Blog Post #11: EOTO 2- What I Learned About... Online Influencers
Introduction
What Exactly is an Online Influencer?
An online influencer is someone using their platform on social media to market various products to their followers that they persuade them to buy by showing them the value that they have. Typically, each influencer has its own specialty when it comes to the kind of products they are selling. For instance, a gamer influencer will be marketing video game consoles and such by playing them, a fashion influencer will be showcasing a certain clothing brand, and a technology influencer will be showing off certain kinds of technology to their followers. Think of it as a famous person marketing and selling a product through the internet. This is not the old fashioned knock on someone's door and try to sell them a bar of chocolate, this is a completely revamped and popular way of certain brands and companies to get their product more widely known across the world. There are many steps that do need to be taken for someone to become a certified influencer. The first step and perhaps the biggest step is that they need to consistently post online and gain a following. No one can partner with a brand to help them market and sell their products if they do not have a suitable enough following that can help bring both the influencer and the company major revenue. With over 3.6 BILLION social media users in today's society, the demand for entertaining content to be viewed online is extremely high. Lots of influencers made their name by doing a series of things whether it was uploading comedy skits, doing vlogs, beauty tutorials, gaming streams, you name it. As these people get more and more views online, brands will recognize their success and reach out to them in attempt to form a partnership where they will give the influencer funds in order to have them advertise their product on whatever social media platform/s they are active on. Some may find this crazy, but many influencers have agents, managers, and publicists just like actors in Hollywood do. Speaking of Hollywood, oftentimes these influencers will move to a place like Los Angeles in order to collab with other influencers and in order to be closer the brand they are partnering with since many of the popular brands are in Southern California. This also gives the influencers a chance to be a part of more projects with the company they are working with which means more an increased income for them which is what they want. Don't we all want more money in our lives?! Companies like Adidas, Pepsi, Sephora, and more use online influencers as a way to advertise and attract new consumers. Sure they can use other forms of advertising like putting up billboards, making commercials, get displayed in the newspaper and radio, but that's a pretty bland and safe way of advertising. Instead, these brands want to spice it up and get a group of people to represent and make them look good in front of the general public.
Now you may be thinking that these companies especially ones like Adidas and Pepsi who have such a high prestige would solely want very seasoned celebrities to be the ones serving as influencers to their products. WRONG!!! Many of these influencers are under the age of 25. As a matter of fact, 31% of influencers in 2019 were between the age of 18 and 24. That number has only increased since then with social media platforms like TikTok taking off and serving as such a huge place for brands to find influencers. Of course many of the worlds famous TikTokers are very young since the app itself is marketed towards being used by younger generations. There are many qualities that are needed for an online influencer to be successful. First and foremost, they need to have an outgoing and very personality be displayed on social media. Think about when you watch commercials on television... do you see the person advertising a product have a stern look on their face or speak in a bored tone? NO!!! You see smiling and be very engaged in front of the camera. That's exactly how online influencers are and these brands from all over the world know exactly what is the identity and value of their company as well as what kind of person would be a great fit for a marketing a certain type of product that they have. The delivery skills of these influencers is so vital as them being able to engage and connect with their audience allows for more trust to be created which will lead to an increased likelihood of their followers purchasing the product their advertising. Since these online influencers have large followings when they partner with these different brands, they already have a steady following where their followers know who they are and how their personality is. Someone like Selena Gomez who has over 269 million followers on Instagram is well-known enough by her fan base to the point where they will react to everything she posts. A picture of her on vacation with a fellow celebrity friend of hers will gain tons of likes and a post of her wearing a piece of a certain brand she's advertising for may not get as many likes, but it will be seen by the same amount of people that sees all of her other pictures like the major ones with her celebrity friends because she still has 269 million followers. Whenever you follow someone on social media, you are prone to seeing the content that you may have followed for along with the random content they post like a certain advertisement of some sort. In the case of Selena Gomez, she partnered with Adidas to wear their clothing and post it online. Gomez has been partnered with Adidas for quite awhile now and by wearing their clothing, she's able to let her fan base at least see the Adidas clothing and there is a good chance that at least some of those 269 million followers she has on Instagram will be open to purchasing something from Adidas. I do give credit to Adidas for taking full advantage of their partnership with Gomez and having her be the main person to help advertise their new products as she has such a big following that many others do not have. In a good world, these influencers grow and grow in their partnership with the brand their helping and it creates for more income being made on both sides.
