“Influencer” is a reductive term — any sort of speech in any context is meant to influence something or someone — but in Techno-Hell, it has a specific meaning.
The “influencer” is one of the cringest online archetypes, defined as “a person who is paid by a company to show and describe its products and services on social media, encouraging other people to buy them.”
Influencers can be apolitical (selling sneakers or iPods or whatever) or political in nature (selling partisan BS). The important thing is they never disseminate an unsponsored, uncompensated opinion of their own.
PJ Media readers, for instance, may be familiar with the Twitter influencer BrooklynDad_Defiant!, who regularly posts #BlueWave DNC propaganda in his feed disguised as grassroots activism, often with glaring hypocrisies and contradictions to his previous musings, as the official party line requires.
There needs to be a "Defiant L's Hall of Fame". Brooklyn dad would be the first entry.
— ★Lͩsͣcͮoͥtͩt★ (@dlscott1111) January 24, 2022
It turns out, Brooklyn Dad Defiant! isn’t as grassroots as he leads his fans to believe.
Via New York Post:
A Joe Biden-boosting social media influencer known as “Brooklyn Dad Defiant” came under fire Wednesday for reportedly failing to disclose that he accepted tens of thousands of dollars from a Democratic political action committee.
Majid Padellan, who runs the nearly 900,000-follower-strong Twitter account — and has been slammed previously for urging Bernie Sanders to drop out of the 2020 presidential race — allegedly accepted more than $57,000 from a pro-Biden PAC, Really American, last year, according to Refinery29.com, which cited tweets circulating Tuesday.
In his Twitter bio, Padellan says he’s a senior adviser to the PAC — but followers slammed him for failing to admit he allegedly got paid to post pro-Biden opinions and theories, according to the outlet.
But Brooklyn Dad is just one in a million. Most of them aren’t political, instead catering to lobotomized NPC consumers of various substandard consumer products (probably mostly made in China). And some of them make serious money. Via Statistica, “the global influencer marketing market value stood at 16.4 billion U.S. dollars as of 2022, having more than doubled since 2019.”
According to a 2020 study by Marketing Dive, 44% of Gen Z and 25% of the general population has made at least one purchase after seeing an “influencer” hawk it online.
Related: Techno-Hell: The Rise of the ‘COVID-19 Influencer’
The internet, as initially conceptualized, was supposed to be the Wild Wild West where users could access information from real people with real opinions, unfiltered by the mainstream media machine that relies on advertising revenue from the same industries and corporations that they report on. Now, it seems the same forces that corrupted the corporate media have also extended their tentacles into social media.
There may be a new hope of restoring balance to the force, though, with the rise of the “de-influencer.” Via Refinery 29:
If TikTok’s latest trend for de-influencing is anything to go by, it could all come crashing down. So far, the #deinfluencing hashtag has 151.5 million TikTok views. There you’ll spot beauty obsessives uncovering the truth about those supposedly game-changing moisturisers, revolutionary serums and magic concealers. Instead of waxing lyrical about shiny new launches, they’re recommending what not to buy, or letting their followers in on the best affordable dupes. [emphasis added]
De-influencing is one potential way to remedy the influencer problem, assuming it needs remedying. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, via Times Now:
Taliban detained a social media influencer and a former security forces member for allegedly spreading anti-Taliban propaganda, according to reports by Reporterly, Afghanistan’s vernacular media. While Abdul Rahim, from the Dare Abdullah Khel area of Panjshir province, was detained on Thursday, social media influencer, Imran Ahmadzai was captured from his home in Kabul.
Obviously, the Taliban is running an oppressive theocratic regime and is incompatible with Western values, but they certainly know how to crack down efficiently on social pariahs with a ferocity that “human rights” and such things in the West preclude. We’re not allowed to toss social influencers into medieval cave dungeons, but it’s cathartic to imagine.
