pig-monkey.com - influencer

It Should Happen To You analyzes the disease that is influencer culture.

2025-01-04T00:00:00-08:00

1954.

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Another favorite is A Face in the Crowd (1957), which explores the danger of social media influencers becoming Populist politic figures.

Beauvoir on Social Media

2024-08-02T00:00:00-07:00

To be no one, all things considered, is something of a privilege… How can anyone be so arrogant or so rash as to serve himself up as prey to a pack of strangers? Their names are dirtied in thousands of mouths; the curious rob them of their thoughts, their hearts, their lives. If I too were subjected to the cupidity of that ferocious mob of ragpickers, I would certainly end up by considering myself nothing but a pile of garbage. I congratulated myself for not being someone.

Simone de Beauvoir, The Mandarins

Future Social Media Influencer

2019-02-06T00:00:00-08:00

I ate lunch today at a park. There was a child, probably four or five years old, happily kicking a soccer ball around while his parents sat watching him from a nearby picnic table. Occasionally the parents would stop paying attention to the child and start talking amongst themselves. At this point the child would stop kicking the ball, and begin to scream “Look at me!” while stomping his feet. After a minute or so the parents would look back at the child, who would resume happily kicking the ball around – until the parents began talking again, at which point the cycle would continue.

At first I found myself thinking that the parents might do well to address this behaviour, but then I realized that this was an outmoded way of thinking. The parents were clearly setting the child up for a bright future in social media, where nothing is worth doing unless other people are watching you do it.