I don’t regret any of this one bit, you look them up and it’s always someone shilling products extremely hard while doing extremely low effort content like reaction videos or streaming Minecraft.
The fact that ‘influencer’ is a legitimate job title is proof that humanity is doomed.
They aren’t some symbol of the end times or anything, they’re just a symptom of the sort of attention based economy we’ve built up here in America. They exist precisely because you can get paid to shill products while playing Minecraft.
If we reign in the marketing and advertising industries then influencers will fall alongside them.
Or, if we regulate “proper” ads and fail to do the same to influencers, whether on purpose or not, then they will become a primary source of advertising. Depending how this is handled could be a good or bad thing.
It’s also one of the few ways to make money available to them that has a chance of making them enough money to live the way their grandparents did. Certainly the easiest to get into.
I work for an influencer now, I went to a reputable film school and have a masters degree. I used to do documentaries on BLM for god’s sake.
So are you a one (wo)man band filming/editing their content? I’m not necessarily opposed to doing this with a (good) youtuber if the content is high-brow/interesting/educational etc but the idea of doing it for a tik tok star sounds positively dreadful. In fact I refused such a proposal before because the “stars” were really not my vibe and also they gave some red flags, but at least they were still “musicians” not JUST ad-peddlers.
No, I’m part of an entire team. There’s multiple project managers, stylists and other people. We get client briefings and everything, it feels strangely corporate.
I would be ashamed to ever admit that I follow somebody whose explicit job is to influence me. Like, do people refer to themselves as “influencees”?
there were always similar jobs going all the way back to the rennaisance
To me, reaction videos are truly astonishing. Like, the number of videos reacting to some thing typically outnumber the thing itself by the hundreds. People prefer watching somebody else watching something so they know how they should feel about it. It’s the modern version of the laugh track.
I’ll turn shit off if someone keeps pausing the actual clip to provide absolutely nothing worthwhile while wasting my time. So annoying.
In the distant future, when we look back on scattered social media caps, we will regret that the date of posting is not shown. Like scattered pages from books unknown, page numbers elided.
The fun thing is that none of this stuff is going to survive long-term at all. Databases are backed up onto forms of media that have a very short lifespan. Only material that is endlessly copied forward (like DNA) will still be around, and nobody is going to pay for that kind of archiving, at least not for the generally trivial bullshit that comprises social media. FWIW this fact make me happy.
What forms of media are you taking about that have short life spans?
I think that as storage density goes up and price goes down, what used to be cumbersome and expensive amounts of data become easily manageable. So the only reasons we loose data will be business or political. Which will also decrease as there’s now money in buying failing platforms.
But yeah, I’m also happy none of the social media I created when I was young still exists, and the platforms are buried by the sands of time. Having everything you do on the internet stay around forever feels like a nightmare.
What forms of media are you taking about that have short life spans?
Things like tape drives and optical storage etc. Even if they have lifespans measured in decades (and these things typically don’t) that still means they have short life spans in terms of being recoverable in the future. A hundred years from now these things won’t be restorable.
I found this report from NIST that estimates tape to last 20 years, CD-R and DVD-R 30 years, and M-DISC 100 years 🤷 (I didn’t even know optical was used professionally, and found the term “optical jukebox” to be hilarious :)
https://www.nist.gov/publications/digital-evidence-preservation-considerations-evidence-handlers
But more importantly, an actively maintained storage system will last forever (as long as maintained). And for example AWS S3 Glacier Deep Archive costs just $0.00099 / GB / month*, so you can store terabytes for the price of a cup of coffee.
*Plus extra fees for access and stuff, but the point is managed storage isn’t particularly expensive unless you have very large amounts of data or heavy usage.
an actively maintained storage system will last forever (as long as maintained)
I mean, this is really my point. This stuff isn’t going to be maintained forever and will eventually be lost - even if it takes 100 years or more. This idea of future archaeologists troweling their way through Facebook posts isn’t going to happen.
