Welcome back to the deep dive. We are so glad
you're here with us today because we were tackling
a subject that feels, you know, incredibly familiar.
It really does. Maybe even deceptively simple.
But when you actually start to peel back the
layers, it reviews itself to be this this incredibly
complex economic and psychological engine that's
running a huge chunk of the modern world. It's
one of those topics where the. let's call it
the popular perception, is almost completely
at odds with the mechanical reality of what's
going on. It is a topic that is, I mean, it's
reshaping global economies. It's changing the
way political campaigns are run. And it is fundamentally
altering how human beings perceive truth itself.
And yet, if I were to ask the average person
on the street, or even you listening right now,
what image pocks into your head when I say the
word influencer? What do you see? Oh, it's a
caricature. For most people, it's a caricature.
They see someone who's, you know, largely famous
for being famous. Maybe they're dancing in a
kitchen on TikTok or they're posting a heavily
filtered photo of avocado toast in Dubai. It
just feels frivolous. Frivolous. Exactly. It
feels like a vanity project that's just gone
viral. Exactly. We tend to dismiss it as, you
know, kids these days or just the latest iteration
of celebrity culture. But the mission. of this
deep dive is to really challenge that mental
image. We have a massive stack of source material
here. I mean, articles, historical records, marketing
theory, economic reports, that paints a completely
different picture. A very different picture.
This isn't just about selfies. This is a multi
-billion dollar industry with roots that go back,
I mean, centuries. And it's an industry that,
you know, it capitalizes on a very specific failure
of our traditional institutions. We are going
to look at the history, which is surprisingly
deep and, believe it or not, involves 17th century
theology. Which is wild. We're going to look
at the economics, which are incredibly top -heavy
and, frankly, pretty brutal for most people involved.
And we're going to get into the psychology why
this specific form of marketing works better
than anything Madison Avenue ever invented. So
let's start by defining our terms. Because influencers
are such a buzzword, and buzzwords, they tend
to lose their meaning after a while. They get
watered down. They do. And the source material,
specifically the breakdown from this comprehensive
Wikipedia review and its associated marketing
literature, it draws a really hard line in the
sand on the definition. Right. And we have to.
We need to distinguish between a celebrity and
an influencer. In the, let's say, traditional
model think Hollywood in the 90s, a celebrity
is someone who gets famous through a pre -existing
industrial machine. You're an actor, so a studio
makes you famous. You're a musician, so a record
label promotes you. You have fame, and then because
of that fame, people might buy the sunglasses
you wear. So the influence is a byproduct of
the fame. It comes second. Precisely. But the
definition of an influencer, at least in the
context of this whole creator economy, is the
inverse of that. An influencer is someone who
builds a, quote, grassroots online presence.
They often start from zero. Right from scratch.
From scratch. They use engaging content, you
know, photos, videos, blogs to establish authenticity
and expertise first. So the influence comes before
the fame. That is the crucial distinction. They
build this direct line of communication with
an audience. They establish trust or at least,
you know, the performance of trust. And then
once that community is solid, they leverage it
for commercial gain, for ideological gain, you
name it. It is basically influence for hire.
That word grassroots is so interesting because
it implies this democratic process. We, the audience,
chose to make this person famous by following
them rather than having them, you know, thrust
upon us by a movie poster or a record label.
And that feeling of choice is exactly why the
psychology works so well, which we'll definitely
get to. But first, we have to completely dismantle
the idea that this is new. You would assume,
just looking at the current landscape, that the
concept of an influencer was invented in some
boardroom in Silicon Valley around, what, 2010
when Instagram launched? I certainly did. I assumed
it was a millennial invention through and through.
But the source material pulls up a reference
that honestly just stopped me in my tracks. The
Oxford English Dictionary. It cites the earliest
usage of the word influencer. Not in 2010, not
in 1990. but in 1664 get out of here 1664 1664
we are talking about the era of isaac newton
and the great plague of london we are the usage
comes from a man named henry moore he was a philosopher
a theologian one of the cambridge platonists
and he wrote this book with the just incredible
title, A Modest Inquiry into the Mystery of Iniquity.