TikTok Influencers
I mentioned previously that the majority of online influencers are extremely young and the majority of the popular ones can be found on TikTok. There are many different and pretty unique ways that one can get famous on TikTok. A person can post one video on their account that goes absolutely viral and gets over a million hits. However, similar to an athlete, actor, musician or any other sort of entertainer, what's going to make you stand out for is to be consistent. A company will not want to partner with someone on social media who only post a few times a month or goes all over the place in terms of the kinds of topics that they put on their social media sites. The reason TikTokers like Addison Rae and the D'Amelio sisters got so popular and gained such great recognition worldwide is because they kept constantly uploading content on their TikTok accounts which led to more followers and their followers wanted to see even more. Think about who you follow on social media. If they go without posting for 5 months, are you going to be likely to unfollow them? Probably since it seems like they're not using social media at all and are pretty much just a wasted and unnecessary person to follow at that point. TikTok is so easy to make a video which allows for an increased probability of videos being consistently uploaded on a users channel. There are a lot of methods that one can use to be creative on the app and the young attraction rate of it helps out immensely as well. Videos on TikTok are also set up to be very short, quick, straight to the point which allows for easy accessibility to it and an influencer advertising a product on TikTok is simply using it in the same way that a person advertising a product on a television commercial would.
Addison Rae started making TikTok videos in 2018 and then graduated from high school in 2019 and started college later that same year like most people her age do. She continued making TikToks at the beginning of college and her videos started to blow up more and more which led to her electing to drop out of college and focus more on her TikTok career. Little did she know that she would become one of the biggest faces on TikTok and all of social media in general and the more famous she got, the more followers she had, and the more brands were reaching out to her in attempt to have Rae sell their product which in the way her career was taking off by storm was a great move. Slowly but surely, Rae's posts on social media turned from simply posting videos of her dancing or partying to posting pictures of her representing various brands like Versace and Sephora. Rae now has over 40.1 million followers on Instagram as of October 2021 so that means millions of people are going to be seeing these brands on their Instagram feed. Of course, I should note that not all 40.1 million of Rae's followers are actually human beings due to the increasing presence of bots on social media but still, having an influencer like Addison Rae is a luxury to have. It helps that she is still young and essentially in the "prime" stage of her life in terms of her appearance and such because it will attract more people to want to follow her and view her content. The majority of her positive comments on her social media accounts are things like "I love you Addison!" or "OMG, you're so pretty!!" Don't think that all she gets on her feed are positive comments though. There are a lot of negative comments that she unfortunately gets and I will touch more on that in the negative effects section of this post.
