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An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy

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Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy

#131

Post by rigorman »

Jedi72 wrote: post #92
CptFribble wrote: post #76

Apologies 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…

Advertising - including subsets of advertising like including models or playing on insecurities - is only a small subset of the discipline of "Marketing". Most of Marketing is about finding out what people want and need, how to deliver it, and how to let people know your delivery of their need-fulfillment is available.

Gimmicks are only needed if you can't figure out what people need or can't deliver it.

Bringing this up because Silicon Valley would be building much better products if our venture-funded companies hired marketers - not marketers who work on advertisements, social media, etc, I know we hire plenty of those - But the kind of marketers who rigorously research consumer needs and creatively find ways the technical capacity of companies can be deployed to meet those needs. User testing is only a small subset of market research, and it's sloppy, lazy, and ultimately very shortsighted to limit market research to user testing and data mining.

Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy

#132

Post by [deleted] »

CptFribble wrote: post #76

Apologies 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…

[deleted]

Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy

#133

Post by mettamage »

kstenerud wrote: post #120

This is basically a repeat of SEO. At first, you have the early adopters. Things grow organically and it doesn't feel like a zero-sum game because there aren't many players. Next comes the growth phase, where more people get involved, and start competing for attention/clicks/votes/whatever points system. Next comes the exploiters, who discover weaknesses in the system and take advantage of them. They tend to make a l…

This is such a good overview, I feel that an academic version of this idea should be given in software development 101 classes.

Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy

#134

Post by MikeGale »

CptFribble wrote: post #76

Apologies 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 are different audiences out there and the "metrics" reflect some of them but not others.

Simplified version.

Type 1: Think that metrics (followers, friends, likes, reposts...) have meaning. Pursue that meaning. Have no effective moral structure. Maybe are dumb.

Type 2: Don't care about metrics. Find a way to get something that they actually like out of the systems. Have some moral structure.

Much discussion assumes that all users are dominated by their Type 1 side. Type 2's are invisible to the analyst.

Me I say. If everybody is genuinely Type 1 it's time to can "Project Mankind" and start again. Fortunately I know that there are Type 2's out there.

Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy

#135

Post by rigorman »

csa wrote: post #100
Jedi72 wrote: post #92

Earlier 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…

> Marketing is product definition, awareness, lead gen, conversion, and then the measurement and improvement of same.

Don't forget the first step - research. Which involves either boots on the ground, offline, watching, talking to and interacting with people, or paying someone else to do it.

Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy

#136

Post by amelius »

mettamage wrote: post #133
kstenerud wrote: post #120

This is basically a repeat of SEO. At first, you have the early adopters. Things grow organically and it doesn't feel like a zero-sum game because there aren't many players. Next comes the growth phase, where more people get involved, and start competing for attention/clicks/votes/whatever points system. Next comes the exploiters, who discover weaknesses in the system and take advantage of them. They tend to make a l…

This is such a good overview, I feel that an academic version of this idea should be given in software development 101 classes.

Yes but I'd say business school.

Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy

#137

Post by rigorman »

mbesto wrote: post #82
CptFribble wrote: post #76

Apologies 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…

I agree with everything you're saying but this: > How is the "influencer game" different from ads? Big difference -> ads are specifically marked as advertisements as legally required. The legislation is wildly inconsistent for influencers (#ad etc)

Last decade, legislation settled on requiring bloggers to disclose all sponsored posts.

Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy

#138

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

flukus wrote: post #127
ip26 wrote: post #98

Earlier 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.

> Marketing isn't intrinsically evil. No it isn't. It's just a shame that 99.99% of the industry are ruining it for the rest of them. Advertising a new product or service is great, but showing me the ads over and over again is manipulation. Creating a brand to get people emotionally invested is manipulation. Almost the entire industry is manipulating people to buy something they didn't want, spend more than they shou…

Marketing is a subset of the Exploitation Economy, which is effectively a global cult now.

Everything in the exploitation economy is evil. But then most previous attempts at large-scale human organisation have been evil too, in their own ways.

It's possible to have a humane non-exploitation economy, and it might even be possible for it to include some marketing. But it would look very different to the economy we have today.

Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy

#139

Post by atoav »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #95
Jedi72 wrote: post #92

Earlier 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…

Free will is highly overstated though: as the parent comment said, everything you think and believe and thus do is linked to a particular social context. That's true for the stuff you buy, the stuff you believe in, the things you think are "wrong" or "right" or "normal" or "abnormal". When you start looking/living in other societies you realise that all of these is just cultural norms.

But it makes a difference whether you are part of creating a society within which a entities fortune is based on exploiting (and feeding into) the believes of gullible victims or whether you try to create a society in which you try to bring out the best from within the people.

The latter is some sort of humanism, that ultimately resulted in all the things we collectively seem to value about western societies, while the former is more or less responsible for the biggest problems we have.

So even if free will turns out a complete illusion, it would still matter how people treat each other based on that idea. Usually you can amend it to: “Free will is an illusion, at least for those poor idiots who have nobody but themselves to blame for it, which is why it is socially acceptable for me to exploit them”

(This is not aimed at you, it is just a thought that crossed my mind, when I read your comment)

Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy

#140

Post by kristianc »

Jedi72 wrote: post #92
CptFribble wrote: post #76

Apologies 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…

> https://youtu.be/_86qb7hlbJI says it all (only 50 second long and very funny, be sure to check out his other stuff - comedy is usually greatest when its saying something true).

Let me guess, Bill Hicks, right? Anyway, this is a straw man of what marketing actually is.

Marketing is the process of finding out what a customer wants and finding the most efficient way to deliver it. What you've described is advertising.

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