The influencers who shape your life, who make you feel bad about yourself for not having achieved anything, often have not achieved much themselves, other than convincing you that they are much richer and more successful than they really are.
Look at the ongoing legal drama surrounding manosphere chud Andrew Tate. As The Guardian reported, Tate’s lawyers recently told a Miami court that the supposedly “uberwealthy” influencer rented the $2.1 million Aston Martin and $7 million Bugattis featured in social media content.
The yacht he presented as part of his lifestyle was not his either; he was paid to promote it. His lawyers say the whole thing is a performance because Tate’s business depends on attention. Of course, it takes a court filing to reveal that he doesn’t actually own any of this stuff, though that is what’s heavily implied by the inclusion of all the stuff in his content.
None of this should be surprising. It feels like you should be able to intuit this kind of thing. But even then, you don’t need to, since a couple of recent articles pull back the veil on just how hollow the influencer world is.
Fake Jets, Rented Supercars and Empty Boxes: How Influencers Manufacture Wealth
A recent WIRED report on the weird market for the empty boxes luxury items are packed in. Why would you want the box, bag, or empty bottle of an expensive brand when you can have its actual contents? Because if it’s all packaging, it decorates the homes and populates the videos of influencers who probably don’t care much for the stuff inside the packaging as much as they care about using it as a prop- just set dressing that makes people think there’s valuable stuff inside.
It’s no more real than the old-school Hollywood Wild West saloon set that’s just a series of wooden planks propping up a façade.
Jason Koebler of 404 Media showed off just how easy the trick is in his fascinating report “How I Bought a Private Jet By Selling $10 Subscriptions to 404 Media,” wherein he rented a fake private-jet set for $65 and used software to create fake Stripe earnings and payment notifications, all to create the illusion of living the baller multimillionaire entrepreneurial lifestyle so common on social media.
It was all just plywood sets and props held together with clever editing. It was convincing enough on a phone, and probably believable to someone seeing it on a lunch break at their soul-crushing minimum-wage job. But even someone on minimum wage can fake it. For a few hours, you too can look like someone either worth envying or worth despising, just like the influencers who tell you you’re a loser for not living as lavishly as they do.
Even though oftentimes the only difference is that they’re better set decorators than you are.
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