Even much of what we know about the first civilizations in Mesopotamia is only because their clay tablets - which were never intended to be permanent records of anything - were accidentally fired and buried when their storage facilities caught fire. It’s possible that some modern forms of media might be accidentally preserved and restored somehow thousands of years in the future, but it’s a bit hard to imagine such a scenario. Especially when we’re going to cook ourselves off the planet before then.
Most of the Chinese internet from the mid-90s to ~2010 has already disappeared.
I randomly download scattered memes that I will want to repost endlessly in the future. I assume other people do the same.
Even some articles or blogposts are without publish date. This should be illegal.
and we wondered why everything was a GameBoy or a Nintendo for our parents
“CURTAINS FOR ZOOSHA? K-SMOG AND BATBOY CAUGHT FLIPPING A GRUNT.”
My friend with young cousins was telling me that kids are using “sigma” instead of “cool” now?
“That’s so sigma, bruh.”
The fuck?
Start speaking in Greek to them. Asspro means white.
I’m something of an asspro myself
Personally, I loved the idea of new media. Cable was shit.
After experiencing new media… there’s some good stuff in there, guys. I promise. Just gotta wade through mountains of shit.
There should be some rule like; if you have a preference it can’t exist all by itself unless it’s watered down or mixed in with every other preference.
Thank all that is good for genres. At least there is some media that can define itself clearly enough and still build enough of a following to self fund.
If its good enough, the news of it will get to me eventually and I will see for myself.
This is how I live now.
This is what it means to be old.
I’m 34.
I used to work at a hikers’ hostel on the Appalachian Trail. A group of hikers needed a ride into town but were short on cash. One of them suggested they offer the hostel owner some weed in exchange for a ride. Another one said, “He doesn’t smoke weed. He’s old, like in his 40s.” He actually was in his 50s and bought his weed from me lol
“We are the first to do this.” -every young cohort going back through time
“The young ones are lacking conservative quality that we had” - Every old cohort going back through time
Ah the duality of humans :p
As somebody who was born in 2007, I have no clue who modern celebrities are either. People consider me out of touch but I have no idea what half of what people around me are saying. The acronyms don’t help and I am too scared to search them up.
Woah, 2007ers are 18 now. 👴
Well 17 still. I still got like 6 months.
I watch NBA basketball and back in the day (1990s) there was exactly one player that was referred to by his initials: Michael Jordan. Nowadays fans use initials (with their jersey number occasionally tacked on as if that’s the cleverest thing to do in the world) for almost every player and it’s almost impossible to know who they’re talking about. For some players this is legitimate (e.g. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is a mouthful so SGA is a good replacement) but for most it is not.
In baseball now, they like to make nicknames by taking the first initial and the first syllable of the last name. Like J-Hey. It’s annoying and unoriginal. Baseball used to have the best nicknames too.
they like to make nicknames by taking the first initial and the first syllable of the last name
Oh god, this is worse than the initials+jersey number thing.
Um, A-Rod has been a thing for a while now.
Um, nobody said he hasn’t. Um, what’s your point
Just that it’s not a new thing like you made it sound.
Honey, baseball has been around a lot longer than the mid 90s. It’s new. Learn about context.
They’re lucky not to know, doop fell hard off after it was acquired by Skoot Corp.
I’m still so mad at the Skoot Corp CEO for that ridiculous re-skeet where they memed the javalina charrp boys on doop.
Am I having the stroke? Or is everyone else?
We’re all part of the stroke
Is that still called a circlejerk?
Why even care about those “celebrities”? Stuff they do is usually mediocre at best anyways.
Listening to what their interests are is a good way to connect with much younger (or much older!) people. I’ll happily listen to a kid explain Fortnite to me, or my to grandpa talk about his favourite TV show. I’ll ask them some questions about it and get a conversation going.
I mean, are they materially worse than Paris Hilton and Kimberly Kardashian? Or the Jersey Shore crowd? I’m not here to judge.
But I didn’t really follow them when I was age-appropriate to care about that shit, anyway. Was too busy reading blogs about the newest feature list of an up-and-coming MMORPG or tearing through the latest edition of my favorite TTRPG, because I was focused on what truly mattered.
