Did you watch Zoella's Winter Haul? That reminds me, I need to go buy those L'occitane cinnamon candles.
I have found that most of my money is spent on things I don't need, often pitched to me be YouTube stars. Companies use YouTube stars to sell their products, and the concept of being used is incredibly belittling of one's potential.
Do you believe today’s YouTube stars are being exploited or
empowered?
Retweets, likes and subscribers translate into money in the
eyes of companies and billion dollar industries. These incredibly powerful
firms then exploit these social media stars and use them to sell their
products. YouTube stars in particular develop a very personal relationship with
their viewers. Their viewers watch them on a daily basis; they begin to
trust them as if they had been long time pals. This trust translates into
social media interaction (likes, retweets, subscribes, comments) and these
social media interactions are then abused by companies, which translate this
trust into money. YouTube stars are often incredibly vulnerable, they need
financial support as many of them have not attended university (or cant afford
it) and they are mostly unemployed, their need for financial support leads them
to believe that advertising products that are genuinely good (not a scam) to gain a living is not a
bad thing.
YouTube tells me I should love Tacobell and Topshop. Tumblr
tells me I should watch the Hunger Games and eat In’n’Out burgers. Twitter
tells me I should be obsessed with Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and Obama.
Instagram tells me where I should eat, what I should wear, where I should
travel. Before I knew better, I trusted social media to ‘advise’ me on how to
live my life because I was getting this advice from regular people, turns out
behind closed curtains the same advertising companies are tugging at the
strings of those social media personalities that are trusted by millions of
devoted followers. Each and every social media website is utilized to gather
data form the consumers, to see what they like and then through the
interactions of the consumers they sell their product. The consumer is the marketer,
this is dramatically different to how advertising use to work back in the day
when it was a one-way conversation from marketer to consumer.
YouTube stars like Zoella, Tyler Oakley, Sprinkeofglitter (Louise)
and Caspar Lee are all very famous and they all have one thing in common- they
all work beneath several companies to help sell products so that they can earn
a living. These mega-famous YouTube stars have millions of loyal fans: Zoella
has 9,560,630 subscribers, Tyler Oakley has 7,774,630 subscribers, Capspar Lee
has 5,360,430 subscribers and Sprinkleofglitter has 2,318,186 subscribers.
What do these numbers mean to them, what do these numbers
make them feel? Exploited is the last word that would cross their mind. These
numbers translate into cash for advertising companies: once a popular social
media personal advocates or endorses a certain product, their millions of
devoted and loyal fans whom trust their opinion would go out and get it to and
that is how the amount of likes, retweeets and subscribers translates into
money for these companies. Companies use social media stars to advertise their
products, once they are done with them they move on to the next big hit in
social media, leaving them feeling used up and worthless. Social media sensations are forced to put
every second of their life online for everyone to see and criticize, this
criticism is very personal as it condemns every move they make in their lives
and it often impinges upon their mental well-being. Behind the glitz and the
glamour of having your sculptures made at Madame Tassuds and the roaring crowds
cheering your names lie lost and broken human beings.
