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The Anxiety of Influencers

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Re: The Anxiety of Influencers

#91

Wow, the subject influencers in the article were insufferable just to read about. I can't think of any group I have less empathy for than them. The world would be such a better place if the concept of an "influencer" completely ceased to exist.

I kind of had a similar reaction but about the author! It read like he used an auto-thesaurus, or purposefully chooses more esoteric words simply to up the contrast between how he sees himself - the professor writing smart think pieces whilst going for tenure - versus those dumb vapid teenagers.

[deleted]

Re: The Anxiety of Influencers

#93

What I don't understand is why brands throw so much money at very young influencers. Are they specifically targeting young rich kids who spend big on products/merch? Seems like a small demographic for a $15B projected market...

You don't have to be rich to buy luxury goods. In fact most of them are bought by people who can't afford them but desperately want to own them. There's credit cards, parents, using all your disposable income on them since you don't pay rent, etc.

I recently read that half of Ferrari owners in the UK have a net worth of less than £1M.

Re: The Anxiety of Influencers

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to be rich to buy luxury goods. In fact most of them are bought by people who can't afford them but desperately want to own them. There's credit cards, parents, using all your disposable income on them since you don't pay rent, etc.

I recently read that half of Ferrari owners in the UK have a net worth of less than £1M.

Link to the source? That's a very interesting statistic

Re: The Anxiety of Influencers

#95
post #82

Reminds me of Calhoun's Mouse Utopia experiments: "Other young mice growing into adulthood exhibited an even different type of behavior. Dr. Calhoun called these individuals “the beautiful ones.” Their time was devoted solely to grooming, eating and sleeping. They never involved themselves with others, engaged in sex, nor would they fight. All appeared [outwardly] as a beautiful exhibit of the species with keen, aler…

Like many psychology and sociology papers, Mouse Utopia is now discredited because nobody could reproduce those results: https://www.gwern.net/Mouse-Utopia

"Kessler 1966 only somewhat resembles Calhoun’s results: while Kessler does describe deviant mice behavior driven by density (such as homosexual matings) and high infant mortality/cannibalism, on the other hand, there are no population crashes or cessation of reproduction but stable populations after initial growth, there are no behavioral sinks, any ‘beautiful ones’ or ‘drinkers’ or ‘autistic’ mice are not described as such by Kessler, the mice are healthy overall, and transplanted mice revert"

Re: The Anxiety of Influencers

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the few named brands in the story is a fried chicken place. You don’t have to be rich to afford fried chicken. But fried chicken is a multi-billion-dollar industry. And it’s an industry that is deeply dependent on advertising to maintain brand awareness and segment the market. All fried chicken tastes basically the same, so customers choose stores based on brand attributes. Are you a Popeyes, KFC, or Chick-fil…

> All fried chicken tastes basically the same How many places have you had fried chicken in?

It’s an oversimplification for effect.

Yes, there’s bad fried chicken and good fried chicken. But when you’re hungry cruising down the commercial strip, there may be two national brands you need to quickly choose from. One of those brands comes out on top because their millions of ad spend got you in there once or twice and now they’re you’re favorite.

Source: we got chick-fil-a curbside many Saturdays last year but at least two other fried chicken places are closer and we generally eat much healthier food.

Re: The Anxiety of Influencers

#97

What I don't understand is why brands throw so much money at very young influencers. Are they specifically targeting young rich kids who spend big on products/merch? Seems like a small demographic for a $15B projected market...

Younger audience is more susceptible to aspirational brand messaging - just look at TV ads for youngsters from few decades ago. Old farts are no longer trying to fit in, and in their purchases bring up terms like "lasting value" and "consumer reports". A friend's son, a newly minted teenager a few years back, had a Logan Paul sweatshirt and T-shirt at the top of the birthday wishlist. Never mind that's it's a generic…

Consumption habits are sticky. It's more effective to get a young person to like your product and they'll buy it across their working life than to try and convert someone already loyal to another brand

Re: The Anxiety of Influencers

#98
post #21

Hope they have the brains to not burn their income as soon as it hits their bank accounts. This sort of popularity can surely not last more than a few years in almost all instances.

It's not about brains. The typical mindset of public performers and entertainers (a.k.a. influencers) is they earn money because of who they are. And since their selves usually don't change drastically from year to year, the thinking is the earnings won't change drastically too.

Re: The Anxiety of Influencers

#99
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean 'if'? They're about as disposable as toilet paper. They are created to be disposable and nothing is moderating that impulse at all. Hell, back in the times of Motown they made the child stars go to school. This is in some ways less organized than, but also less moral than, the music business and the film industry. And that takes some DOING, to be worse than the music business and the film industry. I…

I hope these kids will at least get some experience to enter show business with more of a chance of success. Or maybe enough money (if they are wise, or their parents are) to dampen the effects of the inevitable transition.

Here's the dark truth: any kid like this that gets old enough to have a sense of self-protection around this exploitation is way, way less valuable than a new, younger, fresher one that is completely innocent.

You'll get the occasional one who's bright enough to sock money away secretly (from what little I understand, the rapper Chamillionaire was like this?) and pivot into being one of the exploiters with age and maturity, or just be able to make a graceful exit. The thing is, these kids are meant to LOOK like your classic MC Hammer, acting like lottery winners and living large. To figure out that you have to fake that while secretly being a bit cleverer, and pull it off, is impressively shrewd, and I don't think the system selects for it. The system is not assigning extra points for wise.

I would add that a systemic side-benefit to the group form seen here and in K-Pop is that it's easier to swap out kids and discard them, where in a more isolated celebrity model there's more of an incongruity behind building up a star only to then drop 'em and present a different, younger star to replace them. In a group house it's the house that is the star and it's easier to drop a kid.

Re: The Anxiety of Influencers

#100

What I don't understand is why brands throw so much money at very young influencers. Are they specifically targeting young rich kids who spend big on products/merch? Seems like a small demographic for a $15B projected market...

> What I don't understand is why brands throw so much money at very young influencers.

What I don't understand is that we, as a society, allow it.

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