Furthermore, having these young TikTokers serve as influencers is such a huge bonus because these are young people on the rise who are prone to continue being in the central spotlight of social media for years to come. Don't think for a second that Addison Rae or Charli D'Amelio is going anywhere anytime soon. These are two influencers who are known for actively expanding their brand online as much as they possibly can in order to attract new followers to their social media pages. It seems like every week there are new headlines about what Rae and D'Amelio are doing online and how they are forming new partnerships with more brands. Addison Rae even had the opportunity to land a starring role in the movie He's All That alongside Tanner Buchanan, a remake of the hit 1999 movie She's All That. The fame that Rae gained online was what ultimately helped her land this enormous on-screen role and rumors have it that there's only more of those kind of projects to come for her in the future. Both Rae and D'Amelio were present at the 2020 NBA All-Star Weekend in Chicago Illinois, where they were brought in by the NBA to help market the mega event on their TikTok accounts. Charli's sister, Dixie, who is also a famous TikToker and Online Influencer was also present at the event and all three of them had the opportunity to mingle with fellow NBA stars and were even provided with their own segment on television during the 2020 NBA Celebrity All-Star Game that was televised on ESPN. These kind of moments don't happen to people every single day, but because of the following that Rae and the D'Amelio sisters gained online, they were able to be featured at such a high prestige event. They were able to bring in their followers, most of whom are around their age or younger which brought in a new audience range for the NBA. Of course there are many young NBA fans, but young people who actively enjoy following Rae and the D'Amelio sisters are very likely to tune in and watch All-Star Weekend just for them. TikTok as a whole platform was also able to see its numbers increase as a social media platform as numerous NBA players and TikTokers made videos at the event, forming a connection between the NBA and TikTok that all occurred because of these online influencers. Now you have NBA teams with TikTok accounts. This whole correlation between the online influencers, the NBA, and TikTok is crazy, and it just goes to show just how much influence these online influencers are able to bring, especially those who are apart of the younger generation. Younger people have more time on their hands to spend time scrolling through social media than adults. They are also the future of the world, so having them get attracted to these different brands and organizations will set them all up for success in the long run.
YouTubers
TikTokers may be one of if not the most notable platform where online influencers are making their name right now, but another social media site that is actually the pioneer of where online influencers began their journey is YouTube. YouTube was created in 2005 as a place where people could upload videos to share with the public whether it was comedy skits, music videos, vlogs, you name it. The site took off drastically shortly after it was created and by the summer of 2006, YouTube was serving more than 100 million videos per day, and those numbers only kept increasing year after year. Online influencers as mentioned previously have to have their own large following online in order for them to be reached out by these big brands. YouTube served as that main area where normal people could become famous people. The accessibility to the platform was tremendous and the uploading process of a video was seaming less which meant it didn't take having over 10 years of video production experience necessary in order to create and upload a video on the site. When created in 2005 however, YouTube did not intend on having their platform end up being a place where people could make full-time careers on it and support a family. However, with the presence of ad revenue on YouTube, it has helped allow for more money to made by YouTubers if they can reach an absurd amount of views on their videos. On average, a YouTube channel can receive $18 per 1,000 ad views. This equates to about $3-5 being made for every 1,000 video views. Do the math, and say that a YouTube is making $4 for every 1,000 video views and they have a hit video that reaches a million views, then BOOM, that's 400,000 that they just made from that video alone. A complete shift to the old era of YouTube. I remember when I first started watching YouTube on a consistent basis back in 2009, the popular videos were comedy skits, music videos, game tutorials, and fashion videos. Full on let's plays or try on hauls and such were nonexistent at the time. Let's plays and try-on hauls are perhaps two of the more notable videos that an online influencer on YouTube will make to share with their subscribers. A let's play allows for a gamer to partner with a video game distributor and/or video game console and try it out by providing a live reaction. The cool thing about doing let's plays is that video games are often not completed in one day especially if it is a story kind of video games that features numerous chapters. Therefore, it takes time to complete which means there will be a necessity for more videos to be made by the influencer which will lead to more time that the game/console get shown on their channel. This of course also means the influencer will make more money and there is a great chance that the game/console their advertising will make more money too because it will be actively shown and will give viewers plenty of time to see what its all about. Try-on hauls on the other hand are very similar in regards to the fact that they allow for viewers to get a clear look of what an outfit looks like and allows for one of their favorite influencers to provide a "honest" opinion on what they think about the outfit. I use quote on quote on the word honest because there is no secret that some influencers are better at doing these try-on hauls then others. Depending on how much money the brand is giving them, there really will be no other option for an influencer other than to make the brand that is giving them profits look good since that's essentially their job. However, some influencers who have a more aggressive personality and are known for being very out there and not afraid to share their opinions may not have any problem with criticizing portions of the outfits they are trying on. Especially if they have built and established a sense of trust with their fanbase, the last thing they want to do is tell their subscribers to go buy a product that they say is good but really isn't and then let their fans find out the harsh truth on their own. I will touch more on this in the "cons of being an influencer" section, but YouTubers are challenged a lot more heavily than TikTokers when it comes to being an influencer because they are in charge of creating a 10+ minute video rather than a quick 30 second-a minute video on TikTok.