That sounds like a bestseller. I'd read that.
Right. It was dense stuff for sure. But in this
text, he uses the term to describe, and I'm quoting
here, the head and influencer of the whole church.
Okay. So he's using it in a religious context,
the head of the church. But does that really
map onto what we see today? Is there like a direct
through line from a 17th century church leader
to a beauty vlogger on YouTube? If you think
about the mechanics of it, absolutely. What was
the church in the 17th century? It was the original
social network. It was the primary platform for
disseminating ideas, for shaping behavior and
for establishing community norms. It was the
media. It was the media. The influencer in that
context was the person who stood at the pulpit.
the hub of the network, and guided the flock.
They interpreted the truth for their audience.
Exactly. They were the mediator, the mediator
between the source material, and in that case,
you know, the Bible and the daily lives of the
people. Modern influencers do the exact same
thing. They mediate between the market products,
lifestyle trends, news, and their followers.
The medium has changed from a pulpit to a smartphone,
but the core dynamic of one person guiding the
behavior of a community, that's ancient. That
is a fascinating way to frame it. It's not about
the technology. It's about the social structure.
Yeah. OK, so let's jump forward to a time period
that feels a bit more tangible. The sources present
this case study that I think is the perfect bridge
between that old world and our new digital one.
This is one of my favorite parts of the research,
the search for the original media influencer.
And it is not who you would expect at all. It's
not a movie star from the golden age of Hollywood.
It's not a model. It is Eleanor Roosevelt. The
first lady of the United States from 1933 to
1945. Now, wait a minute. I know Eleanor Roosevelt
was influential, of course, in a political sense.
She was a diplomat, an activist, a powerhouse.
But calling her a media influencer in the modern
sense of the term, that feels like a bit of a
stretch. It sounds like a stretch until you look
at the specific actions she took. She didn't
just rely on the prestige of the White House.
That wasn't her platform. She built a personal
content machine that rivals any modern creator.
You're talking about her newspaper column. Yes,
my day. And this wasn't, you know, a weekly op
-ed on dense policy. This was a daily newspaper
column. It ran six days a week for 26 years.
Daily. Six days a week. That is an incredible
volume of content. I mean, most YouTubers can't
keep that up. It's the 1930s equivalent of daily
vlogging or blogging. She wrote about everything.
She'd cover her breakfast, her travels, her conversations
with the president. But then she would pivot
to lifestyle content. She reviewed books she
was reading. She recommended plays. She talked
about products she liked and used. She is building
this parasocial relationship. She is inviting
the entire American public into her private life
every single day. Exactly right. And in doing
so, she established a brand that was completely
distinct from her husband's administration. She
was seen as independent, wise and above all.
trustworthy. And here, here is where it gets
really murky and really modern. She monetized
that trust. This is the part I really struggled
to believe at first. The first lady of the United
States doing paid commercials. She did. And not
just for, you know, war bonds or public service
announcements. The source material highlights
this specific campaign she did in 1959. She starred
in a TV commercial for Good Luck Margarine. I
just cannot picture a modern first lady doing
that. Imagine if Jill Biden or Melania Trump
popped up on your screen selling butter. The
media would tear them apart. It would be a massive
conflict of interest scandal. It would be absolutely
unthinkable today. But in 1959, the rules of
media and celebrity were just different. And
the payout, I mean, the payout was astronomical
for the time. For that one commercial, Eleanor
Roosevelt was paid $35 ,000. OK, $35 ,000 in
1959. What is that today? Adjusting for inflation,
that is roughly $250 ,000 in today's currency.
A quarter of a million dollars for a single margarine
ad. That is Super Bowl money. It is mega influencer
money. And she executed it just like a modern
influencer would. She had to weave her own brand
values into the ad copy. She couldn't just stand
there and say, buy this butter substitute. So
why does she do it? In the commercial, she actually
manages to pivot the conversation from margarine
to the problem of world hunger. She connected
margarine to world hunger? She framed it in the
context of ensuring everyone, everywhere had
enough to eat. It was totally on brand. It maintained
her persona as this global humanitarian while
simultaneously selling a consumer product. That
is the holy grail of influencer marketing. The
seamless integration of commerce and personal
identity. And the sources mentioned she didn't
just pocket the cash, right? Which is a big difference.
