By Marquis Cooley | Reporter
I’m a fan of social media. I use Snapchat to message my friends regularly, I check Twitter for funny tweets while I watch sports on TV and I scroll through my Instagram before I get out of bed each morning. But as much as I enjoy using social media, there’s one thing about it that I can’t stand: the influencers that come from it.
I hate opening up my Snapchat or Instagram and being flooded with stories and posts about which TikTok star is dating who or why a vlogger is facing backlash. Even though I don’t follow these people, I know so much about them because social media influencers are insanely popular for no reason.
They’re everywhere you look, appearing in commercials with their endorsement deals and guest starring on TV shows, but they haven’t done anything to earn that kind of status. Addison Rae was a guest on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and is releasing an album, not because she can sing or did something spectacular, but because she can recreate 60-second dance videos.
And she’s not the only one. Others like Ninja, David Dobrik, the Paul brothers and the D’Amelios are using their success on social media to make millions of dollars and fund whatever career move they feel like pursuing. A perfect example is how the Paul brothers are somehow professional boxers. Logan Paul, who lost to a fellow YouTuber in his only “professional fight,” is getting to fight boxing legend Floyd Mayweather. Just to put in perspective how hard it is to get a fight with Mayweather, fellow boxing legend Manny Pacquiao had to work his way up and wait six years to get a fight with Mayweather, while all Logan Paul had to do was post a few videos and tweets over a couple of months.
Now, I don’t hate content creators. I have a few I enjoy watching, and I think they should be able to profit off of their work. I also don’t blame social media influencers for capitalizing on their popularity to do whatever they want. My problem is that as a society, we’re enabling them to reach these crazy heights of popularity by donating money to their streams, buying their products and keeping up with their daily lives as if they’re important. Our time is so much more valuable and can be better spent on other things rather than keeping tabs on high schoolers who have no effect on our daily lives. So let’s stop giving these social media influencers the clout we all know they don’t deserve.
