Kelson Reads reviewed Under the Influence by Trey Ratcliff
A fascinating exposé of a side of the network that I’ve mostly ignored
4 stars
I’ve known the high-rolling “influencer” side of Instagram is out there, but for the most part, I’ve tuned it out by following only friends and people whose photos I find interesting (including the author, which was how I found out about this book), rather than following personalities.
The book covers three main topics:
- How and why people game the system on attention-based social networks, using Instagram as a case study.
- How attention-based social media games your brain.
- Ways to keep yourself in control of your social media experience.
I’ve read a lot about the second and third topics, so that part was mostly familiar to me, though I expect it will be more interesting (and helpful) to other readers.
The first topic - which is basically the hook to get people looking at the rest of it - proved to be very eye-opening as it describes the sheer amount of …
I’ve known the high-rolling “influencer” side of Instagram is out there, but for the most part, I’ve tuned it out by following only friends and people whose photos I find interesting (including the author, which was how I found out about this book), rather than following personalities.
The book covers three main topics:
- How and why people game the system on attention-based social networks, using Instagram as a case study.
- How attention-based social media games your brain.
- Ways to keep yourself in control of your social media experience.
I’ve read a lot about the second and third topics, so that part was mostly familiar to me, though I expect it will be more interesting (and helpful) to other readers.
The first topic - which is basically the hook to get people looking at the rest of it - proved to be very eye-opening as it describes the sheer amount of product placement and sponsorship going on, the lengths people will go to in order to make it look like they have a bigger audience than they do so they can get the deals, and the various techniques used to get around fraud detection.