The “influencers” that are all over Facebook and Instagram and Twitter are pretty much Hollywood special effects. Why not go a step further, and make “influencers” that are totally fake?
WIRED reports: [wir]
It doesn’t get more 2018 than this: In mid-April, a Trump-supporting Instagram influencer named Bermuda hacked the account of fellow influencer Lil Miquela, who has over a million followers. Wait, no, there’s more: Bermuda refused to return the account unless Miquela promised to “tell the world the truth” – the truth being that Miquela is not a human being. And in case you haven’t caught on yet, neither is Bermuda. Both are CGI creations.
Both are transparently fake marketing, too.
“Bermuda” is a bit better than Lara Croft (with the shelf-boob) in Tomb Raider I but not much, really. It looks a lot like DAZ3D’s basic ‘poser’ model circa 2005.
What’s interesting, to me, is that these fake creations are supposedly going to encourage real people to want to be like them – but it’s a transparent combination of stupid and bogus. I suppose there are a few people out there who are going to look at someone’s instagram feed and want to run out and spend money to buy whatever it is they’re wearing, but it seems to me like a bad strategy for marketers to emphasize the falsity of their marketing.
A 3D rendering photoshopped awkwardly into a background; she doesn’t even have a shadow.
What else is interesting is that the marketing drones behind this charade are trying to drive eyeballs with fake drama. It would seem to me that this is probably not the time to be emphasizing falsity and pointless drama, but maybe I’m just a curmudgeon.
I welcome anything that reveals marketing as being the lies and empty propaganda that it is; perhaps culturally we need to make things worse, in order that they may eventually become better. If everyone comes to believe “influencers” are just marketing and fakes, maybe they’ll stop following them.
This is a bit unsettling, albeit not unexpected.
Soon we’ll hear about people unhappy that they can’t afford the fourth parlor wall and can’t immerse themselves completely into the drama. If only someone would invent a smaller, face-mounted screen that coordinates with your head movements…
William Gibson was correct on all counts.
Oh c’mon – there’s a reason Second Life is so popular. A lot of people are happy being a Renderosity construct.
Marcus, I have just noticed the bit about making things worse before they get better. That worked so well historically.
Here I am reading this blog post and wondering why should I even care. The thing is: I just don’t care about this stuff.
Back when I checked your blog archives, I read your post “The War on Authenticity.” I didn’t comment there, because, well, old post, but that was one of the (actually pretty rare) cases where I completely disagreed with you. The way how you define authenticity, I just don’t care about it. I’m perfectly happy with “inauthentic” (as per your definition) books, artworks, politician’s speeches, etc.
When I’m hanging out with a friend or going on a date or just being with some person, then I’m interested in the actual person. Then I want this person to be themselves—I don’t want them to recite for me some pickup lines written by somebody else. For example, if I received a letter from a person I know, I wouldn’t want it to be written by their secretary and proofread by a professional editor.
However, my attitude shifts completely when it comes to commercial products—books, artworks, political speeches, etc. Here I am no longer interested in the author(s), I’m interested in the product itself. I would not care or feel faked if the editor turned some mediocre book into a great piece of literature. After all, I’m only interested in the finished product. If multiple people collaborate and together create an artwork that’s better than anything they could have made singlehandedly, then that’s great—I prefer to see the better quality collaboration rather than the not so good works that each artist could have made on their own. (Of course, here’s a potential for abuse—a famous person can put their name on something that was almost entirely done by another person, and thus the other person gets no credit for their work and receive little income. If that happens, that’s very bad. However, if everybody who worked on the collaboration is happy with the conditions, as it should normally be for editors, ghost-writers, people on some writers’ panel, etc., then I’m perfectly fine with it.) Same goes for politicians. For me, they are strangers, I don’t care about them as people, and after all, I don’t even know them. I only care about whether they pass certain laws. For example, I want gay marriage to be legalized where I live. I don’t care which politician passes this law. I don’t care who wrote the speech that resulted in this law being passed. I don’t care whether the politician used a teleprompter—I only care about the law getting passed.
I’m just not interested in strangers as people. If a friend told me about where they went for a vacation, how their relationship with their significant other is advancing or what new hobby they have picked up, I would be interested in this information, because I’m interested in my friend as a person. However, I’m not interested in artists, writers or politicians as people. I’m only interested in their work. If I like some artist’s work, I will happily add their website to my RSS feeds, look at their newest paintings, read any tutorials they make, learn about how they make their artworks. I will be interested in their work. But I won’t care about their personal life, I won’t look at their social media posts where they inform the world about their last vacation or their marriage. That’s irrelevant for me. I almost never read biographies of artists, writers, philosophers, scientists, etc. whose work I like. I’m just not interested in this information.
This attitude of mine is also the reason why I just cannot care about the issue you described in this blog post. I don’t perceive “fake marketing” as a problem.
When offering for sale a pair of pants, the seller will need images of somebody wearing those pants. It can be a celebrity, a well known fashion model, some unknown model, seamstress’ daughter, even the seamstress herself, a plastic mannequin, a 3D model, etc. Whatever. I don’t care, which one it is. Whether I’ll buy those pants depends on criteria like, for example, what is the fabric composition, how good the sewing quality is, do I like how those pants look like, whether workers who made the garment got a fair wage, do I even need a new pair of pants, etc. criteria. Namely, I will decide based on relevant facts about the pants themselves. I couldn’t care less who is wearing those pants in the advertisement photo. That’s irrelevant for my purchase decision.
