>Who even watches this fake-everything crap? the reason it works is precisely because it's not fake everything. A lot of these influencers are content creators

>Who even watches this fake-everything crap? the reason it works is precisely because it's not fake everything. A lot of these influencers are content creators who have built genuine followings, and are outside of their sponsor and brand deals significantly more personable than your average TV figure. That's why a lot of these people can command such high prices per user. I know a few people in the streamer space and they can usually charge about 1$/viewer/hour for sponsored content. So a streamer with 10k viewers can make 20k just playing a sponsored game for two hours. The audiences are incredibly invested because it's people they've been following for years.