Perhaps more importantly, being a successful "influencer" seems to require accepting and internalizing a startling amount of personal and societal dishonesty. From buying your views/ranking to shilling products that you would never use, or are even actively harmful. (Like VPNs that are literally anything but private.)
They can be, because a decent chunk of the people working steady but boring jobs don't want to "make cool stuff". They want to get money in exchange for their time, that's it. Some people have zero work-related ambitions, or zero ambitions overall, and that's totally fine.
> Perhaps more importantly, being a successful "influencer" seems to require accepting and internalizing a startling amount of personal and societal dishonesty. From buying your views/ranking to shilling products that you would never use, or are even actively harmful. (Like VPNs that are literally anything but private.)
It doesn't require those at all. Many choose those because they're "easy", but as an example, Ray William Johnson didn't make shady advertisements. He made funny videos, tried his luck as a writer/producer/director (I think this is still ongoing but haven't really kept up with him), and now only does short TikTok style videos. As far as I know, outside of a deal to get his series out on Facebook exclusively for 24h, he has no shady dealings/advertisements/etc.
Nobody grows up dreaming they'll work at McDonalds, and nobody _wants_ to work at McDonalds. They want to have a decent salary to live on.
And in general, many people work to live, not live to work. For them the things they _want_ are things outside of work like hobbies, family, etc. and a job is just a means to an end - having enough money to live and do the things they actually enjoy.