"Influencing" is a ponzy scheme. If you can convince people you are trending, you'll trend. If you can convince people you are influencing, you'll influence. Sadly, like all trends, the biggest players are all big fish trying to get in before it dies. This doesn't legitimise it though.
This is just an art project that is trending. They're real photos, with real girls and then the creator will place a flavour (ala thispersondoesnotexist.com) through the use of AI. It's akin to automating your photoshop meme pipeline, but way less creative.
It's marketing all the way down. Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, etc. are all just marketing spirals that occasionally spit out unique content that was made with real hard work. The rest is just cycling through other people's work with faux congrats and advertising for your own "channel".
We evolved to compare ourselves to others in order to elevate the fitness of ourselves and our in-group. We look to peers. We take an interest in their gossip. We look at beautiful people, smart people, successful people. We're curious. We're also intrigued by scandalous and dangerous people. It's how we update our mental model of the world and contrast ourselves against it.
I'd be utterly shocked if you didn't, at some level, take an interest in the personal details of some person you don't know.
Virtual celebrities and influencers provide the same sort of dopamine hits that their real life counterparts do, except they can be 100% controlled by a corporation.
You don't even have to look at virtual influencers to know that people will eat them up: lots of people are already addicted to fictional characters. Movies, super heroes, even cartoons and anime. They find pieces of themselves in it. They start to care and take deep interest.
Virtual celebs are the future, and a cottage industry is already cropping up in support of it.
And just wait until people use AR/VR to optimize their own appearances and behaviors.
I definitely don't connect to any celebrity other than those I admire for their intelligence and/or skill. So I'm not normal.
Being a celebrity is mostly a way to make money. And with influencers, the "career progression" that almost every upstart vlogger/instagrammer aspires to is pretty well-defined:
1) Provide some kind of entertainment content as a vector to push other people's crap
2) Over time, build up your user base and revenue base, until you become a well-known brand in a given market segment
3) Transition to pushing your own crap, e.g. a line of products with your name on it
Of course, selection is very strong there. Most would-be influencers spend years and fail at step 1. Few achieve step 3. And it can't really be any different, because attention economy is the ultimate zero-sum game: people have only so much hours in the day.
It's not. Influencers ask prices that are relative to how much money they'll make to a particular brand/store. That's why local influencers is a thing. And I was, too, surprised at how much sales they can drive for a simple store.
Bullshit is selling a lie.
Both are very inefficient and lazy ways to generate interest.
The media tends to notice little phenomena like this and paint them as if it's a cultural megatrend.
I'm still confused by these two comments. I don't think we can verifiably claim any personal story on any media outlet is BS or not.
They're wondering whether this specific account is making money.
Those are very different questions. An account can be both, neither, or one or the other.
I guess Americans use the word bullshit differently to the rest of the English speaking world? Or something else?
If one were to speak bullshit, they'd be doing exactly what I just wrote. No money is involved.
You called it a ponzi scheme!
Either way, please listen to the distinction I'm making.
You're talking about ways the industry is bad.
They're asking if the article is flat-out wrong about this single account being successful inside that industry.
Those are two separate ideas to call bullshit on. A bullshit industry can have bullshit success stories, but it can also have true success stories.
Yes. And then people had a problem with the word bullshit, for some reason.
It can be both bullshit and a ponzi scheme. That doesn't make bullshit necessarily a scam.
If I post the same thing to Instagram, most people will applaud me for being such a great photographer.
Everyone is wasting their time. Lots of people like bullshit.
I must admit I don't quite understand your attitude. I personally for example have no interest in "the Kardashians" and would consider their story "bullshit" in a way. On the other hand, they clearly made a shitload of money. So maybe it would be better to analyse what is going on and why it works.
Another example that I personally consider mostly BS is professional sports. But clearly billions of people are into it and a lot of money is being made. Rather than calling it BS, perhaps it is more interesting to think about what might be going on, and what human need seems to be fulfilled by these things.
I was also reminded of "Hello Kitty" which seems to have been going strong for decades. Maybe, among other things, people just buy into this phantasy of a happy world were everything is fine. I personally bought some Hello Kitty mugs for fun a while ago because using them gave me a little jolt of happiness. Even though it is "commercial BS".
Easiest way for that to happen? Spam. Lots of spam. Instagram audiences aren't fickle, or at least they're not deterred by playing the game. They are extremely easy to offend though, and follow very serious moral trains. i.e. the head of the dragon changes directions fast but the body keeps in toe regardless of how they feel.
Just click on any of the top trending videos on Reddit or YouTube, you'll see a bunch of familiar faces saying the following. The more niche the topic, the more niche the channel spammers.
"Hey this video was great! Good job! -- seoulmetro walking tours".
I'm young so all these social outlets are what are left for me. But they're just way too tiring so I usually ignore the feeds.
Rather, people are becoming more and more annoyed by the repeating news articles trying to hype this thing. Also, young people around me gives absolute-zero-f** about this thing.
I should put it this way: boomers don't realize that influencer marketing is the most boomer thing to do these days.
That's the boomer perspective that I wanted to point out. Where's the internet in this flow? Where's the community? Where's google? I know the above statement is simplified, but what matter is the linking logic, which can be radically different b/w generations.
One thing boomers don't recognize is that, unlike the celebrities from the last generation, influencers are contributors, not rulers or leaders. They make practical contributions to their communities, and, in return, they earn trust, which then can be utilized for monetization. It's not like someone great bam comes in and become a star (which is the exact strategy of this artificial influencer. So boomer, eh?)
