this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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I mean I think it's a fine career, it's the name that's dumb.
For the most part they're just entertainers. The "influencer" name suggests way more than should be.
Entertainers are supposed to be entertaining though.
These people have all the "entertainment" value of a late-night infomercial at best. "Oooh, watch me get excited about unboxing this item. Whatever could have Disney sent me this week?"
The worst problem is that these influencers do gain huge amounts of followers, but rarely fact-check or do hard sciences needed to ya know, give information to viewers? See Linus Tech Tips and the whole crap they're into right now.
You are watching the wrong persons on youtube.
Aaaand: The thing you think is unfunny might be the funbiest thing since forver for another.
Exactly. And the fact that people have large amounts of followers mean that plenty of people find them entertaining.
I mean, they're mostly indie and could probably easily be compared to stand-up comedians.
Which if we look at it's history is a very crash-and-burn career itself. I think a lot of them are entertaining. But it's certainly a saturated market where it can feel like a needle in a haystack at times.
And really, the issue with LTT, is an issue. But keep in mind on the internet we largely mock news sites in general for being uninformative and many being glorified blogs. It's not as uncommon as we unfortunately may think.
But basically a lot of what is souring you on influencers, either has already happened in other careers or is currently happening to others as well, just we don't think about it as much.
Well “entertaining” is subjective. If these people weren’t entertaining, they wouldn’t have so many followers.
There are absolutely a ton of people out there taking advantage of certain people and manipulating them as opposed to actually being entertaining, but that’s not an “influencer” problem, that’s just a people problem. That happens in every industry with human interaction.
Plenty of influencers just post content they think their followers will like and use that following to make money as well. And a lot of the time, their followers actually enjoy the things they advertise.
And the great thing is if you don’t like the concept, you can just not follow them.
If you were objectively correct and that folks didn't find them entertaining, there wouldn't be the industry and they wouldn't have their followers. It's the same phenomenon that makes reality TV such a big money maker.
Reality TV is a money maker because you barely need any writers.
Reality TV was a reaction to the (repeated) writers strikes. Content, no matter the quality, sells eyeballs. Quality almost doesn't matter in practice. As such, shitty TV that is poorly written makes money because their costs are so low. Not necessarily because people find them entertaining.
They're the McDonalds of Hollywood. Low effort, low cost content designed to fill up televisions but keep audiences with "something" between the major shows people watch.
And no. Reality TV isn't "real" either, its just unscripted, low effort television. Its roughly WWE where characters (and their actors) are given much leeway into the shots / script because they don't want to pay real writers to make an actual script.
It has a lot of eyeballs. That's the whole point. They were extremely popular shows. I don't understand how you're just swiping that part under the rug as if it didn't matter. If no one watched them, they'd stop. They watch them because many people found it entertaining to watch. I can't believe you're trying to create a conspiracy that a bunch of people watched a show because they... didn't enjoy it?
Dude, this is well known Hollywood information.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2023-04-10/writers-strike-reality-tv-unions
Hardly a conspiracy theory. Reality TV is about cheapness, getting non-union work, fewer writers (or even no writers at all), and having far cheaper production.
Both things can be true
Most TV screen hours are in the background so a lot of shows are just filler to keep the schedule full
Like they could be a video journalist or a nature photographer or a lifestyle model. All those would be more descriptive than just influencer.
I prefer "content creators. " Sametimes they can be very educational or entertaining. (I watch a lot of comedy, travel, and home workout content.)