I was scammed by a celebrity influencer • Hacker News Board

Re: I was scammed by a celebrity influencer

#51

Post by Rjevski » Sat, Dec 15, 2018, 7:38 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #50

nosuchthing wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except there were maybe 20 of those magazines where as now the barrier to entry is so easy that there's 20 million kids making these sorts of photos.

So? The same happened with text on the internet. Now everybody's a publisher. That seems like a good thing to me.

The problem here is that there’s a limited pool of consumers (and thus money) for this content.

It used to be that the aforementioned magazines were sufficient to fill that gap of the market; as a result they were making decent money, could put out decent content that people were happy with and didn’t have to resort to scammy behaviour to make profit.

Nowadays the floodgates are open and everyone is a wannabe “influencer” except the pool of consumers & money remained the same, so they now have to resort to less than acceptable techniques to try and make money, and this article is one of the possible outcomes.

Text on the internet has the same problem by the way - there’s now a shit ton of garbage content written only to gain clicks and attention without actually delivering any value to the reader.

Re: I was scammed by a celebrity influencer

#52

Post by zeroDivisible » Sat, Dec 15, 2018, 8:05 PM UTC

ryanlol wrote: post #2

I think it's quite the stretch to describe someone as a celebrity just because they have 800k instagram followers. And yeah, that site is full of scammers with high follower counts. I own a couple of nice names and constantly have people with million+ followers messaging me trying to scam me for them.

How can somebody scam you out of your Instagram name other than you giving / selling it to them?

Re: I was scammed by a celebrity influencer

#53

Post by ryanlol » Sat, Dec 15, 2018, 8:54 PM UTC

zeroDivisible wrote: post #52

ryanlol wrote: post #2

I think it's quite the stretch to describe someone as a celebrity just because they have 800k instagram followers. And yeah, that site is full of scammers with high follower counts. I own a couple of nice names and constantly have people with million+ followers messaging me trying to scam me for them.

How can somebody scam you out of your Instagram name other than you giving / selling it to them?

They pretend to be buying the name and string you along for a while, after a bit they request you swap the name onto a fresh account before they'll send you the money. If you try to swap the name, they'll use a script to automatically register it.

Apparently lots of people fall for this, at least according to the scammers. Given how many DMs I get every day, I don't doubt it at all.

Re: I was scammed by a celebrity influencer

#54

Post by spaceflunky » Sat, Dec 15, 2018, 10:30 PM UTC

maxxxxx wrote: post #38

woogiewonka wrote: post #30

These "influencers" and their instagram accounts are so cringeworthy. How can anyone live their life like this, constantly posing and putting on an image? This can't be healthy. I get the money making aspect and getting paid to do something like travel.. but at what point does posing for glamour shots take away the fun of enjoying the places you go? Why do people follow these people? I don't get it...

I myself have no desire to live that lifestyle but when you think about, it probably beats most office jobs by far.

By what measure? All you see is a framed seconds. What you don't see is all the hours these influencers spend begging someone, anyone to give them a freebie or some kind of support. Then they get the free hotel room, and they spend the rest of the time on shitty wifi trying to line up the next freebie. Then when you add up all the time they spent, it works out to probably be below minimum wage. There is no way some nobody with even 1MM followers is making a sustainable living and saving the future.

Sure, these people get to go places, but are they ever really looking at it through the eyes of relaxation? It just seems miserable to me actually. I feel the same way about actors, the job of acting actually sucks, but at least they get million dollar payouts at the end. The instagram 'stars' are lucky to get a free hotel room and a discounted flight.

Re: I was scammed by a celebrity influencer

#55

Post by spaceflunky » Sat, Dec 15, 2018, 10:32 PM UTC

reidjs wrote: post #3

ryanlol wrote: post #2

I think it's quite the stretch to describe someone as a celebrity just because they have 800k instagram followers. And yeah, that site is full of scammers with high follower counts. I own a couple of nice names and constantly have people with million+ followers messaging me trying to scam me for them.

Well if you have 500 people willing to pay $500 for a course I would call you a celebrity. Not because of the number of followers, but because of the value of those followers.

She's just tapping a market with a huge demand and no one offering any "supply."

There are no university courses for "instagram star" so if you're the charlatan who is promising fame and fortune for the low low price of $500, there are plenty of people willing to hop on board. If anything I would say 500 people is really low.

Re: I was scammed by a celebrity influencer

#56

Post by maxxxxx » Sun, Dec 16, 2018, 1:07 AM UTC

spaceflunky wrote: post #54

maxxxxx wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I myself have no desire to live that lifestyle but when you think about, it probably beats most office jobs by far.

By what measure? All you see is a framed seconds. What you don't see is all the hours these influencers spend begging someone, anyone to give them a freebie or some kind of support. Then they get the free hotel room, and they spend the rest of the time on shitty wifi trying to line up the next freebie. Then when you add up all the time they spent, it works out to probably be below minimum wage. There is no way some n…

As I said I don't find that lifestyle desirable but it still may beat commuting 2 hours each day and sitting in an office.

Re: I was scammed by a celebrity influencer

#57

Post by wpietri » Sun, Dec 16, 2018, 2:10 AM UTC

Rjevski wrote: post #51

wpietri wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? The same happened with text on the internet. Now everybody's a publisher. That seems like a good thing to me.

The problem here is that there’s a limited pool of consumers (and thus money) for this content. It used to be that the aforementioned magazines were sufficient to fill that gap of the market; as a result they were making decent money, could put out decent content that people were happy with and didn’t have to resort to scammy behaviour to make profit. Nowadays the floodgates are open and everyone is a wannabe “influe…

Sure?

I agree that free distribution and approximately infinite supply have been a problem for many content businesses that based their businesses on scarcity. But as far as I can tell the topic here is whether Instagram content is valuable. It is. Many valuable things can be hard to monetize. E.g., air.