He laid the groundwork for those shitty influencer. He had the attention of young people who looked up to him. The minute they saw he could make millions by becoming the walking embodiment of a Nascar fender he set the attitudes and aspirations of a generation.
Would YouTube continue without him? Yes of course.
Could he have pushed back and created helped influence a generation of kids to reject the selling out of themselves to this influencer culture? Absolutely.
There were a few influencers in those early days that could have changed things or at least maintained the zeitgeist that we had then. Nobody did. That money was too good. Everything after he made that first million would change how the internet worked.
He was the inflection point. He could have impacted everything going forward. He could have told kids that these companies were stealing their data. That they were soliciting gamers to use as Trojan horses for what would eventually make everything worse.
To call him the inflection point, as if this wasn’t a more complex change emerging over time, is ridiculous. You are clearly speaking from an outside perspective. He has never come close to flashing his wealth or showing a ‘lifestyle’, anything that has came definitively after his peak. The influencer issue was also far more complex. Instagram was the central breeding ground for those types, and twitter was still conversationally relevant.
Even if he was the inflection point, what now? You expect someone at the center of things to realize their unique position, and then realize the most morally correct thing (to you) to do about it? Patently ridiculous, hindsight is 20/20 when it comes to larger cultural movements like influencers.
Calling pewdiepie an influencer shows how little you understand that sphere. You have no idea what you’re talking about.
Since you said I’m wrong, what is the inflection point that I’m describing?
Did I say he flashed his wealth?
I do expect people to be aware of their impact, directly and indirectly, especially on kids. The more people you can potentially impact, the greater the responsibility to be aware.
Is data collection, exploiting children to sell products, and the consequences of profit-seeking something that we weren’t aware of at the time PewDiePie became famous?
I agree PewDiePie didn’t sell things to children. He didn’t need to. He was the product.
I’m against commercial pressure on the internet, which seems like a radical concept now. PewDiePie didn’t need to hawk products to kids i know he did a good job with that. But he was the product. He was the point at which kids saw they could become a gamer and help commercial sites collect people’s attention and sell it to advertisers. That model is what broke everything. It turned the internet into cable television 2.0.
We already had corporate-approved media that was just a way to sell our attention. The internet, for a brief moment, was something for us. It was as close to a gift economy as we could get. It was the difference between a lawn sprayed with glyphosate to kill anything that wasn’t good old American Texas bluegrass devoid of originality, beauty, or color but looking neat and a lawn allowed to grow wild, full of weeds but also flowers, plants, and life.
PewDiePie wouldn’t have been the only one to make money, but he was the first to hit that milestone, and everything changed after that.
He laid the groundwork for those shitty influencer. He had the attention of young people who looked up to him. The minute they saw he could make millions by becoming the walking embodiment of a Nascar fender he set the attitudes and aspirations of a generation.
Would YouTube continue without him? Yes of course.
Could he have pushed back and created helped influence a generation of kids to reject the selling out of themselves to this influencer culture? Absolutely.
There were a few influencers in those early days that could have changed things or at least maintained the zeitgeist that we had then. Nobody did. That money was too good. Everything after he made that first million would change how the internet worked.
He was the inflection point. He could have impacted everything going forward. He could have told kids that these companies were stealing their data. That they were soliciting gamers to use as Trojan horses for what would eventually make everything worse.
To call him the inflection point, as if this wasn’t a more complex change emerging over time, is ridiculous. You are clearly speaking from an outside perspective. He has never come close to flashing his wealth or showing a ‘lifestyle’, anything that has came definitively after his peak. The influencer issue was also far more complex. Instagram was the central breeding ground for those types, and twitter was still conversationally relevant.
Even if he was the inflection point, what now? You expect someone at the center of things to realize their unique position, and then realize the most morally correct thing (to you) to do about it? Patently ridiculous, hindsight is 20/20 when it comes to larger cultural movements like influencers.
Calling pewdiepie an influencer shows how little you understand that sphere. You have no idea what you’re talking about.
What is an influencer?
Since you said I’m wrong, what is the inflection point that I’m describing?
Did I say he flashed his wealth?
I do expect people to be aware of their impact, directly and indirectly, especially on kids. The more people you can potentially impact, the greater the responsibility to be aware.
Is data collection, exploiting children to sell products, and the consequences of profit-seeking something that we weren’t aware of at the time PewDiePie became famous?
I agree PewDiePie didn’t sell things to children. He didn’t need to. He was the product. I’m against commercial pressure on the internet, which seems like a radical concept now. PewDiePie didn’t need to hawk products to kids i know he did a good job with that. But he was the product. He was the point at which kids saw they could become a gamer and help commercial sites collect people’s attention and sell it to advertisers. That model is what broke everything. It turned the internet into cable television 2.0.
We already had corporate-approved media that was just a way to sell our attention. The internet, for a brief moment, was something for us. It was as close to a gift economy as we could get. It was the difference between a lawn sprayed with glyphosate to kill anything that wasn’t good old American Texas bluegrass devoid of originality, beauty, or color but looking neat and a lawn allowed to grow wild, full of weeds but also flowers, plants, and life.
PewDiePie wouldn’t have been the only one to make money, but he was the first to hit that milestone, and everything changed after that.