It’s not like I never care about marketing. In fact, it worries me a lot. There are marketers gathering my personal data without my permission just so that they could use “big data” for, uh, well, something. We have outright fraudulent products (detox, homeopathy, penis enlargement pills). We have marketers lying about the supposed benefits of their products (for example, organic food). We have marketers intimidating people and capitalizing on their lack of education (“your tap water isn’t safe to drink, you need our water filter”). Then there are also marketing that’s a fucking pain in the ass, because it makes me waste my time when I get phone calls or text messages (my mobile phone has no good spam filter for text messages, thus I have to manually delete every spam text message I get). Besides all of these problems, what bother me most are the really subtle advertisements that actually succeed in manipulating me to buy some stuff (for example, unnoticeable native advertising). I don’t like having my choices influenced by somebody else. On some occasions I have caught myself being influenced by marketers. The fact that they succeed in doing this bothers me. I don’t care about blatant and obvious marketing exactly because it is so obvious and simple. A 3D model in used to market some clothes in some social media site? Whatever. It’s not like people who choose to follow this account cannot realize that this is an advertisement. If some people actually care about what some celebrity or 3D model wears and want to buy the same stuff, that’s their choice, they are free to buy whatever they want. (Personally, I don’t care about celebrities, influencers and whatever else. Since I don’t even own a TV and I hardly ever watch movies, I don’t even know who is famous, and I cannot recognize a celebrity even when I see one.)
And, speaking of “fake marketing,” is there really such a thing as “authentic marketing”? I’d say all marketing is inauthentic.
Caine@#3:
Oh c’mon – there’s a reason Second Life is so popular. A lot of people are happy being a Renderosity construct.
Yes, but we don’t see those people making purchasing decisions to bring them closer to their 2nd life ideal. Personally, I think the world would be more fun if people dressed like their World of Warcraft characters, but they don’t. And that’s the point: all this marketing is premised on the slim theory that people will do what they see media figures do. But, as the media figures become increasingly isolated and improbable, it becomes more and more obvious that’s not going to happen – so they give up.
I used to wonder how many people actually tried to dress like Paris Hilton, until I looked the brands she was flogging’s revenues compared to Ecko’s.
Elitism marketing has to balance carefully on that cusp between projecting an attractive image of social class without going outright classist.
chigau@#2:
William Gibson was correct on all counts.
He’s turned out to be right on so many counts.
cvoinescu@#4:
Marcus, I have just noticed the bit about making things worse before they get better. That worked so well historically.
True. Why is it that the masses don’t see through the leaders and fashion-makers? It’s such an obvious game they are playing!
Marcus:
That’s not so. I have a friend who is very into second life, and pulling down some serious money with it, too. That friend, and a couple others tried to talk me into doing second life, but just checking it out exhausted me. In order to make it really work, you do have to live another life and be committed to it. There are a lot of people on second life who end up meshing their virtual life with their afk life, and yeah, that includes purchases.
Second Life is not at all like world of warcraft or any other game; the whole thing is based on marketing, first and foremost, marketing yourself, then marketing whatever it is you’re selling. You can make a good living with it, as long as you fully commit to it.
Marcus:
That’s not a sound basis for judgment. You won’t find rich people buying knock offs, let alone off the rack. Most people, no matter their burning desire to dress like whoever, can’t afford $2,000 for a dress, $800 for shoes (on sale!), $1,000 for a bag, and so on. People do what they can in that regard, in their desire to emulate so and so.
I’ve always gone my own way when it comes to fashion, and I’m often told I have a great flair for it, and “everything always looks so good on you“, blah blah. Most of it is simply liking the clothes you have, and having confidence wearing them. That said, there’s multi-billion dollar businesses who do that kind of money in seriously overpriced cosmetics, clothing, etc., because a lot of people do want to emulate so and so. That market also includes men, who get the same shit flung at them. That desire to emulate also fuels all the knock-off industries, which make a pretty haul in money, too.
I suspect that a lot of people (probably most of them) realize on some level that marketing is deceptive, but they follow it anyway because they get something out of it that they value. For example, lots of people pay extra money for clothing and accessories that have a prestigious name or logo on them. Often, the actual quality of the items purchased isn’t that much better than cheaper brands without such a name or logo. In effect, they are paying extra money and providing free advertising for the brand at the same time. For a long time, this didn’t make sense to me, but I don’t think that it is just a case of people being foolish. I think that most people must realize that they are being overcharged for a brand name, but they don’t care because they get something that they value out of the deal. It could be the admiration or envy of friends or strangers, or a greater feeling of self-confidence, or a feeling of higher status relative to wearing no-name brands, but it means a lot to some people. The reason buying more expensive brands didn’t make sense to me is because I either don’t feel or don’t care about the benefits that are so important to other people.
In other words, marketing is exploitative, but I think that many, perhaps most, people are consciously willing to be exploited by it because they feel that they are getting something more valuable than they are giving up.
springa73@#11
I don’t see that much exploitation in this example you give. Here the advertised offer is completely transparent. People are given the option to pay more in order to get the same clothes worn by some celebrity or just clothes with some fancy label. They realize that they are paying more and they also understand what it is that they are getting (a chance to show off, status symbol, whatever). As long as advertisement is transparent and people understand what it is that they are getting in exchange for their money, I’m perfectly fine with it. After all, every person is free to choose to buy whatever they like. If they want the same clothes as worn by some celebrity, fine, whatever, that’s their choice.
Marketing can get a lot worse than this example you gave. I cannot stand advertisements when they become obscure and deceitful, when they actually lie to the purchaser. For example, native advertising lies to the buyer by pretending not to be an advertisement. Another example—advertisements for homeopathic “medicine” lie to the patients by claiming that the pills are effective (when in reality they aren’t). This is an example where the buyer is tricked by marketing, lied to, and, as a result, becomes unable to make a rational decision (how many patients would still buy homeopathic medicine if they knew that it does not work as advertised?).