They aren’t “real” people either way, even the human ones are just drones reading a script that someone paid them to read.
Gen Z mostly doesn't care if influencers are actual humans, new study shows
Submitted 6 months ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://mashable.com/article/gen-z-ai-influencers
Comments
RobotToaster@mander.xyz 6 months ago
CorrodedCranium@leminal.space 6 months ago
Are you telling me all the podcasters I listen to didn’t natural have the same experience with HelloFresh?
Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee 6 months ago
This is how I think about social media in general. It’s a spectrum from mostly fake to all fake. Even the least fake profiles still only show the good parts of their life and unedited photos are still hand-picked from a bunch of other ones they don’t want people to see.
Hell even my own Pixelfed feed which is 100% landscape photography is all more or less fake. I take hundreds of photos and only publish one or two of the best ones and even those are heavily edited.
return2ozma@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Even with people knowing social media is fake or highly edited, It’s really doing a number on people’s mental health.
_edge@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
What a non-story.
They basically asked: In an ad, do you prefer an actor reading out the marketing script or a computer-rendered face?
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I just… don’t watch ads.
Firefox, ublock origin, NextDNS when mobile, pfBlockerNG at home.
I’ve gotten to the point where it’s genuinely jarring if I see an add on one of my own devices.
TimeSquirrel@kbin.social 6 months ago
Ever watch somebody who doesn't know about all that use the rawdog Internet? It's amazing how people can just sit there and not go apeshit. The population has been conditioned.
xePBMg9@lemmynsfw.com 6 months ago
How does that affect you instagram browsing experience?
eronth@lemmy.world 6 months ago
It feels like a weird study. I can’t tell if the study, or just the article, was trying to make GenZ look like fools yet again, when the actual results found are “GenZ is like a lot of other people in yet another way”.
Pantherina@feddit.de 6 months ago
I dont get why people would care for influencers
filister@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I don’t get how people can watch reality shows but apparently they do.
Plus entertainment is a great control tool. Give people enough entertainment and they will never revolt.
deafboy@lemmy.world 6 months ago
If the only way to a revolution is making lives more miserable, is the revolution even worthy? Something, something, accelerationism…
funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
why do people care for Shrek? Or Walter White? Or Antigone?
The concept of caring for fictional narratives is ages old.
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
And that makes it right?
Anyway the difference now is that peoples opinions are amplified and spread quickly. Combine that with sponsorships and uninformed takes and you are in trouble. It Aldo doesn’t help that people these days are lazy and dopamine junkies.
AA5B@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Wheel is excellent entertainment, and far more human than most of these pretenders.
I make the distinction among “streamer” who is doing a play by play similar to sportscasting, “presenter” is showing facts or teach a lesson like online learning, “op ed” to explain an opinion or parody, and “influencer” as someone trying to be center of attention but usually brings no value and has no reason to be famous except from being famous.
Maybe it’s just my own biases, but
- I can listen when my kids watch e-sports, recognize it as sportscasting
- I appreciate how “Everyday Astronaut” explains things
- I’ll go with Jon Stewart for presenting news topics with a sense of the absurd because I don’t have the patience to find a streamer equivalent
- somehow people like the Jenners, Lindsay Lohan, Kardashians, are famous for being famous, and supposedly “influence” people? Some of these really seem like the worst of humanity and ought to just be ignored.
billwashere@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Personally I despise everything about the idea of influencers. I have yet to see one who wasn’t an outright attention whore or just trying to get free shit.
kofe@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I don’t think it’s a bad thing to want to be paid for being the center of attention. There’s pathological levels to it for sure, but we’re communal, creative creatures. Maybe it depends on how we define influencer, idk. I was gonna comment that younger generations aren’t fully developed physiologically, so the appreciation for fully human influence could be chalked up to that
skulblaka@startrek.website 6 months ago
Right. There have been folks getting paid for (and enjoying) being the center of attention since culture has existed. The entire concept of cinema comes from this. I wouldn’t call Rowan Atkinson or Penn & Teller “attention whores or people who only want free shit” but they are the “influencers” of their time.
The dynamic has shifted, but I don’t see it as some inherently bad thing, this just reads as a “kids bad!” kind of statement.
Aggravationstation@feddit.uk 6 months ago
But isn’t that the whole point of them?
cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
I don’t care if it’s a human or a bot trying to sell me something because my ad blocker will make sure I don’t even see it.
sebinspace@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Probably because we didn’t care about them in the first place
velvetThunder@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
They have too many followers for that to be true. But I don’t understand why.
eronth@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I suspect a lot of the influencer numbers are pretty inflated.
pastermil@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I mean, who does? They don’t act like one.
TimeSquirrel@kbin.social 6 months ago
Does anyody really look at anyone in an ad and say, "Yes, that's a fellow human, I connect with them on a personal level"?
I've been perceiving them as robots since 1986.
Carrolade@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Exactly. Marketing generally doesn’t try to speak to your rational forebrain. It’s going for your subconscious, by design. It’s why ads can be so random and still retain efficacy.
kakes@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I’m a millennial, but I don’t necessarily care if the person I’m watching exists or not.
That’s not to say there aren’t a bunch of other factors involved that would generally steer me away from artificial people (general corporate BS being the obvious one), but all else being equal, I’m totally fine with it.
Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee 6 months ago
If it’s someone I’m never going to meet either way then it doesn’t matter if they’re real or not. What matters is the quality of content.
acockworkorange@mander.xyz 6 months ago
Newsflash: adolescents don’t care who is pushing consumerism to them.
tearsintherain@leminal.space 6 months ago
How the internet created ever more hucksters. Went from door-to-door to screen-to-screen salespeople. If they’re growing up okay being influenced by a bot, well aren’t we all screwed.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 6 months ago
I’m ten years you’ll have people identifying as an AI, and grafting on extra fingers.
c0c0c0@lemmy.world 6 months ago
My Gen Z son says these are Alphas and he doesn’t want to be associated with them.
SindNagger1820@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
America = not the fucking rest of the world you are complete retards
slurpinderpin@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I know every generation says this, but I actually think Gen Z is doomed. They have like 50% support for Hamas lmao, brain rotted by social media and echo chambers
Jimmyeatsausage@lemmy.world 6 months ago
If you think that’s what’s happening, you’ve been in an echo chamber yourself.
slurpinderpin@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Sorry, “only” 37%: newsweek.com/pro-palestinian-protest-hamas-colleg….
That’s so fuckin depressing lmaoooo what a bunch of idiots
Zier@fedia.io 6 months ago
Stop calling them "influencers", they are Sales People. They influence nothing, they sell you the same crap any ad does.
Sales people, advertisers, spam, all the same thing.
Usernameblankface@lemmy.world 6 months ago
They influence the buying decisions of their audience.
SupraMario@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I never understood how people like this got that title. They don’t influence shit, except maybe consumerism and the dumbing down of society.
Takumidesh@lemmy.world 6 months ago
They influence the people watching them.
capital@lemmy.world 6 months ago
So they have no influence except for the ways that they do?
funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
it’s actually already a sales term in ABM - you have the decision maker, blocker, influencer, end user/stakeholder etc
the term has been around longer than the internet
Zier@fedia.io 6 months ago
They pander to the less informed, shove confirmation bias into everything, and pretend to sound like an 'expert" on what they spew. Basically a con artist.
And they really want to be famous, but have zero talent. Again, con artist.
admin@lemmy.my-box.dev 6 months ago
Not even sales people, just marketing people without a fixed affiliation. The only people they influence are the people for whom the name influencer is not a red flag that they’re being lied to.
Having said that, “influencer” is a lot shorter than that, and at least everyone will know what you mean.