Correct. And this is a key distinction for most
modern influencers, for sure. She donated the
vast majority of her earnings to charity. However,
the sources also note that she wasn't afraid
to use her influence to help her family. She
absolutely leveraged her sway to assist the entertainment
careers of her children. So we have the origin
of the Nepo baby discourse, too. It's all there.
It is all there. The paid spots, the brand building,
the personal content, the family promotion. Sources
even argue that her influence was so potent it
had real world political consequences beyond
just selling products. A JFK election. There's
a theory that her televised support of John F.
Kennedy in his 1960 campaign helped nudge him
to victory. A hairline victory, as the history
books say, decided by an influencer endorsement.
Essentially. It just demonstrates the raw power
of that connection she'd built. People trusted
Eleanor. If Eleanor said JFK was OK, then for
a lot of voters, he was OK. It completely bypassed
the political party machinery and went straight
to the voters' trust receptors. So he had this
rich... long history of influence. But then we
hit the internet age and everything just accelerates.
The source material tracks this digital evolution
starting in the early 2000s. This is where we
move from mass media TV newspapers to the complete
fragmentation of the web. In the early 2000s,
we saw the rise of the bloggers. The era of LiveJournal
and Blogspot and Zanga. And product forums. People
were going online to talk about, you know, digital
cameras or video games or parenting techniques.
And companies started to realize something. Really
important. Consumers did not trust their banner
ads. Right. But they did trust user 745 on a
camera forum who wrote a detailed 5000 word review
of a new Canon camera. But this was the Wild
West, wasn't it? There were no rules, no disclosures.
None whatsoever. Companies would just send free
products. Cameras, clothes, fast food to these
bloggers in exchange for a write -up. But nobody
was disclosing it. It was a complete gray market
of opinion. Then in 2004, a guy named Ted Murphy
decided to formalize it. He launched something
called the Blogstar Network. Which sounds like
a very 2004 name. It really does. But the concept
itself was revolutionary. He created a database
of bloggers and essentially went to advertisers
and said, I can get your product mentioned on
all these sites for a fee. This eventually evolved
into a platform called PaperPost in 2006. And
PaperPost was exactly what it sounds like. You
pay, I post. And it caused a massive ethical
outcry. I mean, journalists and media ethicists
were horrified. The idea that you could just
pay for coverage without any disclosure, it violated
every tenet of the profession. But it worked.
It worked because the audience didn't know the
difference. Then came the visual shift. The 2010s
arrived. And with them, the rise of Instagram.
This changed the entire game from being about
information to being about aspiration. Blogs
were often text heavy. They were information
rich. Instagram was about the aesthetic. It allowed
people to curate a visual lifestyle that was
designed to be envied. The glossy magazine of
the Internet. Perfectly put. And despite the
recent rise of TikTok and short form video, the
sources all note that as of 2023, Instagram is
still the undisputed king of influencer marketing
spend. It's where the big money is. Which brings
us to the big question. Why does it work? Why
do we care so much? That's what we need to get
into. The psychology of it all. Right. Because
on the surface, it seems completely irrational.
Why would I trust a stranger on the internet
more than, say, a professional critic or a billion
-dollar brand with a reputation to protect? It
all comes down to a crisis of institutional trust.
The source material references this pivotal study
from Rutgers University that was conducted way,
way back in 2001. 2001. That's pre -Facebook.
That's pre -YouTube. It's ancient in digital
years. But the findings were incredibly prophetic.
