The concept of "influencer" as a career needs to die a quick death.
it's fancy speak for "salesman"
Ooo it's the equivalent of "side hustle" just being a 2nd job.
I mean I think it's a fine career, it's the name that's dumb.
For the most part they're just entertainers. The "influencer" name suggests way more than should be.
Entertainers are supposed to be entertaining though.
These people have all the "entertainment" value of a late-night infomercial at best. "Oooh, watch me get excited about unboxing this item. Whatever could have Disney sent me this week?"
The worst problem is that these influencers do gain huge amounts of followers, but rarely fact-check or do hard sciences needed to ya know, give information to viewers? See Linus Tech Tips and the whole crap they're into right now.
Talking to real friends more interesting than arguing with strangers? Shareholders flummoxed! News at 11.
Hey, I take offense to that! I'm going to write a vitriolic response to your seemingly-normal-but-different-viewpoint-than-mine opinion where I'll use non-applicable slurs and misinformation and then call you dumb if you post a sensible reply!
I've seen the birth of it in my lifetime, I'll see the death of it in my lifetime. Way to go, evolution!
It had the potential to be good. But as with everything, once capitalisms tendrils flowed through it the benefit to anyone except those wishing to reap a profit is gone. I’m hoping the fediverse gets the support it needs because infrastructure is expensive and we have something good here
Social media in general is in the following stage of Enshitification:
- Launch
- Growth at all costs, user focus
- Use size to bring advertisers
- Gradually shift focus to advertisers and money bringers
- Ensure users are way too invested to quit
- >> Sell out <<
It's no surprise that people only end up seeing "carefully curated" content, it's what "sells", or rather, ensures people stay in the stupid app. From TFA: "While sharing has tailed off, consuming content hasn't slowed"
I have an Insta account for some of the part time 3D printing I do, but since I'm not a "content creator", my stuff has almost zero reach. Whenever I open the app, it's roughly 1:1:1 posts of "recommended", someone I actually follow, advert. 2/3 of everything shown to me is stuff I didn't ask for, not to mention when the advertises are actual scams or fucking pyramids
I still visit Reddit but I no longer engage in any way, other than reading comments. No up/down voting, not commenting, no reporting spam. Nothing but reading with multiple layers of ad-blocking.
PS: the overall quality/value has dropped precipitously
I deleted all 6 of my accounts. I can’t upvote or comment and I like it that way. Reddit no longer values me as a content producer by eliminating my fav apps, so I no longer value Reddit.
The fediverse, while still social media, has a level of authenticity unrivaled by most major social medias in my opinion. Hopefully it stays that way!
No app better defines the changing nature of social media than Instagram. The app started as a digital scrapbook — a place to keep up with real-world connections, close friends, and family. While other networks had more users (Facebook) or generated more news (Twitter), Instagram seemed to define the ideal form of this era of social media. Instagram became a verb, an aesthetic, and a generational signifier.
huUURP! BLAAaahhriifgghhh. . .
Garbage marketing platform dies horribly. Thousands of clueless "journalists" bereft.
I also noticed how my social media usage (even on Lemmy and Mastodon) is consistently declining, I haven't opened the clients I use for either platform in days (or possibly more than a week). It's bad because I was pretty invested in the fediverse, but it's good because now I can actually do something productive, or even go outside.
Also, if no one is posting on social media, then what the hell are we all doing right now then?
I almost never use Facebook anymore because whenever I’m on it, all I see are posts from groups I’m not even in, ads, videos, and interspersed in all that algorithmically chosen content, the occasional post from people I actually follow and know. Social media isn’t social any more.
Even fricking tumblr now has videos on it, and you can only shut “tumblr live” off for a week at most before they come back.
I dont even want to talk to half the people I know anymore lol. I stopped using FB but keep it running because there are many years of pics and what not for family. And when I bring it down people freak out and think something is wrong with me. Other than that, it has been stripped of any identifying information, only has people I know and I never use it anymore. That was the only real 'personal' place I had on the internet. Everything else is fake names and whatnot, always has been.
Big shock considering everything we post online is being weaponized in various ways.
My following on insta is dominated by meme pages, influencers, and that one person in your social group who practically shares their life on social media.
Does Lemmy count as social media?? lol
In broad strokes, yeah. I'd even consider older, more traditional forms like forums and IRC/BBS to be proto forms of social media. As long as the internet exists there will be social media, what form it takes is malleable depending on the desires of the userbase at hand.
Yes but I’d classify it as a different category more akin to old school forums. It’s less a place to post photos of yourself and more one to discuss and read about stuff you enjoy (or memes). I just want a place personally to discuss movies, video games, technology etc
Not to me.
Just like Reddit, it's more anonymous and the people you are interacting with don't really matter, you don't know them, they don't know you.
You just interact for a few minutes and never see each other again.
it's interesting how many comments show that people like to read the headline and are content with that to form an opinion. literally the first paragraph says that it's not "THERE ARE NO POSTS" but it says that the "feed is swamped by a combination of perfectly curated photos and professionally created content." - the problem is that the paid content creators have become GOOD. so many of them really look like they are just opinions and casual mentions of movies/clothes/...things. viral marketing is really at a point where so many fronts that have been established have been broken down in the guise of "irony" or "sarcasm". "I'm only buying the Barbie merch ironically" etc.
If a company ever puts ads in my group chats I will jump in a volcano
No no no... We need to throw the CEO's in the volcano. We don't need CEO's but I'm sure someone needs you.
I've been trying to cut down social media use ever since 2020. I don't blame people for not posting most social media platforms are either boring or a toxic shit holes.
Don't mourn social media. It was always too easily astro-turfed.
Group chats were for sharing before social media. It just out lasted them.
The fuck even is BeReal? LOL
It's kinda niche, but it's where you and your friends can only post once a day at a random time. But it's all at the same time, so you kinda get a slice of life of what everyone is doing. I like it, it's much worse for influencer type stuff, so everyone I know just uses it with their friends which is nice. It starts conversations that might not happen otherwise.
My students will jump up in class when they get the notification. My only rule is that I get to be in it.
I would argue that the quality of content is in decline more than numerical users. Also, the quantity of ads are much much higher, which hides what little good content there is.
Mix that in with political splits in social media sites (from left leaning Lemmy to the Facebook right), and you generally find yourself in an echo chamber with little to surprise you, and a lot of things confirming what you already know.
Indian aunties were on the group chat trend before it was cool.
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