What's the deal with fictional influencers?

Whether they're fictional, "real", or "fake" is a meaningless distinction in this age, Baudrillard explained this to us a few decades ago. All the virtual influencer stuff is happening at a solely symbolic level, there's no 'real' underneath. You can have a meme and satire of a thing that never really existed, or maybe it did, or maybe the fake thing existed before the real thing, and so on. It's been the condition of modern communiciation for a while and in that sense it now happening openly and people creating jobs around virtual influencers really just makes sense.

One safe approach is to assume everyone is a fake until proven otherwise.

As a Navy veteran, I can suss out a "stolen valor" account almost immediately. Just a vibe. When it comes to social topics, the current day is just too weird to guess.

I have a friend that is an actor, good looking, charismatic. And I've occasionally tossed around the idea of working with him to create a coding or otherwise tech social media channel where he would be the voice and face of the channel. With me creating the content. I sometimes wonder if some of the more niche, expert influencers are doing that as well.

That’s lonelygirl15 all over again! we’ve come full circle!

The successful vlogger started as a scripted actress, then was taken over by real people, who took it from vlogging to influencer, and now we are back to scripted actors!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonelygirl15

"tiktok fictional finance fuckboy" isn't something I was expecting to read today

We've had fictional characters in movies for decades, in literature for centuries, and in myths and legends for millennia. And people have made their living (and occasionally made fortunes) telling those stories.

How is this different?

There is no deal, nobody wants to hire them to promote anything.

So "she" is fictional, but is it an actress or is this some kind of CGI? at this stage i dont even know anymore ...