They found that even back then, people already
preferred Internet forums and other social sources
over conventional ads and even over professional
reviews when making purchasing decisions. And
what was the logic there? It boils down to two
things. Perceived authenticity and a lack of
obvious bias. we are conditioned from birth to
know that an advertisement is a lie or at least
a manipulation the company is talking about itself
it has a direct financial incentive to deceive
you but a real person on a forum Theoretically,
they have no skin in the game. They are a neutral
third party. But the great irony is that the
influencer industry has turned those real people
into walking, talking advertisements. That is
the great paradox. The source material defines
an influencer as a third party who significantly
shapes the customer's purchasing decision but
may never be accountable for it. That phrase,
never be accountable, that's the dangerous part.
But the perception of being a third party is
what generates all the trust. The sources also
bring in Malcolm Gladwell's work from the tipping
point. He breaks down the types of people who
drive this kind of influence. And I think this
is really helpful for understanding that not
all influencers are doing the same job. Right.
Gladwell identifies three key archetypes. First,
you have the connectors. These are the social
butterflies, the networkers? They're the network
nodes. They know everyone. They bridge all these
different social circles. In the digital age,
this is someone who aggregates a lot of content,
or they're always the first to share viral memes,
or they just seem to know everybody in their
particular industry. Their value is their reach.
If a connector mentions you, you get seen by
a lot of different people. Okay, so that's one
type. Then you have the mavens. The maven is
the information specialist. The nerd. This is
the tech YouTuber who does a 40 minute deep dive
breakdown of a new graphics card. Or it's the
beauty guru who analyzes the chemical ingredients
of a moisturizer. They aren't trying to sell
you based on personality. They are selling you
based on data and expertise. You trust them because
they've done the homework that you are too busy
or frankly too lazy to do. And the third one,
the salesman. The salesman is pure charisma.
This is the person who could sell sand in the
desert. They use emotional persuasion. They make
you feel like if you just buy this product, you'll
be part of their cool, happy, exciting life.
Most of the top tier influencers are some kind
of hybrid of these three, but they usually lean
heavily into one of these specific lanes. And
companies are getting incredibly sophisticated
about matching the right archetype to the right
product. The sources talk about this concept
of product and benefit matching. Oh, this is
crucial. It's the difference between a campaign.
pain that soars and one that just completely
flops. The text uses the example of a shampoo
brand. You don't just need a famous person. You
need a person with, you know, good hair that
seems pretty obvious right it does but you have
to take it a step further if you are a brand
that sells excitement or flashiness maybe a sports
car or a high -end vodka you need an influencer
who embodies that loud bold look at me lifestyle
but if you're selling say a minimalist skincare
line that's all about quiet luxury hiring that
same loud influencer will absolutely backfire
even if they have millions of followers even
then the audience will sense the disconnect it's
triggers that inauthentic alarm bell in our brains,
they'll know something's off. So it's really
about casting. You're casting a character to
play a role in your brand's story. Exactly. And
this leads us perfectly into the hierarchy of
the industry because there is a very real caste
system here. And the economics of it are fascinating
because counterintuitively, bigger is not always
better. This is our third section, the hierarchy.
And we usually categorize these people by one
simple metric. follower count. Right. The industry
standard tiers are pretty rigid. At the very
bottom, you have the nano influencers. These
are people with under 10 ,000 followers. Which
to an oral person sounds like a lot of people.
But in this world, it's tiny. It is the absolute
entry level. And you have micro influencers,
which is generally from 10 ,000 up to 100 ,000.
above that macro influencers go up to half a
million and then anything above 500k you're in
the mega or celeb influencer territory okay so
if i'm a brand with a million dollar marketing
budget my first instinct is to go straight to
the mega influencer i want the most eyeballs
right i want the celebrity and that was the old
thinking for sure but the source material highlights
a massive shift in strategy advertisers are increasingly
dumping their money into the nano and the micro
tiers why Why would you go for the person with
5 ,000 followers instead of 5 million? It all
comes back to what you could call the intimacy
cost. As your audience grows, your engagement
rate, the percentage of your followers who actually
interact with your content, it almost invariably
drops. A celebrity with 5 million followers might
post a photo and get a lot of likes, but are
they reading the comments? Are they replying
to DMs? Of course not. It's a broadcast, not
a conversation. But the nano -influencer? The
nano -influencer probably knows half their followers
by name, or at least recognizes their usernames
from past comments. When they post, hey, I really
love these new hiking boots, it feels like a
genuine recommendation from a friend. The trust
is incredibly high. And the data actually supports
this, doesn't it? It does, in a big way. In 2024,
45 % of the total U .S. marketing spend in this
entire sector went to influencers with fewer
than 20 ,000 followers. 45%. That's almost half
the market. Almost half the market is moving
away from the big stars and toward the neighbors.
