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.

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.

I mean the name of the people who are originating these ideas. We should be putting names like who are the executives.

They get away with this stuff because they’re faceless organizations or higher ups beyond consequences.

I just see so many systems in place that are there to allow these things to trample us and nobody in this generation challenges. Like the opposition to authority in this generation just seems like they’re apart of the authority. They’re also playing they’re role.

You think not having total control of an organization means he’s free of blame. Would you say that your MAGA uncle doesn’t control Trump so isn’t responsible for his actions.

Pewdiepie is literally called an influencer. He warped what many young people belief they can become today and that belief is what ushered in a world of influencers chasing the all mighty dollar. That has given all these corporations fuel to create content and that content is stealing our data, eliminating data scarcity and used to influence politics.

He’s not the cause of it but he was an inflection point and could have went in a different direction to push kids to reject this new paradigm. Instead he was the face of it.

Holy shit, this doesn’t work. It’s 2026. You cannot get the runway you need to ever make this happen. None of you even bothered to create the runway. You handed the runways over to the people you want to protest.

The very last thing you should be doing is deleting any of that. You need to be creating multiple accts. Building groups. Building hype. Spreading information and stopping theirs. You have no business ever suggesting a general strike until you solve how to control the messaging.

General strike is maximum effort. Online action is much lower effort. If you can not find success at lower effort activities, you’ll never get success at higher effort. You don’t walk into a marathons without running 5km just because you have big feelings. Need to work up to it.

How come there’s never a name attached to these things.

He helped usher in this new enshittification. He was the Trojan horse. First one to reach a million

I always get the vibe it’s an astroturf. A way to c convince leftist to further isolate themselves like 1700 Japan. It just makes these people turn into Trump like archetypes where you only surround yourself with people you agree with.

I bet you’re all being used to manipulate stock prices.

Same, I was about to give up and this place might be what hooks me.

Not to derail here, but it is interesting to me that on a pro socialist, left leaning site that there isn’t more focus on community based solutions. Isn’t the a big focus on the left is to find a way that the many can govern themselves without some centralized group deciding what is and isn’t best for everybody.

I think this is wrong. At least from the internet i grew up with. These communities at not hobby projects or owned by moderators. They’re owned by the community. Moderators are there to help manage the community. But it isn’t theirs to own. The community needs to police itself which is why we have up and down votes. Moderators are there to handle users that are violating something that can’t be managed through voting.

And time is running out to do meaningful things on any platform. They’re quickly taking them over. It’s not just for fun

In my opinion that makes it a big failure. But also eye opening. There is so many here who say they will fight some nazis in the upcoming Civil War, yet can’t be pissed to do anything now.

Also I’m starting to see moderators may be big contributors to this failure on the left. The right grip and control over groups like it is some military unit is the box I’m talking about. It creates a space where everybody is in lock step or removed. But everybody that remains are all low energy, low effort people. No passion. No energy.

Stay with me for a minute. We know governments and just about any one wages warfare at all times. All except the left. Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk are out there working with Cambridge analytics. Proud boys joined with backyard militias and eventually becoming ICE. Peter Thiel funded Joe Rogan to become the mouth of MAGA. That is what we can see. When people we calling this stuff out, they were called crazy or to go touch grass. But they were right.

We have to assume that behind the scene there is equal or greater effort. You can see this in all our protests. All our efforts. All our ideals. Something is broken. There was 700 million people in the streets without any effect. That wasn’t the only time. Something is steering the left into these black holes of effort. There is an old guard that is protecting this.

We need new ideas and generators. Lemmy should be that. But instead we again get tight boxes and people yelling about car heads and issues that shouldn’t be the upfront focus.

But do you organize in a meaningful way. Like a way that produces some kind of result. If you were the boss of lemmygrad. You’ve taking all your life savings out and lemmygrad comes to you to say they’ve helped organize a protest or some action and as a result you have …

Growing numbers? Changed policy? Changed minds? Originated ideas keep things fresh and exciting?

Where?

And what measurable impact has it created?

Yea?

Do they?

Do you think they are?

You ever take creative people and box them. Lemmy is the box.

Lemmy isn’t the only exemple of this. I was just expecting something different given it is suppose to be left. I was wrong. It’s the worst parts from other boxes.

Lemmy likes to make noise about Trump but would rather not discuss the politics or do anything about it.

Lemmy is the “i don’t do politics”