While reading the long read ‘It’s genuine, you know?’: why the online influencer industry is going ‘authentic’ by Sophie Elmhirst it made me realize how much social media has changed recently. For years now we have been attracted to the lavish lifestyle of social media influencers. However, they are flipping the switch and are developing more raw and real material rather than highly produced content.
There has been a rising popularity in “I’m Sorry” videos with more and more controversial topics coming to light. I have seen many memes of influencers who make apologie videos because they seem insincere and as if they are just trying to save face.
My question is how can we as viewers tell what is real and what isn’t. How are we supposed to distinguish if someone on a screen is being truly sincere about what they are saying? Is it our place to say they aren’t being truthful if we don’t even know them no matter how close we actually think we are to them?
-Victoria Garcia
I think that the recent trends of influencers being genuine and authentic are to build trust with the viewers. If they establish an alliance with their audience, their followers will be more likely to be sympathetic and stick with them, if the influencer is, say, caught in a scandal.
ReplyDeleteOf course, a lot of influencers actually do care about their viewers. They want to make a safe space when addressing their audience. Though being sincere can be a slippery slope, take every thing for what it is and with a grain of salt, and you'll be happy.
- Alfonso Gastelum
You make a good point, most of the time if not all, we can't tell if an influencer is being sincere or not. We can only make educated guesses based off their body language and composition, yet they remain just that, guesses. These influencers make these apology videos in an attempt to appear more sincere or authentic which is the new trend on social media. Also how can we as viewers on the other end of a screen know whether the lifestyle they're showing is authentic or not? We may think it's authentic because it's similar to ours, yet they may be downplaying themselves to seem more authentic to more followers. All this just shows, like your question asks, that we really can not know if these influencers are being authentic or not. Hence why this new age of social media, is a one all about trust.
ReplyDelete