At some point, its not an age thing, its just a taste thing. I could probably name more web comix artists and indie board games than C-list celebrities and Reality TV shows, and that’s fine.
It’s not about caring, it’s just about even knowing what business they’re in.
I’m an old coot, I know some names like something paul, mr beast or pewdiepie, from when I was on reddit years ago, I know those guys are “youtuber” because I saw the thumbnail, but I have no clue what they do or what they speak of or why they would be famous?!? I don’t watch youtube, first because comments are toxics, it takes too much time, who spent hours listening/watching some rants by some guy in his basement?!? I’m like an out of touch skinner :)
From what i can tell, YT comments have actually improved over the years. Still plenty of garbage, but it’s bearable and there is some real discussion sometimes now.
Bot spam is now backed by LLM technology
Youtubers are different than movie, music, and tv stars.
I’m old school too though, i could be wrong at this point.
Makes sense from that POV, I guess. Although I’d probably rather talk about hobbies and stuff instead
You can do all of the above.
I feel seen.
I used to be really into new music. Now I have 10 bands I listen to and just hope they keep releasing new albums.
I used to be really into standup. Now people mention it and all I can think to say is “Kyle Kinane is still doing comedy, right?”
I used to be really into movies. The newest I’ve seen recently is the Bob’s Burgers movie.
But hey, at least I’m ignoring a lot of my hobbies these days!
I often need to remind myself that Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings are not recent movies.
It’s the same as being a kid in the 80s, which I was, and thinking The Seven Year Itch was a recent movie. Now, I had seen that movie on TV, because my parents liked it, and I thought it was funny, but never did I think of it as “recent”.
Still, you can’t tell me that Harry Potter movies didn’t happen in the last ten years.
Holy hell, the last movie was released in 2011.
I remember how much anticipation and agony people were complaining about waiting for it, that it couldn’t come soon enough.
I recently picked up a new game: RoboCop: rogue city… It hits all of the nostalgia about the original movie so far. Marching through an office building blowing off people’s hands and ripping machine guns off turrets and mowing down rooms full of enemies in all the gory, bloody detail… It gives me all the warm and fuzzy feelings.
The sound track is on point too.
Hard to believe it’s source material is from 1987. The game almost looks as good as the movie did. It’s not as polished as big name titles. People will talk and their mouth won’t move, some of the idle animations for NPCs is very repetitive and robotic… But the visuals… MMM. If you liked the original, and want to partake in some thug killing mayhem as Murphey himself, I’d recommend it.
That game is a blast to play. Some bugs like you said but well worth the 20 bucks or whatever I spent on it.
It’s actually only $9.99 right now with the Steam spring sale, normally $49.99…fuck. I might have to play it.
I refuse to ever call Harry Potter a classic.
But it is a classic
I have never (not asking for info, I can look it up) seen it, just heard it mentioned by name. Couldn’t tell you the actors or even the genre off hand.
But I can tell you that every time I hear the movie my brain (for juuuust a second) always thinks it’s a Star Trek movie that’s specifically about pon farr.
For those not in the know, Vulcans (aka the race of aliens that Spock belongs to), while very disciplined, will get super horny every 7 years. So horny that they will just up and die if they don’t bust a nut and for whatever reason they can’t just take care of it themselves.
Now I’m no kid from the 60s, but I did hear of it first with Tuvok in the Voyager series. And now that reference is just as dated now as the original show was when I watched Voyager. And I just had a whole existential moment between those 2 sentences in this paragraph. I’m so old now.
I’m a school bus driver and my elementary school kids go on about somebody named “Queso” (sp?) on Youtube and I find myself constantly fighting the urge to see what he’s all about. It can’t possibly be good.
He’s a streamer whose chat makes fun of him for being fat. Caseoh.
I guess he won streamer of the year in 2024 - that was the first I’d heard of him
You’ve seen boomer humor. Get ready for milly mirth