It's the classic long -tail theory of the Internet.
A million tiny niche markets are actually bigger
and more valuable than one mass market. Precisely.
It is way more efficient to pay 100 micro -influencers
$500 each than it is to pay one celebrity $50
,000. You get better engagement, higher trust,
and often you get better, more creative content
because the small creators are hungry. They're
trying to prove themselves. But there is another
category emerging that sort of bypasses the whole
human element entirely. The virtual influencers.
This is where we fully enter the realm of science
fiction or perhaps, you know, corporate dystopia,
depending on your point of view. The AAIs, Artificially
Intelligent Influencers. So these are characters.
They're generated by CGI and AI. They have social
media accounts, they post photos, they wear clothes,
and they talk to their fans. But they don't exist
in the real world. Think of characters like Lin
McKella or Shudu. These accounts have millions
of followers. And major brands, Prada, Samsung,
Calvin Klein, are hiring them for campaigns.
From a purely business perspective, I can absolutely
see the appeal. It's the ultimate solution to
the human problem. Humans are messy. Humans get
tired. Humans get caught in scandals. Humans
say the wrong thing. Humans age. A virtual influencer
is immortal, indefatigable, and perfectly 100
% controllable. They will never say something
offensive unless you program them to. They'll
never show up late to a photo shoot because they
don't physically exist. Exactly. But... Doesn't
that destroy the entire premise of authenticity
that we've spent all this time talking about?
If I know this is a robot, why on earth do I
trust its recommendation for a moisturizer? It
doesn't have skin. That is the paradox we are
now living in. It turns out people might not
care as much about biological reality as we once
thought. If the character is compelling, if the
storytelling is good, we engage with it. It challenges
the very definition of what it means to be social.
It's like professional wrestling. We all know
it's scripted, but we still cheer for the good
guy and boo the bad guy. Exactly. We are entering
the era of kayfabe in marketing. The suspension
of disbelief is now part of the product. Okay,
so we have this massive industry. We have robots.
We have nepo babies. We have nano influencers.
Let's talk about the money. Section four, the
economics. Because there is a very dangerous
myth out there that becoming an influencer is
some kind of get -rich -quick scheme. It's the
modern gold rush. Every kid doesn't want to be
an astronaut anymore. They want to be a YouTuber.
But the source material provides a really brutal
reality check. Let's look at the 1 % rule, or
I guess in this case it's the 4 % rule. The data
shows that only 4 % of all influencers make more
than $100 ,000 a year. That is a staggering statistic.
I mean, that means 96 % of the people who are
doing this as a job are making less than a living
wage from it. And that's before costs. When you
factor in the cost of equipment, the clothes,
the travel, the editing software, many of them
are likely operating at a net loss. So what are
they getting paid in, if not cash? In -kind payments,
free stuff. The sources highlight that for the
vast, vast majority of creators, especially in
those lower tiers, free products are the primary
currency. A brand sends you a bottle of shampoo,
you post a video, the brand gets its advertising,
you get clean hair. You can't pay your rent with
shampoo. No, you absolutely cannot. And this
creates an economic structure that is incredibly
similar to the Janini coefficient of a failed
state. The wealth is concentrated so aggressively
at the very, very top. The middle class of influencers
is actually quite small and incredibly precarious.
The sources mentioned that there were 27 million
paid content creators in the U .S. alone in 2023.
Right. But you have to break that number down.
Seven million of those were classified as hobbyists.
They're doing it for fun or for a little bit
of side cash. The 12 million who consider themselves
full -time creators, they are all fighting for
a very specific, very small slice of the pie.