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| Jimmy Donaldson, more widely known as Mr. Beast has taken the world over by storm as an influencer and is known for his massive giveaways and insane stunts |
YouTubers like Mr. Beast are known for being influencers that aren't necessarily stuck in the pot of being solely in one category like gaming, sports, or fashion because he really took a step beyond everybody else and create a diverse brand that allows him to roam around freely and partner with numerous companies on his videos. The big thing Mr. Beast is known for is his massive giveaways and insane stunts. Whether its doing things like giving his 40,000,000 subscriber 40 cars or eating the world's largest slice of pizza, Mr. Beast always brings something new to his channel which allows for him to be unique and keep gaining the attention of more and more brands because he is always expanding his arsenal on a consistent basis. Now, Mr. Beast actually did make his name first off doing let's plays on his YouTube channel, but the moment he started expanding and increasing the engagement and overall quality of his content, the views on his channel and the number of subscribers he had absolutely skyrocketed! There are tons of YouTubers who do let's plays, but how many of them try to survive on a desert island for 24 hours or open the world's first store where everything is free? Not much right? Its influencers like Mr. Beast that show how one can become a successful influencer. Yes, he makes a lot of money from his bangers on YouTube, but he is also able to make a lot of money from these different brands he's partnering with that allows him to earn more profits that he can then use as resources for his videos. The big company he got sponsored by was Current, a financial technology company. Mr. Beast agreed to an exclusive, long-term partnership with Current and they will help give back in his videos at an even larger scale on YouTube and his other social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram, as he will be utilizing Current's mobile banking products. Sure a video game company or a fashion line is great to partner with, but when you're able to form a LIFETIME partnership with a financial technology company, you know you're doing well! Because Mr. Beast is already widely-known for giving so much money away and putting so much time and investment into his insane stunts, Current took great notice of that and wanted in on an opportunity to connect with Mr. Beast and have their company be advertised immensely on the social media platforms of Mr. Beast. Since this partnership just formed, it'll be interesting to see how it continues to expand within the coming months. Just when it seems like Mr. Beast is running out of ideas, he keeps coming up with new ones, which is oftentimes the challenge of being an influencer, is how do they find innovative ways to expand their fame online and get deals with other brands in order to receive more money? For Mr. Beast that has been no trouble and now he is serving as one of the prime examples of what makes a great online influencer.
Pros of Being an Online Influencer
Being an online influencer has been stigmatized as a very unorthodox job for quite some time now. This is simply because it is still a relatively new job in the world today and 10-15 years ago, if you were to tell someone that you were going to partner with a company, upload photos and videos of advertising their products and make a million dollars, they would tremendously laugh at you. However, the reality of the fact is that the number of online influencers in today's society is high, it has been a major success when executed correctly, and its only anticipated to grow even higher in terms of its overall popularity. Because its such a unique job, being an online influencer presents many pros that cannot be found in many other positions. For starters, you can gain a lot of fame and money as an influencer. This may be deemed as the most obvious and most cliché pro of being an influencer since many people want fame and money in their life, but these are actually the two most important things that will determine whether an online influencer is successful and if they can actually make a full-time career out of this. As stated earlier, these online influencers typically already have a suitable following online when they officially partner with these different companies, so the fame is normally already there. The money can already be there as well depending on how many views and likes the person is receiving on their social media platforms. If an influencer can partner with a big corporation like Adidas, Nike, PlayStation, etc. then the likelihood their overall revenue increasing is extremely high since these are some of the most wealthiest companies out there that they have the opportunity to partner with.
