For me, though, the whole concept of influencers is part of a broader disease which corrupts and weakens every part of of humanity that it touches. Even a Musk-free social media environment is still infected with it. It's as if the adage "you are the product" is not a warning to be heeded, it's a battle cry and you respond by saying "FUCK YEAAH, I'M A PRODUCT BABY, I'M GONNA SELL ME".Elon Musk makes the classic mistake pervasive among Silicon Valley executives, which is a deep disrespect for their users. This is how Clubhouse died. It’s how Vine died. This is how app after app is killed by Silicon Valley hubris: “I don’t care how users want to use this product. I’m going to tell them how to use it, and I’m going to decide who’s popular on this app.”
Of course, social media apps will boost people that they think might be interesting to users, but you can’t force-feed users content that you want them to see. Overall, that’s not going to be a compelling app to the majority of users, and so it is going to fail. Elon is learning that lesson the hard way. He’s alienated all the big content creators. Twitter’s an ideological project for him. It’s not about building a sustainable business.
Then there's the audience, which accepts this deception and doesn't notice how pathetic it is that they see themselves as "friends" of these junk-sellers. Or even if they do notice, they accept it because they aspire to that same success themselves. The currency they are tempted with is not money, of course, it's social media metrics, likes, followers, subscribers. You get sucked into that neo-Amway world but it's even more corrupt than old physical Amway because you never get any real money for all the work you do to promote those further up in the pyramid.
