Technical/Academic people might hate "influecer" culture for its crassness, but whenever fame/popularity is the primary goal, this is the only social dynamic.

Technical/Academic people might hate "influecer" culture for its crassness, but whenever fame/popularity is the primary goal, this is the only social dynamic. People are not outraged in academia that the primary goal is fame/popularity (rather than knowledge, technical ability), they're outraged that someone is cheating in this game to get ahead. This is happening across the spectrum tbh, as the world becomes increasingly monocultural and winner-takes-it-all social schema. People talk about anthopocene, but look at human social cultures : the millions of ways of living (with dignity mind you) sustained by < 1B population from as late as a 100 years back is now down to 1 or 2 at best. In such a vast pool, this kind of stuff is not only bound to happen, but is the optimal way forward (okay, may be not such blatant stuff). Honor-code etc. are BS unenforceable measures that are game-theoretically unstable (and kill-off populations that stick to it). See what the finance industry does for instance.