Also it's worth noting that the internet community is that it offers more information and raw data than the sum of influencers can ever offer. Follow the recommendation of an influencer? Pf, it's just mere a drop in the vast ocean. A proper digital-literate - and MZs are the first digital native generation - will search other sources, cross check the information, and, naturally, expand it even further. As more effort goes in to these steps, the significance of influencers drops rapidly.
So, I want to say that the influencer marketing can't be a key strategy these days. Rather, it's just an element in the usual advertisement campaign. The most critical part is the community engagement.
TV commercial does not make it not BS. There are lots of things in Korea that are utter BS but get a lot of attention, and people are generally fearful of missing out.
I am saying creators are probably not lying when they project $800k yearly revenue. Yes, you can earn $800k in South Korea entirely by fads, but that was not the question.
I know what you're saying, I'm not sure what being Korean has to do with that. And no, no one said you could not earn money in Korea through fads. What does that have to do with what I wrote?
I'm saying they are most definitely capable of lying, especially in cases where lying grants you a huge boost to future results.
Are you replying to the right comment here?
It's completely normal to qualify one's perspective, and often beneficial. in fact for people to know whether your comment is an opinion, or based on some actual experience, knowledge, skill, etc, it adds value to the discussion.
In the context of South Korean culture, it's absolutely useful to know the commenter is South Korean.
If we're talking about tea, crumpets, or the rain, I might point out that I'm British.
It's not saying you don't know. It's saying that, this should be part of your knowledge based on you being British.
I don't see how that's offensive.
"If you were British..." and "If you are British..." have very different subtext.
That specific form of the sentence has negative connotations and might be considered divisive in (British) English.
It's essentially a challenge to my honesty, and had you said "if you are" rather than "if you were" it'd be a more amiable challenge, implying I should respond with proof that I know where York is, and not suggest I'm being dishonest.
As I said, it's divisive, but to some may be considered offensive too.
Just one word makes all of the difference.
If you want to suggest I would know where York is by virtue of being British, you might say;
"You will know where York is, because you're British" or "You must know where York is, you're British".
The statement is at most doubting whether you are British, but not dismissing or claiming the opposite.
>but to some may be considered offensive too.
It's offensive that someone might claim to be from somewhere and not understand a very common piece of knowledge from that place. Or at least I might want to claim it to be.
I backed up why I disagree that a single spark determines whether it's not BS. I assumed, being in Korea for so long, it'd be a given first thing to bring up when someone asks if hype is actually genuine. So I brought it up. Every fad with even the slightest traction will be overvalued more in Korea, and it will also fall out of favour much faster too. The cycle is very much filled with BS that hasn't started to stink yet.
You should see the investment funded startup scene in Korea. It's very close to throwing anything at the wall and waiting for the one that sticks. Which is a shame given how technologically empowered Koreans are.
I'm still unsure why it made anyone upset. But then again, this is the internet.
p.s: Post is rate limited now, so there was a delay in this reply.
"If you were South Korean" is exactly saying "You are not South Korean", which sanxiyn rightly took offense to.
As a native English speaker from the colonies, I have zero idea whether "If you were" in this usage is the subjunctive, or if it is a conditional clause, or something else. Maybe I need to take an ESOL course to learn English grammar.
I can see why they'd get upset if I was assuming they're not Korean. But that's not what I said or meant.
It would be considered directly saying that if I were to say "You can't be Korean because ____" or "You would be Korean if you ______".
I think you might be thinking of a similar construct which doesn't imply it's false: "If you're Korean, you realise ...". The "you" here is non-specific, and the phrase doesn't say you're Korean or not Korean. The present tense and lack of speculative "would" are what make the difference.
"If you were at the beach, you would have seen the shark." is saying you were not at the beach, and implying you didn't see the shark.
"If you were tall, you would have been able to see it" is saying you are not tall, and implying you couldn't see it.
The "if", "were", and "would" make the phrase a hypothetical counterfactual, imagining that the statement is true and supplying a consequence, and this means that the statement is actually false (i.e. you were not at the beach). This meaning holds when speaking about a specific "you", like the person you're replying to. I'm sure there's a name for this grammatical construct, but I don't know it.
The sentence may be incorrect, in which case the person you're speaking to could correct it with "I was at the beach, but I didn't see it", "I saw it by climbing on a rock", or "WTF I am Korean". It's possible the speaker may suspect their sentence is incorrect and be using it to ask a question indirectly, inviting correction.
A more general meaning is possible when you're not talking about a specific person, but using the conditional to imagine a group of people or something, e.g. "If you were employed, you could afford it, and if you were on a benefit you could afford it, so most people can afford it." I think this usage is uncommon though, as there are much clearer ways to phrase that sort of thing. It's definitely not the usage you wrote.
Source: Native English speaker, but not trained grammarian. Also wrote way too much because it's late at night and I can't be succinct.
Financial chains in South Korea do not usually do influencer marketing. I would guess that the companies are buying not because of the influencer's reach, but because of the novelty of AI and the quality of the art. Presumably their goal is using the character and derived artwork in more traditional advertisements.
Edit: sanxyin confims that Shinhan used the character in a TV ad. I don't watch TV, so I guess I missed it.
That being said I see the AI was in TV ads (is this influencer based? or just actor?) so 800k is possible.
She has 60k followers on Instagram which (even if all real) isn't that much. Certainly not anywhere big enough to make 800k a year that the creator claims he plans on making.
They say they have 100 sponsorships but this seems like a marketing statement...influencers all the time talk about how popular they are and I don't see why we should trust the creator of AI influencer more.
I don't see any major brands on her Instagram though I'm not South Korean so maybe I'm missing something - but more likely explanation seems to be that he has partnered with a few companies for a pittance and is overhyping his creation to get more money in.