The college entrance scandal has intrroduced me to a new social category. The daughter of one of the actresses, whose college entrance [the daughter, not the actress] was facilitated by hefty bribe payments, is described in news stories as an "influencer."
Am I the last kid on the block to learn this term?
It's not a social category; it's a job. Influencers are people with strong social media presences who take money in return for featuring a company's products or services in their social media postings.
ReplyDeleteCool. How do I get to be an influencer? :)
ReplyDeleteAre you familiar with the Fyre Festival debacle? Influencers played a key role in it. I recommend the Hulu documentary for the run-down. (Netflix also released a Fyre Festival documentary, which is good but less biting than the Hulu one.) A seasoned Marxist like you really ought to have known about the Influencers because they truly are late-stage capitalism made flesh (er, pixels?).
ReplyDeleteA side note: the actress in question is Lori Loughlin, “Aunt Becky” from the sitcom Full House, which I loved in my youth but which is perfectly terrible and now only watchable as camp.
Here’s a HowTo from Bloomberg: Confessions of an Instagram Influencer. For a joke I sometimes append these ludicrous influencer hashtags (lifted from the article) to my posts on Instagram: #menwithclass, #mensfashion, #agameofportraits, #hypebeast, #featuredpalette, #makeportraits, #humaneffect, #themanity, and the for carefully planned photos, #liveauthentic.
ReplyDeleteIn politics I am an anarchist, in religion I am an atheist, in economics I am a Marxist, and on Instagram, I am an influencer.
ReplyDeleteI want to second the recommendation that your watch the Netflix documentary on the Fyre festival, because it's an object lesson in what influencers (the most influential ones) look like and what their influence amounts to, and because it's a great watch. (I hear the Hulu one that came out the same time is also really good, but I haven't seen it myself).
ReplyDeleteI think shill is the right word, though Influencer sounds considerably more respectable.
ReplyDelete