A Rant About Social Media "Influencers"- I Feel Much Better Now.
I can't stand most influencers. By nature of the name, naive and impressionable people don't need influence from the majority of them. Most people have lost touch with reality and I truly hope they get back in touch soon. Besides, it's mostly smoke and mirrors.
Clickbait. Faceless trolling. Shaming. Vanity. Egotism. Objectification. Poor values. Manipulation. Unattainable standards. Body issues. Infidelity. Insecurity. ADHD. Lack of responsibility. Shallow swipe culture. I could ramble on forever.
People trying to build their brand is so hot right now, Hansel. When done right, it's pretty admirable. Please don't miss that point. However, most people look and act ridiculous when they try to be influencers, when they're duly unfit and unqualified to be leading or a role model of any sort. Most seem to surf the trend lines than lead by virtuous example to make new ones. The original visionaries that became influencers are set in many ways now, and that's great. They deserve it. The masses trying to follow in their footsteps, please invent a healthier trend.
Does everything need influencers? God no! Please make it stop.
Disclaimer: My best friend is an influencer with 110K "Insta" followers, and the perks I get as a +1 are pretty amazing. He actually does a great job promoting in his niche, helping businesses, putting in legwork, and makes solid money from his network. This is an outlier. This is also something he does around his normal career. He was early and was dedicated to his craft with years of quality hustle. He earned it... I've seen it since day one.
Influencers on Instagram, Twitter, and/or YouTube, etc., waste so much precious time taking the perfect pics, constructing the perfect 30 word tweet, and/or editing videos down to every fragmented twitchy syllable for a group of followers. Real cool. Oh, what ever happened to a video without cuts every few seconds, or flashing info overload like shiny bait for our shrinking attention spans/ to dumb us down? This shallow, mindless, and devolving culture makes my eyes roll harder than I can handle. Are we making life and humanity better or worse here?
Generally, some people do it really well. Most, the wannabes, don't. Desperation to catch up leads to... desperate copycats. More of the same. A ripple effect and trending of ridiculous things of all types. Many people have forgotten how to learn and think for themselves, and this is scary.
Is an "Influencer" a label, job title, badge of honor, or just a rationalized classification for such a selfish and shallow sinkhole where many don't have adequate social skills?
Well, if you're trying to HELP OTHERS or DO GOOD FOR HUMANITY without hurting or manipulating anyone, then you are AWESOME. Even if someone isn't great at their social media work, their mission is what's most important, as that creates positive influence. Insert like 3 heart emojis, a strong arm, and a pound... or don't, please.
To those trying to photoshop themselves with thicker or thinner features, or "flawless" bodies (the irony), promote vanity and even crypto they're not qualified to financially advise impressionable novices with a caveat disclaimer as their "out"....be happy inside first and stop promoting false ideals you can't even meet yourselves. Want a bigger ass? Do lots of squats and eat calories. Duh. Stop trying to lie to people with fake photo alterations that simply project one's insecurity.
Am I trying to be an influencer here? Hell no. This is a rant because I wanted to rant. The only influence I want to have in the social media world is for helping the environment, financial freedom, and fitness. I believe that these things help others. I don't gain from this outside of some Steem on some posts, but hey that's just for fun these days. I prefer to make my own decisions and not have others suggest what I should do or buy -- and certainly wouldn't want to influence anyone to do the same. That's their business.
Quality relationships in person and quality conversations are where more focus should be, not "slipping into DMs" or broken English tweets where 10 minutes can be spent to pick out the perfect set of emojis to portray the human emotions they're not able to feel or portray in reality. Want real relationships or a few thousand mindless followers that often cause more drama than they're worth? I know my answer.
Stop taking pictures and snaps of everything. Stop Tweeting every random thought. Turn off the devices and need to project influence on others. Live life in front of you and influence your own well-being for the better like we used to.
