What are Online Influencers?

 

An online influencer must have a solid following and online presence where they can interact with fans, share opinions, and share products or brands as a whole, promoting them. There are online influencers in practically every topic, such as fashion, dancing, sports, and book reviews. Online influencers have become a form of entertainment for so many people because many make YouTube videos to answer questions or vlogs or post photos and videos on social media, giving ordinary people a form of new entertainment. Online influencers have a good impact on themselves and others. They positively impact themselves because they can make a decent amount of money through brand deals and promotions. For example, Charli D'Amelio is one of the most popular influencers, and she has been since 2020. She has been successful for a long time, bringing her family along. She has been successful because of brand deals, being on contest shows, and her family having their own show.
Online influencers are positive for everyday people because they can be role models for so many young people, especially with bullying showing young people that it is essential to show that what other people say does not matter. Influencers have started promoting positivity more, significantly influencing so many people because it is what they need to hear. Everyone needs more positivity; people tend to take it more seriously or feel it matters more because a public figure said it. While they have such a positive impact, they can also have a negative impact, especially on female influencers with young girls because many influencers look similar, making young girls feel like they have to look a certain way. After all, that is how people look online. 

For society, brand deals on social media promote materialism whether they realize it or not. Most likely, if someone sees an influencer promoting a particular brand and specific items from that brand, the viewer will want what they had, and chances are the more popular influencers are promoting more expensive brands. Ultimately, the viewer will most likely like the item because their favorite influencer has it, so they can be like them, potentially having them spend money on items they do not need. Viewers also see influencers do not have authenticity more often than not; it is rare that an influencer posts what they want because most have managers. Since most have managers, they are told what to post, who to promote, and what videos they need to do. Also, some influencers tend to follow trends in their posts on all platforms rather than coming up with something themselves. Almost everyone knows this, so viewers feel like they cannot post whatever they want, which makes others lose authenticity, too. Finally, influencers hurt themselves because they have to share their entire lives on social media, so they feel like they cannot be anything but fine every day, all the time. 

So many influencers make conscious efforts to include everyone on their platforms. The majority of them do not refer to specific groups of people. Many talk about and post on a wide variety of subjects so that everyone can relate to something that they talk about and can relate to. While many people now talk about various topics, that was only sometimes the case because people have taken time to learn. In past years, people have lost support from their followers because of how they have acted towards a particular group or talked about a specific situation. A growing online personality is Jenna Sinatra, who is in the above photo. Jenna is a perfect example of a personality that does not appeal to just a specific group of people. She talks about and promotes various topics that so many can relate to; she will talk about sports, fashion, school, working out, and shows. She has something for everyone, which attracts so many people to her. While discussing various topics, she is vulnerable on her social media accounts. She will talk when she is not ok; whether something happened or if her mental health is not bad, she will talk about it and promote that not being ok is normal and that she is not perfect and pleasing all the time. Something that stands out about her is that she gets so many mean comments about doing social media or that she lives at home, and she will respond to them. Most of the time, she says that if they do not like her or something about her, they do not need to follow her, which is so brave of her which many people enjoy. Online influencers do not necessarily affect me or my friends. There was a time when they affected me because I felt I needed to look like them, especially during the pandemic. After all, I was constantly watching them on YouTube or seeing what they posted. After a time, I realized that I do not need to look like them because I am not them, but I am not the only one who has compared myself to an influencer in the past; many of my friends and I have talked about how we used to compare or have wished that we were them, but then we remember the dark side of what they do and realize that we do not actually want to be them. Many people in Gen Z feel like they can be influencers or want to be influencers until they recognize the dark side of everything that they go through. At the end of the day, some influencers positively impact society and some hurt society.