If ever I thought about social media influencers at all, it probably was in a derogatory way, assuming them to be minor lights among Madison Avenue propagandists. The writer sees becoming an influencer as a viable, even lucrative career path with a solid, economic basis.
Influencers and Subjective Value: They Have Something to Teach Us
Published
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
Interesting overview of the influencer market.
In retrospect, many are simply the age old tactic of celebrity endorsements. Nike and Jordan, for example.
The obvious difference is reach. Cable or broadcast media reaches millions. Social media reaches 100’s of millions.
The next tier are those who generate their own celebrity via well produced social media videos. Still, massive audiences as people are glued to pads and phones to the exclusion of conversation.
There is a term which is just new in slang, but old as humanity probably: FOMO, fear of missing out.
That was the core for advertising since merchants vied for customers. “You can have it all”, the Master Card campaign for years a few decades back. We obviously don’t “need it all”, but if your neighbor has a spiffy new toy, then FOMO is resolved by easy credit regardless of usurious interest rates. The current boom in the cruise business is all about FOMO.
Advertising is not primarily product comparison. Yes, that is part of it. Ford is better than Chevrolet because…
But the real goal is to create demand for something people didn’t even know they “needed”. Create a problem, then sell the solution. Innovation depends upon the success, and resulting rewards, of product or service demand.
This is neither good nor bad. It is marketing.
The downside is our addiction to social media often to the exclusion of human interaction. Which has its own issues that seems to escalate social and cultural friction. That is, of course another subject.
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RE: “The obvious difference is reach. Cable or broadcast media reaches millions. Social media reaches 100’s of millions.”
A good example of that was Qanon.
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QAnon is an example of using the social media to create panic and conspiracies for fun at the expense of truth and civility.
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And?
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You loved EVERY minute of it. No matter how destructive of full of lies it was.
Maybe YOU are “Q”. You have a habit of claiming superiority over anyone here who disagrees with you.
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You assume too much.
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You leave too much to the imagination. I assume nothing. I, too, wrote technical papers after my retirement form the Navy. I understand words and can figure out what is being said. Or not being said.
I also know that if you piss on my shoes and you tell me it’s raining, you are full of shit.
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RE: “I, too, wrote technical papers after my retirement form the Navy.”
Good for you.
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