and social media is like the absolutely absurd instagram influencer posts is just completely and utterly silly.
asdff 7y ago
I wonder what you read if you think nearly all traditional media is filler with no substance or value. I pay a dollar a week for NYT and I still feel like I'm stealing from them.

notyourday 7y ago

It just demonstrates in spades how out of touch the marketers, brands, etc are with reality. The "new" influencers are the teenage/early college women that are hot. That's why they have a "following". There's nothing else to it. The older ones are tripping out of the most desired demographics because they are in their late twenties. That's why the "old" style is out.

behnamoh 7y ago

I have mixed feelings about this "influencers" phenomenon. On one hand, one might say these people really don't add any value to one's life and as a result, we should design mechanisms that rids the social media of such phenomenon. On the other hand, in a free market/world people are free to do whatever they want and follow whomever they find interesting. So, maybe it's just another "phase" of human evolution in the bigger scheme of things; one that should be experienced by a few generations in order for them to really realize what's important and what's not. Ask yourself this: how were all these foods invented thousands of years ago? People probably died of suddenly eating something they were not supposed to consume, and through trial-and-error, they finally realized what's healthy for them and what's not. The "Influencers" thing is just like that, only this time it deals with peoples' minds rather than their bodies.