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| Chris Smoove's NBA2K19 MyCareer creation video received over 4.3 million views on YouTuber |
Furthermore, influencers have a fun job where they make money by trying and marketing new products for free. Think about PlayStation reaching out to you and saying "hey, we want to form a partnership with you. All were asking is for you to play 10 different games on our brand new console and make 10 let's play videos of those games on your YouTube channel marketing our product, and will give you $100,000 if you do that for us." I mean, how cool is that?! There are so many wonderful opportunities as an influencer to receive exclusive access to a lot of products. I see it all the time with online influencers who are gamers because they always are the first ones to receive a game, console, you name it in order for them to market it to their audience where most of them are gamers themselves who are strongly thinking about buying and playing the same game. NBA2K does a fantastic job of partnering with the biggest 2K gamers on YouTube in order to promote their new games year after year. Perhaps the most notable online gaming influencer in the world of NBA2K is Chris Smoove, who is also known as the Godfather of 2K for being one of the OG's who began publishing NBA2K related content on YouTube. NBA2K has a game mode called MyCareer, which is by far their most popular game mode, and every year when the new game comes out, Chris Smoove will get the game early and start uploading MyCareer videos roughly a week or two before the game officially gets released to the general public. During these videos, Smoove will not only play the game mode, he will also provide his feedback and thoughts of the game, while also marketing it heavily on social media sites. Because Chris Smoove has such a large following and has been uploading NBA2K related content on his YouTube channel for over a decade, he has gained an extremely large following of having over 5.08 million subscribers on YouTube and the 2K community listens to him. This is a very smart marketing move on the side of NBA2K because they are using the power of an online influencer to help market their games. On the other side, Chris Smoove is also getting a lot out of it because the views for those videos he makes playing the new NBA2K game are oftentimes his most watched videos of the calendar year. He also gets the chance to collab with other gamers which is a big thing on YouTube and just an important project to do as an online influencer, and he has also done feature videos with other professional athletes like Tony Parker, David Ortiz, and John Wall to advertise the PlayStation console. The amount of opportunities an online influencer can receive is high and they have a chance to really gain more attraction with their following especially if they are partnering with a company that is related to their main area of content, which in Smoove's case is a gaming console in PlayStation partnering with his channel, that centralizes around sports and gaming.
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| In 2014, Chris Smoove did a PS4 upgrade with 5x NBA-All Star John Wall, which garnered more than 2.5 million views on YouTube. |
Cons of Being an Online Influencer
Not to stereotype here, but if you were to talk to someone who was born in the 20th century, and asked them whether or not they were a fan of online influencers, they would most likely tell you no in a very passionate and direct tone. To be honest, I can't blame them because while online influencers have provided some positives in our society, they have also created an unnecessary distraction for us as well. A lot of that has to do with the uncertainty of being an influencer. These online influencers are heavily pressured with continuing to expand their following on social media and increase the overall quality of their content, creating for immense encounters of creators block, which leads to some of them making idiotic decisions on their social media sites. Scandals, arguments, etc. are very prominent in the lives of online influencers which obviously is not good for any companies that influencer is partnered with because that brand is heavily relying on the influencer to make them look good. While it's awesome to see that a company like Pepsi is partnering with an online influencer, it is also a major risk and there is no guarantee that everything will work to perfection. Yes, the majority of these influencers may be in Hollywood, but are they on the same standard of professional actors and musicians? Not quite. Some, in fact a lot of influencers may be more widely known than these actors and musicians simply because they are actively present on social media on a day to day basis, but still a lot of them became famous through the internet, and are not really in a professional setting with restrictions of what they can and cannot share with their fanbase. The internet is meant for everybody to post anything that they'd like. Yes, YouTube, Instagram, and other social media sites have certain restrictions and guidelines, but sometimes they are not used properly, and these influencers still find a way to upload nonsense stuff on their social media sites which creates great deals of controversy. Being an influencer, there is so much competition since there's so many other influencers out there. There is an estimated range of between 3.2 million - 37.8 million influencers in the world today, so it almost becomes this long never-ending game where whoever can attract the most followers and views will reign supreme as an online influencer and generate more profits on a year to year basis. Each influencer is fighting for more people to join their following and if that seems bad its because it is. However, that is unfortunately part of the job description as an influencer because if they don't attract more followers and gain more views, their partnership with a certain brand can be taken away just like that which will serve as a detrimental effect to the career of that online influencer.