I could keep rambling, but I'm going to go back to listing items I personally recycled from my city's curbs to make money, top off my crypto, and try to make a positive impact on this planet offline before my time is up. I mailed out 17 pounds of recycled merchandise and packaging today and have tons more to go. That's my definition of influence.
So tell me how you really feel?
Thanks,
@steemmatt
Nicely put bro. Best to just weed out the bs. "Influencing" seems to come from a place of narcissism in today's world with so many. Luckily there are still people like yourself that keep my faith for humanity alive.
I let a neighbor in my home recently because he was locked out of his apartment, gave him some food, was accommodating and even gave him a dollar for the bus. What I just discovered is missing money that was in plain sight... Go figure, no one else has been in my home lol. I really needed to read this.. Nice job, keep that big heart of yours alive!
Did you let your neighbor know that you saw that the money was gone? At least you can be cautious of them going forward when they could've taken much more during another time you were being hospitable. Time to change the locks.
No point in creating a possible conflict over a handful of quarters.
Good news, I've been working hard to get out of this place. I've signed the paperwork for a much better place to live and will be moving soon. It's been a year of hell living in this place, but my persistence and hard work to get out of here has finally paid off.
Dear @steemmatt
Somehow I bumped into your publication. Interesting read - upvoted already.
Thank you for sharing your own view on influencers. In my opinion golden times for all influencers are over. Right now majority of people are already resistent to all techniques, which used to work pretty well. And most those techniques you described.
Right now real influencer = leader. Someone who want to gather people around himself, people with similar goals and visions. People who he will help grow. That's what being real marketer or influencer is about. However most influencers still rely on spam, spam and spam.
Yours, Piotr
Glad we could connect on this. Hopefully the golden times are over for them so future generations don't continue to devolve like so many of the brainwashed space cadets we have struggling to interact with the real world.
Wow @steemmatt
You really do not like influencers, don't you? :)
ps.
I would also like to take this opportunity to share with you one of my recent posts
, where I'm describing project.hope economy (I run it with few guys from steem). I would love, if you could invest few minutes and get familiar with our efforts and perhaps share your feedback (this is what I always care the most).
Yours, Piotr
Hi again @steemmatt
Can I ask you for little favour? I joined contest called "Community of the week" with project I manage and I would be grateful if you could RESTEEM it and help me get some exposure and drop some encouraging comment :)
Link to my post: on steemit or on steempeak
Thanks :)
Yours, Piotr
The stuff people throw away or fail to recycle; the landfills; the carbon footprint everyone pins on corporations, not realizing each of the billions of humans arel like the emperoror's grain of sand in Disney's "Mulan" - items I personally recycled from my city's curbs" - good for you! I've seen guys at Goodwill buying $6 designer dresses to re-sell via ebay. If they have the time for that, let them profit.
As for "branding" and "influencers" - use our hashtag or your post won't get read by anyone in this group - just, ugh.
Off to think about less aggravating things - and to avoid the pop-up ads and slogans.
Thanks for this post. Vent, rant, and steem on!
Thanks for dropping by and sharing your input. I'm personally not big into hashtag gaming, but it is discouraging if some people really ignore the posts of Steemians who don't use their tag. Yuck.
I have no better response to this but, yup
!giphy yup
Eye of the tiger. How's your fitness upkeep going lately? I'm not doing my daily reps , but I've done decent enough at sticking with the gym. I can do more though. I want to be stronger and faster for baseball soon. That's what drives me, but I often get tired from late nights recycling and selling.
I have a daily routine where I jump out of bed, meditate using Headspace for 20 minutes, about 10 minutes of stretching, and a couple sets of pushups/squats. Just enough to get me going in the morning. I'm starting a new contract that will be near a gym, so I plan to start working that into my routine.
Mind and body prioritized. You've added 10 years to your life.
giphy is supported by witness untersatz!
To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.
Brought to you by @tts. If you find it useful please consider upvoting this reply.