So how do the winners, the tycoons at the top,
how do they actually make the big money? Because
it's clearly not just about sponsored posts anymore.
No, the sponsored post, what some call the billboard
model, it's unstable. If the platform algorithm
changes, you can lose your entire income overnight.
The smart ones, the ones who last, they diversify.
The sources point to what they call the tycoon
model or influencer 3 .0. This is where you stop
selling other people's products and you start
selling your own. Exactly. Look at the case of
Kiara Farani. She started a blog called The Blonde
Salad. It was just outfit photos. But she leveraged
that audience to launch her own shoe line and
then her own clothing brand. She built a business
empire where she captures the full value of every
sale, not just a small marketing fee from another
company. Or they sell knowledge. The sources
mentioned platforms like RGPL Academy and coffee.
Education is a huge revenue stream. How to be
an influencer, how to edit photos like I do,
my secret recipe for sourdough. It is monetizing
expertise. It's a much more stable revenue stream
than just waiting for a brand deal to land in
your inbox. There is one group, though, that
has completely disrupted this economy recently,
and we have to talk about them. Student athletes.
Yeah. The whole NIL revolution. This is a seismic
shift in the U .S. sports economy. I mean, for
decades, the NCAA operated as a cartel that prevented
athletes from earning any money, despite the
universities making billions of dollars off their
labor. The myth of amateurism. A myth which the
Supreme Court essentially blew up in the case
NCAA v. Alston back in 2021. The ruling allowed
college athletes to finally monetize their name,
image, and likeness, or NIL. So suddenly you
have college kids becoming millionaires overnight.
And not just the star quarterbacks, which is
the fascinating part. The sources specifically
mentioned the Cavender twins. They played basketball
at Fresno State and then at Miami. They weren't
necessarily the WNBA's number one draft picks,
but they were absolute content geniuses. They
built a massive TikTok following. They understood
the assignment. They did. Or look at Adrian Nunez,
a basketball player at Michigan. He played very
few minutes on the court, but he had millions
of followers on TikTok. He was reportedly making
more money than his coaches. It completely decouples
athletic performance from... economic value.
So you don't have to be the best player anymore.
You just have to be the most interesting one.
And that bridges the gap between the traditional
celebrity athlete and the modern influencer perfectly.
It forces universities to become content incubators.
If you want to recruit the best players now,
you have to promise them that you can help build
their brand. So we have the money. We have the
history. Now we have to look at the dark side.
Section five, regulation, controversy, and ethics.
Because all of this rapid growth has happened
largely without any guardrails. It has been the
Wild West for 20 years. And as always, regulation
lags way behind technology. But we are finally
starting to see the hammer come down. And the
core issue has always been deception, right?
The blurring of the lines. Right. Is this a genuine
recommendation from a person I trust? Or is it
a paid advertisement? For a long time, influencers
fought tooth and nail against disclosing. They
felt that putting hashtag odd on a post ruined
the aesthetic. It broke the spell of authenticity.
But not disclosing it is basically fraud. Essentially,
yes. And it leads to absolute disasters like
the Fyre Festival. The Fyre Festival, the cheese
sandwich that launched a thousand lawsuits and
two documentaries. But before the disaster, it
was a marketing triumph. The organizers paid
Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, and hundreds of
other influencers to post a simple, plain orange
square on their Instagram feeds. No context,
just an orange square and a link. It created
this immense FOMO, this fear of missing out.
But the influencers, they didn't verify the product.
They didn't know if the festival was even real.
And most of them didn't disclose that they were
paid, in some cases, $250 ,000 just to post that
orange square. When the festival collapsed into
a I, Lord of the Flazies scenario on a Bahamian
island, the public turned on the influencers.
