Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you feel about HN?
Better culturally than most, but too much of a timesink to be a net-positive for society.
Can't tell if sunk cost fallacy or honest. Do you use IG/other social media?
An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy
101–110 of 211 posts
Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy
#102Apologies if this is too meta, but all the claims of "ugh so glad I don't care about social media" and "what do influencers am I right????" feel really, really disingenuous on a forum run by a silicon valley incubator, where discussions of building products that run on advertisements regularly take place. I think there's a deeper truth that most people, including us here on HN, don't want to admit: humans are at not…
> feel really, really disingenuous on a forum run by a silicon valley incubator, where discussions of building products that run on advertisements regularly take place.
Just because they take place here doesnt mean everyone here is involved in these discussions.
Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy
#103Scams, conmen and pretenders. None of this is new and certainly doesn't mean the death of meritocracy. At most this is a conversation about how IG is enabling bad behaviour, but it's not quite end of the world territory.
Jeremy Campbell, The liar's tale : a history of falsehood https://www.worldcat.org/title/liars-tale-a-history-of-false... Herman Melville, The Confidence-Man : His Masquerade https://www.worldcat.org/title/confidence-man-his-masquerade...
til that con-man means confidence man as in the past people where foolish enough to trust people confident to be their friends and then asked for their watches (surprisingly they trusted) and thus stealing them.
Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy
#104As 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 h…
But why follow the influencer at all?
Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Marketing isn't intrinsically evil. The positive side, for example, might be showing people how great switching to wireless headphones is going to be, (justifying the expense) and then hey what do you know these really are awesome! Marketing at its best is helping people see how a product fills a need or makes their life better in a way that might not have been clear at first.
If people honestly wanted or needed a particular thing, then marketing would be irrelevant. We've been manufacturing demand to meet supply for decades now. It is fundamentally a disingenuous act.
Thirty years ago nobody knew why they should care about the internet. Fifteen years ago nobody understood why they should get a smartphone. New technology often has to initially answer the question of "Why should I care", even if it's obvious in retrospect. You could wait around for people to figure it out on their own, or you could help them.
Just as an illustration, if you watched the show Silicon Valley, this was one of their big challenges. We made something brilliant, but hardly anyone understands why it matters.
Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
If people honestly wanted or needed a particular thing, then marketing would be irrelevant. We've been manufacturing demand to meet supply for decades now. It is fundamentally a disingenuous act.
Thirty years ago nobody knew why they should care about the internet. Fifteen years ago nobody understood why they should get a smartphone. New technology often has to initially answer the question of "Why should I care", even if it's obvious in retrospect. You could wait around for people to figure it out on their own, or you could help them. Just as an illustration, if you watched the show Silicon Valley, this was…
Exactly, we've all been shepherded here and now have nothing to show for it but increased rates of cancer, illiteracy and suicide. All thanks to PR.
Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Marketing isn't intrinsically evil. The positive side, for example, might be showing people how great switching to wireless headphones is going to be, (justifying the expense) and then hey what do you know these really are awesome! Marketing at its best is helping people see how a product fills a need or makes their life better in a way that might not have been clear at first.
If people honestly wanted or needed a particular thing, then marketing would be irrelevant. We've been manufacturing demand to meet supply for decades now. It is fundamentally a disingenuous act.
This is ridiculous. There are about a zillion products and brands out there that people didn't know about until they found out through marketing.
Also, lol @ commenting on Hacker News to rail against marketing. This is literally a lead-gen site for YC
Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy
#108>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?
This post was written by a woman, fwiw.
Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy
#109Apologies if this is too meta, but all the claims of "ugh so glad I don't care about social media" and "what do influencers am I right????" feel really, really disingenuous on a forum run by a silicon valley incubator, where discussions of building products that run on advertisements regularly take place. I think there's a deeper truth that most people, including us here on HN, don't want to admit: humans are at not…
There is a deeper truth that marketing people (like yourself I am guessing?) don't want to admit: what you do is wrong. To it's very core. You're attempting to take away people's free will, using the dirtiest tactics one could imagine. Emotional manipulation, exploiting peoples insecurities, their need to feel a certain level of status from their peers: these are staple tactics of a marketer, and social media influen…
Are you suggesting goebbels was evil?
Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a deeper truth that marketing people (like yourself I am guessing?) don't want to admit: what you do is wrong. To it's very core. You're attempting to take away people's free will, using the dirtiest tactics one could imagine. Emotional manipulation, exploiting peoples insecurities, their need to feel a certain level of status from their peers: these are staple tactics of a marketer, and social media influen…
> what you do is wrong. To it's very core. You're attempting to take away people's free will, using the dirtiest tactics one could imagine. Emotional manipulation, exploiting peoples insecurities, their need to feel a certain level of status from their peers: these are staple tactics of a marketer For the record, this is not what marketing professionals do. What you are talking about is somewhere between black-hat ad…
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For the record, this is not what marketing professionals do. What you are talking about is somewhere between black-hat advertising and lifestyle advertising (which is much deeper than "manipulation").
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Marketing professionals absolutely use manipulative predatory tactics like that on the people they are trying to convince to buy their products. Just because you nonsensically try to suggest otherwise, doesn't magically make it so.
What's even less shocking is that it has real limitations in that, once trust is lost by a bad actor in one area of marketing, all other areas are suddenly seen as untrustworthy as well. That is the reason marketing only tends to work on younger people with little to no previous experience being targeted for the hard sell.
You can't distance yourself from people who use predatory advertising as a means to increase the "awarenes" metric any more than you can claim marketing isn't actually selling anything.....