DARK SIDE OF THE INFLUENCERS

 

Darkside of Influencers It doesn't matter if you're Jay-Z or Jay-Wiz, success breeds jealousy.

But for this digital age, it come in the form of an Influencer who's got "Likes", "Favorites" and "Followers" in abundance on Social Media.

Influencers have worked their way into our everyday lives, infiltrating our feeds by pitching products, clothing lines, makeup brands - whatever they're connected with. Sometimes an advertiser will request an Influencer to promote their product or service for a price. Other times, they'll audition to do sponsored posts on Instagram or YouTube videos for "exposure."

But with all this advertising... lot of money... lots of followers...

But do you know, there are lot of dark secrets in this glamorous industry. All this glitter is not gold.

FAKE FOLLOWERS

Do you have 10K or 1M or 10M+ followers on your Social Media profiles?

Maybe you've heard about "Fan-Cloning" and "Fan-Pushing".

This is where the Influencers hire a bunch of people to follow them on Social Media and comment, like and share their content on Social Media.

The thing is, they've paid to be "followed".

So what are the Influencers doing?

They are simply getting more followers, more "fans" and more views to their posts and videos. Also the followers can be bots.

Or in the other words the influencer you religiously may be a fake influencer.

By the helps of these fake likes, comments , they get paid to make reels or tiktoks. Companies decided on the basis of number of followers to pay the amount according to their number of followers.

In fact, nowadays our self-esteem depends on our number of followers and number of likes. At such a time, people can go to any extent to increase the numbers on their social media.

Hypeauditor- an influencer marketing  and data analytics firm, According to their research, there are 1.6 Crore fake influencers in India, Influencers who have fake followers and fake likes. Maybe among them, there might be influencers who you follow.

But, is it easy to become a real influencer? Just upload some photos and dance to a 30 second reel or give 50 profanities in a video and upload it on YouTube. But it is often said , its not as it seems. Same goes with this industry also.

FORCED TRENDS

Influencers are the masters of manipulation. I f you don't know this, then let me tell you how? Let's say you heard a new song on social media that is very cringe. But, you see that song everywhere and after a certain time, you think that 'Maybe, there is something about this this song.' This is what we call 'Brainwash'. Well, the influencers and their trends are behind this. Sometimes, automatically, many people start liking a song or a step at the same time. But most of the time, the influencers are given money to dance to a specific way. And when many influencers start doing the same step on the same song, it becomes a trend and you start liking that song. Infact, there is thing on Instagram, where Instagram pushes those reels in which there are trendy songs and it becomes a loop. So what you like and what you don't like, everything become same.

BODY ISSUES

Just a social media is growing, we can see that people can become influencers while sitting at home. The pressure of being picture perfect can be very dangerous and apps like Instagram increase it. The catfish filters that we see on Instagram can make your face perfect. In a study it has been observed that negative body issues is one of the biggest problems and 32% of influencers face them. For many, body shaming in the comments section is a joke. But it's a very big issue for creators.

OVERNIGHT SUCCESS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

You may have heard that 'Influencers make overnight success' on Instagram and Twitter. But the fact is, it takes months and years to make it big on social media. Yes, overnight success on social media can be very tricky. And a good influencer will take at least a year to make it big.

But by posting a single picture or video if you can lose lots of followers than by a single post you can also gain lots of followers. For example, you must remember in 2018 , everyone's internet crush Priya Varrier. Just because of a 5 second video, she gained more than 10 lakh followers in one day and her account became the 3rf fasted growing account in the world. In just one day, her account became verified and she started to get many ads and films. Priya, who was an actress, even she didn't know how to handle this fame. She in her interview said that she is very grateful for this fame and attention but she and her family, both didn't know what was happening. She wished the studies further but because of all the fame and attention, it became almost impossible for her to get out of the house. After some time of getting viral many cases started filing against her from Hyderabad and Mahrashtra. This was happening because her song had hurt the religious sentiments of many people. You think about the issues and mental pressure being faced.

There are ups and downs in every industry, but if you are genuine on the internet, and know how to deal with your problems then you can survive in this industry.

Thankyou.