5 ms·
It's pretty insidious. People form parasocial relationships with these social media personas. When they recommend blueberries, or a brand of lip gloss, or invas
by morsch 3y ago
It's pretty insidious. People form parasocial relationships with these social media personas. When they recommend blueberries, or a brand of lip gloss, or invasive surgery, it's like a recommendation from a friend.
I doubt it's a new phenomenon -- presumably in the past people bought sneakers because some celebrity wore them or recommended them. But it's probably more ubiquitous? And I think it's easier to fool yourself you have a relationship or kinship with a Instagram microcelebrity than with Micheal Jordan.
- tivert 3y ago> And I think it's easier to fool yourself you have a relationship or kinship with a Instagram microcelebrity than with Micheal Jordan. That, and it's probably easier to be fooled into thinking some Instagram microcelebrity is expressing a true independent opinion rather than making a paid endorsement. I think a similar thing happened to blogs. I recall reading years ago about a "mattress blog" that presented itself as some enthusiast sharing his knowledge, but it was 100% pay-for-play promotion. I'm not super active on social media, but I'm assuming something similar is going on there with influencers. An additional insidious dynamic is how advertising camouflages itself in whatever medium is the popular way for people to share honest opinions with strangers, then infects it so totally that you can't really trust it anymore. It's really undermined one of the positive selling points of the web.
- ghaff 3y agoI have trouble marshaling any outrage in this particular instance but anyone with a base level of intelligence knew that "Got Milk?" was a paid for advertising campaign while you may not know if some blog or Tik-Tok is the legit opinion of an enthusiast or is pay for play.
- ryandrake 3y agoAt this point we have decades of dealing with this. Shouldn't the default assumption be that someone promoting a product online is being paid to do it, until they somehow demonstrate that they are not?
- ghaff 3y agoI prefer to just maintain a healthy skepticism. After all, even if I'm getting an honest opinion, it doesn't mean my needs and preferences are the same as the reviewer's.
- subpixel 3y agoI think I choose who I am influenced by, but I am definitely influenced. Whether it's the cooking channels I follow on YouTube or the things I see others owning in Instagram posts, it seeps in.
- creshal 3y ago> I doubt it's a new phenomenon -- presumably in the past people bought sneakers because some celebrity wore them or recommended them. Ancient Romans bought specific brands because gladiators advertised it, and their most parasocially attached fans bought their bottled sweat as perfume. So it's been around for as about as long as true commercial enterprises in the "modern" sense have been around. > But it's probably more ubiquitous? I think it's far more obvious today, because it's so hyper focused and fractured and short lived today that these phenomena are no longer society wide, decade long "fashion trends". In the era of mass media, everyone got influenced by the same handful of celebrities and wasn't really aware of what was happening since everyone did it roughly at the same time, now you have thousands of bubbles forming around thousands of micro-celebrities, and everyone thinks what people in the other bubbles are doing is weird.