The Internet Has Too Many Influencers

There are too many damn influencers.

Not “a lot.” Not “more than before.” Too many. We blew past the point of this being reasonable years ago and just kept accelerating because nobody wanted to be the first person to admit the whole thing was getting fucking ridiculous.

Everywhere you look now, somebody is trying to become an influencer. TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, it doesn’t matter. Everyone has decided that they’re a content creator now. People used to want to be rock stars or actors. Now they want to film themselves buying iced coffee and talking about “self care” like their opinion actually matters.

Great, but who the hell is left to actually watch all of this?

If everybody is trying to become an influencer, then eventually the audience disappears. At some point it just becomes millions of narcissistic assholes yelling into their phones while desperately trying to convince each other that they matter. The internet stopped being a place where people shared things naturally and became one giant sales pitch.

The worst part is that you can’t even escape this shit in public anymore.

Go literally anywhere and there’s a decent chance somebody is filming content. Someone doing a “candid” (read: fake) reaction video, someone dancing in the middle of a walkway like an idiot, or someone holding up foot traffic because they need the perfect shot of their overpriced coffee. Oh I’m sorry your highness, don’t mind me, please take all the time you need. It’s not like the rest of us have anywhere to be.

A couple months ago I was walking through Philly and some girl was filming one of those “day in my life” videos outside a coffee shop while her boyfriend held the phone. They were blocking half the sidewalk while she kept redoing the same stupid little entrance walk over and over again because apparently entering a Starbucks now requires seventeen takes and cinematic direction.

I gave them a few chances to get the shot. After the fourth attempt I got tired of waiting and just walked right through. The boyfriend threw his hands up like I had just ruined the filming of The Godfather.

Sorry, not sorry, dickhead. You’re filming in public. I am the public. I’ll walk right in front of your camera, photobomb your little selfie monologue, and when you get mad about it, I’ll keep right on moving.

When I say “zero engagement”, I mean it. On both your platform and in real life. Cry harder, bitch. You don’t get to turn a public space into your personal film set just because you bought a ring light and decided you’re important.

That entitlement is what really annoys me about influencer culture. These people genuinely expect the world to stop moving around them because they decided to point a phone at their own face. Nobody owes you silence or a clean shot. You are not suddenly important because Amazon delivered you a ring light.

This behavior has become so normalized that people barely even question it anymore. Twenty years ago if you walked around narrating your life into a camera in public, people would assume you were mentally ill. Now it’s considered entrepreneurship.

I’m not even trying to sound like some bitter old man yelling at clouds either. I’m not above watching some of these people myself. I’ve said this before, but I actually like Will Tennyson. His humor is childish and he’s got a punchable face, so I get why people can’t stand him, but I still find his videos entertaining. I’ll also watch Sambucha sometimes. He’s got the personality of a potato and sounds like an AI stuffed into a human body, but some of the things he does are interesting enough that I’ll take a look. I’ll also watch channels like Odawg, CJDaChamp, and RDCWorld, because their content is funny and they feel authentic.

So no, this isn’t one of those lazy “internet bad” rants where I pretend all influencers are ruining society. The issue is that influencer culture has completely warped how people view success and attention.

My sister teaches preteens, and a disturbing amount of them say they want to be influencers when they grow up. Not doctors, engineers, lawyers, or anything important. Influencers. Their dream job is essentially “please look at me online.” That’s bleak as hell when you really think about it.

These kids see the top 0.01% of influencers making millions of dollars and assume that’s normal. They don’t see the millions of people making absolutely nothing while sinking countless hours into content that nobody watches. For every MrBeast, there are thousands upon thousands of people sitting in their bedroom talking into a webcam for an audience of twelve people and a bot named CryptoKing420.

A lot of this content feels fake as hell. They’ve all got perfect lighting, perfect houses, and perfect lives, and yet, none of it feels real. After a while you start wondering how many of these people actually built anything, or if they just had enough money to throw at the algorithm until something stuck.

There are entire industries built around faking engagement. For example, sites like Buzzoid allow you to buy followers, views, comments, all of it. At that point, what are we even looking at? Is somebody actually influential if most of their audience was bought for $49.99?

The influencer economy only works as long as people keep pretending there’s infinite attention to go around. There isn’t. Human attention is limited. There are only so many hours in a day, only so many videos people can watch, and only so much fake enthusiasm audiences can tolerate before they burn out.

Eventually something’s going to give, and the bubble is going to burst. The people who are actually entertaining or actually built something real will be fine, but there’s going to be a whole lot of people finding out the hard way that “being online” isn’t a skill.

A lot of these people are building their entire identity around internet validation. Their self-worth depends entirely on views, likes, comments, and engagement numbers. There’s no safety net (except for mommy and daddy), practical work experience, or transferable skills. It’s all just vibes and a ring light.

Being an influencer is a gamble that, right now, way too many people are going all in on.

Angry_Jerk

Adam “The Angry Jerk” Baker is the CEO of The AJnet Organization and Editor-in-Chief of AJnet Magazine. A grizzled internet veteran of over 20 years, he writes about politics, culture, and whatever else manages to annoy him that day.

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