I hope it does. Don't get me wrong, I don't wish the guy ill. I hope he expects that and was ready to get out anyway. But I also don't care much for the "Instagram influencer" thing. It's a lot like political astroturf, appealing to people's preference for real-person authenticity when there's really none involved. The harder it becomes for people to make money at it, the better off we'll all be.
Because it's better to have professional models in ads rather than self-educated hobbyists?
It could be improved by journalistic standards of disclosure - but instagram/facebook already requires that, though I don't know that it is widely followed/enforced: https://www.facebook.com/policies/brandedcontent
I think you're using "professional" in a manner inconsistent with its actual meaning. Modeling is not generally considered one of the "professions" requiring licenses and adherence to standards, so the operative definition clearly has to do with a source of livelihood rather than a pastime. In that context, your dichotomy leaves out one of the most relevant groups - self educated professionals. Like me, albeit in a different field.
"Self educated" is really orthogonal to professional vs. hobbyist, and if somebody is a professional in that sense then damn right I think they should be honest about it. Being a professional is fine, being a hobbyist is fine, but neither should try to pass as the other. That's deceptive, in the astroturf-like way I already mentioned.
"Professional model" is a common phrase that has nothing to do with licensing, just that someone is paid to appear in a photo.
Old: Manufacturers create advertising, including professional models. Journalists write reviews, but aren't generally in photographs of the items. Manufacturers try to build positive relations (influence) with journalists in various ways.
Social media influencers: Self-selected individuals produce content about products, often including themselves as the "models" in the product photos, hoping to build a following so they can get paid by sellers for publicizing products.
It's all marketing, and almost all of it is fake, and it requires finding voices you trust and agree with.
In other words, the difference between a livelihood and a pastime. Like I (and the dictionary) said. A "professional model" is someone who makes their living at it, and I challenge you to find an instance of a non-idiot using it to mean someone who only got paid a modest amount one time.
> it requires finding voices you trust and agree with.
Ideally, it also means those voices are trustworthy. Among other things, that means being honest about whether they're professionals or amateurs. That precludes "influencers" pretending to have genuine passion about something when in fact they're being paid to fake that passion. Encouraging and rewarding deceptive behavior is not a good thing, even in marketing.
So it's better to have professional models in ads being paid to fake that passion rather than self-educated hobbyists?
The difference isn't "paid vs not paid", it's "model" vs "someone who consistently produces content about a topic". They're both getting paid, but theyachtguy at least started out with some passion for the topic, and you have a chance to evaluate how well theyachtguy's opinions match yours.
> So it's better to have professional models in ads being paid to fake that passion rather than self-educated hobbyists?
If they're faking it then yes. You keep conflating "self-educated" with "hobbyist" and it's starting to seem a bit disingenuous. A self-educated person who is making a substantial portion of their income from promoting products is a professional. They shouldn't portray themselves otherwise, and if they do they're being dishonest. That's not a problem with professional models or actors who are clearly performing a role.
Since disclosure of interest is strictly relevant to the conversation, do you by any chance have a horse in this race? I don't. I barely even use Instagram, and my only experience with modeling was one charity fashion show when I was a child. I have never been paid to promote anything, nor do I wish to enter that line of work. Can you say the same?
You keep reading what you want to see in my statements.
You said you'd like theyachtguy to lose business. I contrasted his role starting out as a self-educated hobbyist with a paid model. He has migrated to a full-time job, because he produces content people like. I think that is still more useful than a paid model appearing in an ad (certainly not less useful).
I think we can agree that the problem isn't whether someone is self-educated or not, or what percentage of their income they derive from the activity, the problem is if they are claiming as true opinions positions that are really just paid positions. As we agreed above, disclosure is important.
As for me, I created an amazon affiliate account a dozen years ago but I don't think I ever got anything from it, not sure I have an instagram account, have maybe a couple of dozen social media posts in my life, and you're one up on me in modeling.
Putting people in prison is a shitty thing too, but it's still better to do it to people who are actually a menace to society. Something doesn't have to be good in an absolute sense to be better (than an alternative) in a regular one. Even if we're just dealing with statistical probabilities, hustling the rich seems less egregious than hustling the poor. Would you have reacted so strongly if the same sentiment had been expressed as "preying on the poor is especially bad"?
> Would you have reacted so strongly if the same sentiment had been expressed as "preying on the poor is especially bad"?
Nope. Preying on anyone is bad. A rich person could lose everything in a hustle the same as a poor person. It's only the extent of the hustle that makes it better or worse. E.g., hustling someone for a fraction of their assets is better than taking all of their assets. The value of the assets is not relevant.
Do you seriously think taking half of a poor person's assets is the same as taking half of a rich person's? I suggest a little reading on the concept of marginal utility before making more simplistic moral statements.
> It only made worse by the extent of the hustle. E.g., hustling someone for a fraction of their assets is better than taking all of their assets.
No.
It's pretty clear that it's worse to hustle a poor person out of 85% of their assets, and have them wind up homeless under a bridge, than it is to hustle a rich person out of 85% of their assets, and have them wind up living a comfortable upper-middle-class life. Both these scenarios involve the same "fraction of [personal] assets," which shows that some simple numerical comparison doesn't properly capture the essence of what we're talking about.
There's no such thing as bad publicity. This guy comes across as knowledgeable, honest and down-to-earth. Great salesman traits. Only thing better would be knowledgeable, honest, down-to-earth and famous.
