>I’m no Mother Teresa, I did my fair share of light-cheating at the beginning of this dark age
Ok then.
An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy
61–70 of 211 posts
Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
They did exist before the internet. But could they reach the masses for so little out of pocket? Could they reach as many so easily? Edit: To a degree, yes. Infomercials were wildly successful. But were there other ways?
Back in ancient times, scammers placed small ads in the back of comic books and computer ad catalogs and gardening magazines and the like. I remember one case where a guy placed an ad that said, "Send $1 to [his P.O. box]" and made some money over the course of a few months before anyone complained. He didn't promise to send anything for the dollar, so iirc he wasn't prosecuted.
But I swear these X-ray specs are legit and that you can learn to be a ventriloquist in only 5 days!
Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The shear number of typos Your being facetious, right?
> Your being facetious, right? ... Uh, did you intend to misspell that, just to drive home the point? Or did you actually make a grammatical mistake, while calling out another poster's grammatical mistake, who was him- or her- self calling out yet a third person's grammatical mistakes?
Both Muphry's Law and Poe's Law seem to apply here:
Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy
#64The use of the term "merit" in this context feels fraught with issue. One could say that, almost by definition, the individual with the most ability to game the system has the highest merit. If a poker player is able to read the opponents' faces where no-one else can - they win based on merit. The losers may well disclaim this as being some sort of 'hack'. We are speaking here about some pictures on a small, rectangu…
I stopped reading when the author complained about being able to "buy reposts and shout outs from feature accounts and influencers." Isn't that exactly what being an influencer means: people paying for shoutouts? So it's ok when you're getting paid, but it's fraud when you're paying someone else for the shoutout?
Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy
#65Man, reading this makes me so happy I don't care about social media, and I have other aspirations than trying to be a social media influencer. What a miserable feeling, chasing numbers, producing and contributing nothing real to humanity. I bet it is better for happiness and mental health to stay away from all that.
>What a miserable feeling, chasing numbers, producing and contributing nothing real to humanity. Yeah. This isn't exclusive to social media influencers, though.
The thing is, the people who do it don't know that's all they are doing. It's meaningful to them. False hope is a terrible thing.
Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy
#66Sounds like it can take a lot of money and effort to become a winner at the game of Instagram. The system has rules; you have to know them and play them in order to win. Other players know the rules too, and you know that they know that, so fun second order effects exist. I can see why it could be fun, competing with other players. Trying to keep up with whatever kind of picture (and legend behind it, I expect) score…
It does matter, because "winning" at IG means you have an audience. Audiences can and will be monetized. I don't think this is that hard to see.
The reason so many people go so hard on the Instagram game isn't just to make themselves feel good or validated, it's because when you have 400,000 people watching your stories every day a lot of people will pay you to wear their gear while you do it.
Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy
#67The use of the term "merit" in this context feels fraught with issue. One could say that, almost by definition, the individual with the most ability to game the system has the highest merit. If a poker player is able to read the opponents' faces where no-one else can - they win based on merit. The losers may well disclaim this as being some sort of 'hack'. We are speaking here about some pictures on a small, rectangu…
Based off this definition of merit, any system would be meritocratic. A politician winning elections by purchasing votes wouldn't be considered to be merit based.
In poker, reading tells is an accepted part of the game and within the rules. It's my understanding that most of the tactics reported in the article are against Instagram's rules.
Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy
#68As a nine-year old, I watched commercials on our black and white TV showing famous baseball players claiming they "smoked Camels." I knew then that smoking was dangerous, and that it was unlikely that the players "smoked Camels," either. So I don't get this influencer crap. I mean I really do not get it.
I don't think the intentional is to get people to smoke who otherwise wouldn't. It's to get the people who are going to buy cigarettes, and in doing so, chose their brand. When confronted with many choices of competing products, having someone you trust and admire favour a particular product may be enough to tip the scales and get you to take that option.
I find myself doing this often, due to all the podcast ads I hear! If I'm going to buy a mattress or printed framed picture I'm going to start with I've heard about from some "influencer" I follow.
Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy
#69>I’m no Mother Teresa, I did my fair share of light-cheating at the beginning of this dark age Ok then.
I was just skimming, but did anyone else get the impression this guy was actually trying to teach people how to cheat, with the complaining tone just for deniability?
Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The shear number of typos Your being facetious, right?
> Your being facetious, right? ... Uh, did you intend to misspell that, just to drive home the point? Or did you actually make a grammatical mistake, while calling out another poster's grammatical mistake, who was him- or her- self calling out yet a third person's grammatical mistakes?
This exchange here is my favorite thing on HN today.