[jw1224]

Influencers are very often harmful.

1. Their aspirational lifestyles perpetuate feelings of inadequacy amongst their viewers, especially when their target market is often predominantly young people. Their audiences grow up with self doubt and anxiety by comparing their lives to that of the influencers they follow.

2. They are in the pockets of their advertisers and sponsors. Any recommendations they make are inherently disingenuous.

3. They’re often just really terrible people. Being the kind of attention-seeker who is able to command a large online following often seems to correlate with being a jerk. Just look at Jake and Logan Paul — two of the biggest stars of today, and both mired in controversy and bad choices.

[wpietri]

I'm a fan of Reddit's AmITheAsshole and I'm always stunned by the stories of teens whose life plan is to become an influencer. As a sociological phenomenon, it's fascinating: celebrity distilled down to an implausibly pure form, like Paris Hilton rendered into uncut white powder. But as somebody who feels responsibility to the kids in my extended family, it's a worry. I'm not even sure how to explain to them that it might not be the best way to spend 40 or 50 years.

[lopmotr]

You know what's worse than aspirations to become a celebrity? No aspirations at all. I know people like that. They just seem to see the future as a regular life with nothing particularly to do in it except exist and perform normal regular practical activities to sustain it. I can't imagine how dull it must be, but they seem to cope, and get all their excitement from immediate events. I hope you can be happy that your relatives at least have ambition, even if it's not quite accurately targeted yet. Not everyone is that fortunate.

[wpietri]

Just to be clear, I know of no relatives who want to be influencers. It's only a hypothetical problem for me.

I also have never met people with "no aspirations at all" and am not sure they exist. Although you seem concerned about diminishing people's ambitions, you also seem to denigrate people who want to have "a regular life", as if there's something wrong with people who want to settle down and raise kids and live a good life. That's never been my path, but I respect it a lot.

[laurent92]

I don’t know, I have quite a lot of respect for the fathers around me. I’d rank climbing Mount Lenin, being a CEO or hitchiking from Paris to Sydney an order of magnitude easier than being a father ;)

[jarjoura]

Influencers are just people that have a sizable fan base, that they earned fair and square. Now, what they choose to do with that fan base, is another story. Just like a startup can lose its soul when bringing in VC money, an influencer can lose their soul when they try to scale their brand with marketing deals.

Mark Rober is a good example of an influencer who has stayed true to his core values while scaling his brand. He’s the Gen-Z version of Mythbusters.

Potato Jet is the opposite, his brand has become overrun with every cinematography company using him to peddle their wares. It’s hard to take anything he says as an honest review of the product.

[vorpalhex]

If someone else having a nice life makes you feel your life is bad, your life may actually be bad. If you spend your days working and feeling unfulfilled and wish you could be the person restoring a ghost town or exploring the arctic... that's a signal.

Humans aren't farm animals meant to be kept nicely penned up.