It was a huge wake -up call. It showed that influence
carries liability. So now regulators like the
FTC in the U .S. and the AANA in Australia are
getting aggressive. They are. The standard now
is that a paid promotion must be clearly distinguishable
from organic content. You can't bury the disclosure
in a sea of 30 hashtags at the bottom of the
caption. It has to be up front. That's why you
see hashtag, ad, or paid partnership everywhere
now. But it gets even more serious when it involves
health and medicine. The Kim Kardashian case
mentioned in the sources is a perfect example
of this. The Declagius case. So Kim Kardashian
promoted a prescription drug for morning sickness
on her Instagram. She wrote this glowing caption
about how much it helped her during her pregnancy.
But she left something pretty important out.
She left out the laundry list of potential side
effects. Now, if Pfizer runs a TV commercial
for a drug, half the ad is the guy talking really,
really fast about all the side effects. That's
the law. Kim didn't do that. And the FDA stepped
in. They did. And they stepped in hard. They
sent a formal warning letter. She had to take
the post down and issue a public correction.
It established a huge precedent. If you are selling
medicine, you are subject to medical advertising
laws, regardless of whether you are the TV network,
NBC, or a reality star on Instagram. It turns
the Instagram feed into a regulated commercial
space. Which is exactly what it is. But the newest
crackdown is the one that fascinates me the most.
August. 2024, the bot ban. This is a direct attack
on the fake internet. The FTC voted unanimously
to ban marketers from using fake user reviews
created by AI chatbots. So you can't just spin
up ChatJPT anymore and say, write me 500 five
-star reviews for this toaster. Exactly. And
more importantly for influencers, they banned
the purchasing of fake followers and fake engagement.
Buying followers has been the dirty little secret
of this industry for a decade. It has. The whole
fake it till you make it philosophy. Influencers
would buy 50 ,000 bots to make themselves look
more popular so that real brands would hire them.
It's a Ponzi scheme of attention. The FTC is
now saying that this is officially a deceptive
trade practice. If you are selling influence,
that influence must be human. This feels like
a battle for reality itself. Yeah. We have AI
influencers who aren't real. We have bot followers
who aren't real. We have deep fakes. The regulators
are trying to draw this tiny circle around humanity
and say this part at least has to be real. And
it is a losing battle, frankly, but it's a necessary
one to fight. So we have covered a lot of ground
here. We've gone from a 1664 definition of religious
influence to Eleanor Roosevelt selling margarine
to the economics of the long tail and all the
way to the AI future. It's a massive, massive
arc. If we have to distill all of this down,
what is the so what for the listener? Why does
any of this matter if you aren't trying to be
an influencer yourself? It matters because this
is the new economy of trust. The source material
cites a report from SignalFire that calls the
influencer economy the fastest growing type of
small business. But deeper than the economics,
it represents a fundamental shift in how we as
a society. Discover truth. We've moved from trusting
institutions to trusting individuals. Exactly.
50 years ago, you trusted the news anchor. You
trusted the government agency. You trusted the
big brand with the factory. Today, trust has
decentralized. We trust the face on the screen.
We trust the person who feels like a friend,
even if they're a stranger. Which is empowering
in a way. It democratizes influence. Anyone can
have a voice. It does. But it also completely
fragments reality. When everyone has their own
trusted source, we lose a shared baseline of
truth. And without that baseline, society becomes
very, very difficult to manage. And that leads
us to the final thought, the final question to
leave everyone with. We talked about virtual
influencers. We talked about the efficiency and
perfection of AI. Right. And I want to leave
you with this question. As this AI technology
advances, these virtual influencers are going
to get better. They will be more charming, more
funny, more empathetic, and more consistent than
any human could ever hope to be. They will never
have a bad day. They will never have a scandal.
They'll be perfect. They'll be perfect. So will
we eventually prefer the perfectly curated consistency
of an AI personality over the messy, unpredictable,
flawed authenticity? of a human being. And if
an AI influences you to buy a product or to adopt
a political belief or to vote for a candidate,
who is actually doing the influencing? Is it
the code? Is it the corporation that owns the
server? Or is it just a perfect reflection of
what the algorithm already knows we want to hear?
That is the question we are all going to have
to answer very, very soon. Something to think
about the next time you find yourself double
-tapping a photo. Thank you for listening to
this deep dive. We will see you next time.