The cons of being an online influencer do not just focus on the uncertainty of the position, it expands to the immense number of hate comments and threats that they receive online which leads to a rise in various mental health issues such as depression and anxiety across all of these influencers. As I learned during the EOTO presentation of online influencers, these users on YouTube and TikTok experience great deals of bullying and harassment. With features like dislikes on YouTube and an open comment section on TikTok, it is very easy for someone to send hate comments especially since they "hide" their identity online behind the screen. Of course, nothing is truly private nowadays but there are even some people who will post a hate comment or harass an influencer online with their REAL identity. The world of social media has caused a number of bad encounters for influencers and because the job of these influencers relies on them always being on social media and posting content, its very difficult for them to step away from being on social media unless they do not want to be an online influencer anymore. As previously stated before though, many of these online influencers are young meaning many of them either dropped out of college or did not even go to college at all in order to pursue a full-time career as an influencer. With that being said, if they were to just completely leave social media after being bullied and harassed, their opportunities to find another high paying job will be severely limited because of the minor education experience that they have. Nowadays, employers want to even see a masters degree on the resume of their potential candidates, making it that much tougher to enter the professional workforce and for these influencers, there already taking a big risk by doing this job, so seeing the risk not pay off is the worst thing that could possibly happen. Of course, I do not want to see any influencer continuously suffer from these hate comments and encounters of bullying which is why I've been glad to see certain influencers taking a two week break or so from their job where they just strain away from being on social media and uploading content. Just like if you are working as a teacher or salesman, you will be taking a vacation every know and then, and these influencers need to as well. There's many people out there who are the haters and question why these influencers need a break if they are not working 9 to 5. Well the reality of it is that these influencers are actually working a lot behind the scenes. Especially if they have a partnership with a company, they'll have meetings with them, they will be planning their next videos of content, and then of course filming and uploading them. Many influencers put a lot of time and effort into their work, so when it gets uploaded and they see comments like "you're so ugly" or "you should go kill yourself" it affects them drastically as it would for a lot of people. Having creeps stalk the TikTok accounts of young influencers is disgusting, but it happens and it unfortunately happens way too often to the point where stopping one creep will not stop the other ones from making disturbing comments. Dealing with the negativity is sadly part of the little fine print in the job description and some influencers have just learned to deal with it which they shouldn't have to. There are also a lot of haters who want to see certain influencers get "canceled" because they can't stand their content. Sadly, it is impossible to please EVERY single person in the world as an influencer, so hate will come just like athletes receive hate, but its more about the extent as to which these online influencers receive harsh criticism. Death threats and messages of verbal harassment is completely uncalled for. These influencers are REAL people doing a REAL job. They are not actors playing a character on the internet, they are actually be extremely bold and portraying their real selves online to millions of people from all over the world. No one likes hearing a bunch of random people hating on them, but these influencers deal with these comments every day which of course depending on the person can have a severe effect on their mindset of working as an influencer which can then lead to a decrease in the overall quality of their content which then can affect the income they make and the praise and recognition that they get from their followers and other companies. An influencer is set up in a tough position and their haters want to manipulate them and see these influencers fail.
