Clicks & Clout: How We Seek Status In the Digital Age

Most of the social internet has become about building an audience and connecting people to brands and influencers. It’s better understood as a performance by the top 1%, not as a way to exchange knowledge or connect people to one another.

in an age when everyone seems to be trying to build an audience in order to “monetize their passions,” the end result is a crowded digital world of people striving to be influencers-celebrities, especially on social media

When incentives are tethered to status and gaming attention as the mechanism for building an audience, we have a serious fucking problem.

We’re living in a sea of low-quality influencer content, which I believe offers an opportunity to create something better — something that emphasizes the signal over the noise, that’s slower, calmer, and personal.