I'm amazed that people still depend on "influencers" to make decisions. After all we've seen over the last 10 years of sponsored posts, and "influencers" people still blindly follow their lead.
"…I do worship celebrities, because they’re very powerful, their moods create weather. I was feeling bad about it, and then I was like, “Well of course, I’m just a tiny, frightened animal. I’m gonna look towards the most powerful and fertile-appearing of our species for information on how to survive. I need to find out what that Jennifer Aniston is doing. She’s a strong, sexy monkey. She’s going to tell us where all the bananas are located.”
1. Convince people they're part of your group, make them feel special for being part of that group, and make yourself their identity.
2. Don't straight-up recommend the product. Say things similar to "This is great for people like us!" Insinuate that people truly in the group would want this product (and therefore, wanting this product makes you part of the group).
3. Profit.
Identity / group appeals are more powerful than individual ones. Unless you're Michael Jordan.
He did this with smoking for women.
- Company A wants to sell more cigarettes.
- Company A approaches marketing firm B to sell things.
- Marketing firm B hires marketing firm C and D talk about how cool it is to smoke for women. Show women smoking in cool ways. Show doctors are cool with it. Show how empowered you are. Very base emotional in-group ideas and feeling good about yourself (not necessarily good for you). Do this until a particular point in time when people seem to be buzzing about it and meme's fly. Social media has made this way easier and faster to do.
- Marketing firm B now starts putting brand A in adverts also espousing how they can help you with what firms C and D did.
- Profit for company A.
It is a shockingly effective way to manipulate people without them even seeing it. As it uses our cognitive biases to manipulate us. You think you can ignore but you will have a tough time of it. Even if someone shows you how it is working it can be tough to get out of it. As you had 3 other people tell you it is ok and several trusted 'news like' sources say it is ok. It is also used in political orgs to good effect too. This method is everywhere.
I doubt it's a new phenomenon -- presumably in the past people bought sneakers because some celebrity wore them or recommended them. But it's probably more ubiquitous? And I think it's easier to fool yourself you have a relationship or kinship with a Instagram microcelebrity than with Micheal Jordan.
That, and it's probably easier to be fooled into thinking some Instagram microcelebrity is expressing a true independent opinion rather than making a paid endorsement.
I think a similar thing happened to blogs. I recall reading years ago about a "mattress blog" that presented itself as some enthusiast sharing his knowledge, but it was 100% pay-for-play promotion. I'm not super active on social media, but I'm assuming something similar is going on there with influencers.
An additional insidious dynamic is how advertising camouflages itself in whatever medium is the popular way for people to share honest opinions with strangers, then infects it so totally that you can't really trust it anymore. It's really undermined one of the positive selling points of the web.
Ancient Romans bought specific brands because gladiators advertised it, and their most parasocially attached fans bought their bottled sweat as perfume.
So it's been around for as about as long as true commercial enterprises in the "modern" sense have been around.
> But it's probably more ubiquitous?
I think it's far more obvious today, because it's so hyper focused and fractured and short lived today that these phenomena are no longer society wide, decade long "fashion trends". In the era of mass media, everyone got influenced by the same handful of celebrities and wasn't really aware of what was happening since everyone did it roughly at the same time, now you have thousands of bubbles forming around thousands of micro-celebrities, and everyone thinks what people in the other bubbles are doing is weird.
Pharmaceutical companies have paid doctors (in hotels, spas and what not) to prescribe their pipeline medications to patients. Then US government passed a law to make it illegal for pharmas to do that. It just spawned some 'medical education' company that is hired by the big pharams to do it on their behave.
Consumer capitalism is kinda like democracy. The consumer/voter need to be well informed/educated, and information needs to be 100% transparent.
> If you think you aren't influenced by "thought leaders" and similar, you are mistaken.
That seems like a false equivalence. I think the question is about what kind of influence, not "influence, y/n?" Is it typical for "thought leaders" to be paid to dishonestly push certain ideas?
My understanding is "thought leaders" are at worst self-promoters and at best are just people with ideas they believe in. "[Social media] influencers" on the other hand, are typically paid shills.
Null hypothesis would imply we should treat them no different than other influencers. Unless you've evidence otherwise?
So what exactly is your definition of a "thought leader?" How do you treat them "no different than other influencers" without closing yourself off to current ideas?
IMHO, social media "influencers" should be totally ignored, but the people active in public life should be engaged with, if skeptically.
There's no general reason I should inherently trust these people aren't being biased by third parties.
"X paid me to promote Y"
"My employer, X, doesn't mind if I write about Y on company time"
"Our socioeconomic system X happens to mean I have way more free time and energy to promote on of its bases, Y, than other people do"
but is it a qualitative slope or just quantitative?
I've never been willing to say/write something I believed to be manifestly untrue just because an employer wanted me too. But I've certainly avoided certain topics that I might have been willing to address more candidly under different circumstances.
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