Future Outlook of Online Influencers & Conclusion
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| Emma Chamberlin is widely considered as one of the world's top influencers and she is only 20 years old |
To conclude, online influencers are presented with a tough job and with the increasing presence of social media users online nowadays, the position itself is only going to get tougher. Career days at schools are not even about bringing in doctors, realtors, and police officers to come in, now you have kids in elementary school saying that they want to be a YouTuber or TikToker when they grow up which is crazy to think about. I think back to when I was 8 years old, and YouTube was still relatively new, I never thought a full-time career could be made on YouTube, I just thought it could make for a great side career, but boy was my little 8 year old self wrong. The numbers of online influencers has only increased which makes for the competition of being successful as one a LOT harder. If you think buying a camera and making three YouTube videos will do it, then you are absolutely wrong. There is a lot of work that needs to be done to be successful as an online influencer and it is essentially like running your own business. There are a lot more logistics that need to be figured out and tough decisions are needed to be made on a nearly every day basis. The good thing for online influencers, is that with its increased presence in society, it is slowly but surely starting to be taken a tad more seriously. No wealthy company like Nike or Sephora would be partnering with online influencers if they didn't think there was insane potential for online influencers to succeed in the near future. So, the interest and demand for online influencers is high, but the million dollar question will being an online influencer become a safer and less stressful job? The duties of fulfilling the role of an online influencer seem super fun, but the negatives that are not thoroughly listed in the job description and come along with it are not fun. How can these issues be addressed? Who knows. Perhaps it will take for more online influencers to speak out on these issues and make those haters if they feel bad (If those haters will even listen and care about what the online influencers have to say about them.) If addressed, these online influencers will be able to solely focus on their job and entertaining their followers. Even if an influencer has a great deal of haters, they still have a large following of people that love them for who they are and want to see more content from them. Nowadays, when you ask some people on the street who is their biggest idol, they'll say the name of an online influencer and they will be proud to say their name too. Online influencers are making a difference in this world and they mean well, but I think the haters they get and the scandals that are always attempted to be made about them, when oftentimes half of them aren't even true is hurting the chance of them being able to increase their reputation in society.
There are so many platforms where online influencers can make a name for themselves nowadays. Whether its on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, you name it, the accessibility for these influencers to do their job is amazing. TikTok just recently blew up too and its popularity and usage in the media is only set to increase as time progresses. With so many platforms that one can follow an online influencer on, every person can find one that fulfills their needs since not everyone is the biggest fan of Instagram or the biggest fan of TikTok. Bottom line though is that these online influencers are real people and I feel like that is the message that needs to be conveyed the most to people around the world. There are a lot of individuals out there who forget that sometimes, including myself. We think of YouTube videos as an alternative to movies and television, and think we are watching actors play certain characters, but in reality we are just watching real people showcase their real self to the internet. I can relate to that a bit in the sense that as an aspiring sports broadcaster who has already appeared on ESPN+ and ESPN3 for more than 70 NCAA Division 1 games already in addition to uploading more than 130 podcast episodes that are available on the internet, I have showed my real self as well. I'm not playing a character on the air, I am being myself. That is actually one of if not the most important quality to what makes a great online influencer. Some influencers feel the need to be someone else and its actually not because they are trying to look cool, its because they are afraid of what people will think of their real selves. Everybody in our society is so different and unique in their own way though to the point where we all should fully embrace whatever personality and appearance these online influencers have. At the end of the day, they all want to entertain us and are just trying to make a living. Of course, working as a YouTuber with a flexible schedule is completely different from working a 9-5 job in a corporate office, but the next time you think of hating an online influencer, just think about how they are a real person with real feelings. I'm not saying there will ever be a time where online influencers will be fully liked and never receive any hate, that's ridiculous, but a lot of their success as an influencer relies on what their followers think of them, and any praise they receive will lead to them being more motivated to increase the level of their content. It will be interesting to follow the future of online influencers and how its role in society will play out, but a simple positive comment on one their posts online could tremendously help out them and YOU in the long run.
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