Get Rich or Lie Trying: Ambition and Deceit in the New Influencer Economy
Symeon Brown
I know I was around for the rise of the influencer, yet I know nothing about them.
Their rise coincides with my young adult years, when theoretically I was paying the most attention, and yet I missed it.
Maybe my technophobia was to blame (I regarded iPhones with extreme skepticism as late as 2014), or the fact that hipster culture back then was not particularly glamorous. Our early-teen-aughts aesthetic was ironically ugly and thrifted from the worst Salvation Army’s in Ohio. We had graduated into an recession and we were angry about it.
But clearly some people were not, and they became influencers. Regardless of how or why I failed to notice them, they exist now, and they are here to stay (maybe).
So I read a book about them to catch up. All in all, I enjoyed this little treatise on the influencer. Sometimes I was depressed, sometimes I was horrified, but mostly I learned cool facts about recent history. For example, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter, Alicia Garza, has a masters degree from my alma mater. That was inspiring, unlike the rest of the book, which was more unsettling.
In conclusion, influencers are a menace to society, thank you for reading.
Ironically, I learned of this book while watching a Youtube video by influencer Jordan Theresa, who is clearly effective at her job, as she influenced me to read this book.
Kate's 52 Book Challenge 