With athletes and movie stars etc there was a much clearer delineation between when they were performing and when they were advertising. A few things blurred th

With athletes and movie stars etc there was a much clearer delineation between when they were performing and when they were advertising. A few things blurred the line, like being paid to wear certain things, but when an athlete is on the field you know they're performing and when they're in a wheaties ad you know they're being paid to sell it. Influencers are much more insidious, you can't tell when they're being themselves and when they're being an influencer. You can't tell what is an honest opinion and what is an ad. A consequence is that that the value of everyone's opinions goes down because you can't trust anything, things like small time blogs used to be a good source of decent information, you'd get valuable real feedback from someone with no money in the game, but now they're an influencer that goes out the window. This is even worse when it bleeds into the real world. As for their ideology, it's the sheer willingness to prostitute their "soul".