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fireflysummers · 5 years

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Just Fiction (and When It’s Not)

I’ve been tying myself in mental knots for the last while about the “It’s Just Fiction” argument. At this point I’ve heard a lot from both sides that’s actually pretty valid, leading to a lot of general confusion.

The conclusion that I’ve come to, though, is that “It’s Just Fiction” is not a universal defense, and its meaning shifts drastically when it’s shifted out of the originally intended lens.

I propose that there are three lenses through which the “It’s Just Fiction” argument can be viewed: in-universe, authorial intent, and public interpretation.

Before jumping into the analysis, I should note that there are a few assumptions here:

The fiction in question is actually fiction, and does not resemble any real life persons, living or dead in an identifiable capacity. Therefore, things like the Ted Bundy Case Files are immediately disqualified.

We are assuming innocence until proven guilty.

The In-Universe Lens

The “It’s Just Fiction” defense is most often applied to in-universe logic, and is related to the suspension of disbelief--the mechanism by which we can ignore our comparisons to the real world and immerse ourselves in a fantasy.

When you say "It's Just Fiction" about in-universe logic, it understands very clearly that fiction is fake, and that the characters and events do not exist in the real world. It may echo real life, and real people might to replicate it, but no matter how dark or gross or fluffy or fantastical the content, no matter how gritty and “realistic” it is, it is not real.

Arguing that "It’s Just Fiction" is basically stating that you understand how to separate reality from fantasy, and treat characters and in-canon logic as the mechanisms by which an interesting story is told. While they may feel real, especially if you have a special connection with them, they fundamentally are not.

As a result, content creators are generally allowed to use it as space to explore taboo topics and search for relationships and meaning in places that no sane person would enact in real life.

However, this is not free reign to create whatever you want, and expect no consequences, as we will get to in our next point.

Authorial Intent

As stated earlier, the general assumption here is that the content creator did not intentionally have ill will towards anybody. Unfortunately, there have been too many case where this has proven to be bad faith. As a result, how to approach this aspect of the “It’s Just Fiction” argument is very difficult and controversial, because sometimes it is very difficult to “prove,” especially since the creative process is often multi-faceted as content creators draw from multiple inspirational and motivational sources.

Oftentimes, content creators are young, ignorant, and lacking self-awareness. This leads to them not knowing how to take critique, especially if they are approached in a harsh, critical manner, and generally only alienates them in a way that stifles their desire to learn and grow naturally. It is generally not your job to educate strangers on the internet, either, since there are often trolls who disguise actual ill intent as ignorance.

The most surefire way to address this is to curate your own internet experience by blocking liberally those whose content you do not wish to see.

There is another case, though, that needs to be discussed: that of predatory content creators. These people usually straddle the line between “a distasteful lack of mindfulness” and “preying on vulnerable populations.”

Accusations of ped/o/phil/ia against any individual are serious, and in process you have to consider a personal history of predatory behavior, rather than applying a blanket "if it's dark and taboo topics, then it automatically implicates the author as a pervert.”

You can usually identify these individuals based on the content’s tone and approach--that they aren't approaching a taboo topic for the sake of literary exploration, but because they are self-inserting themselves. There are heavy implications about people who self-insert into that sort of fiction, such as people who write or draw cartoon character CP, and you can usually tell on a case-by-case basis whether or not somebody is hiding a gross perversion behind "It’s Just Fiction.”

Public Interpretation

Public interpretation is usually where the “It’s Just Fiction” argument breaks down entirely, because we are no longer working directly with the work (in-universe) or the people immediately responsible for its creation (authorial intent). Public reactions are very, very real and need to be treated as such--but first, you have to consider the likelihood that a work of fiction will actually contribute to swaying that public.

The argument here is “even if the person didn’t mean any harm, that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be held responsible.” And this is another tough one, because on one hand, yes, content creators ideally should exercise mindfulness about how their work will be received and interpreted. On the other hand, the public is beyond the control of any single individual, and things can easily be taken out of context or snowball out of their control, regardless of their intent.

So, for the sake of this particular case, we have determined that the author did not mean to cause harm, the next question is how much harm is being done.

In other words, who exactly is the public, and how many of them are there?

For instance, a bunch of kids filming a shitty monster movie featuring sharks may have the exact same messages as Jaws (sharks are evil and need to be killed). Neither one of them intend to do real sharks any harm; however, the one that needs to be held responsible is Jaws, not the shitty indie film.

Why? Because Jaws was a box-office success that became a cultural phenomenon. It impacted the opinions of the millions of people, leading to a sharp increase of shark hunting.

Yeah, the indie film was equally bad in the messages it was conveying, but it just fades into obscurity without actually doing any harm.

It’s the same spiel with fandom works. Because fandoms are insular spaces, they feel a lot bigger than they actually are. That’s why fan-content creators are not held to the same standards as mainstream content creators, because the public they actually affect is actually quite small.

When people say “It’s Just Fiction” in relation to content that is not intended to do harm, but is controversial in content, what they’re really saying is “fandom is a small, in-bred pocket of the internet, and and because it is not written by somebody intending to cause harm and will never likely see the public eye, the damage that it does is negligible, and any energy that you put into causing an outcry over it is merely a petty waste of time.”

At which point, again, the best course of action is to just block what you don’t want to see.

Applications

This is a long read, and the basic point is to exercise your own critical thinking skills. My general rubric for what I keep versus what I block is:

Is the content actually fictional.

Is the content creator acting out of a desire to hurt others?

If the harm is unintentional, how many people are affected, and how wide-spread is the damage?

Let’s Practice

Case 1

Person A is obsessed with a villainous character from an anime.

They know that the character is completely made up.

They have no desire to hurt other people, since this affection for a fictional character is literally just them. Their actions do not pose a threat to vulnerable groups.

The number of people even directly aware of Person A’s special interest is pretty small, and if you’re squicked out by it they’re an easy block.

Therefore, by this rubric, “It’s Just Fiction” works just fine as an explanation for their actions.

Case 2

Person B’s fanfic reduces your favorite character to LGBT+ stereotypes. The tone of the fic, though, is fluffy and light-hearted.

Again, this is entirely fictional and all parties know it.

It’s difficult to gauge whether this was done intentionally or not; sometimes a quick chat with the author will clear things up; otherwise, the tone of the fic and the lack of mean spirit in any of their other works, so it’s probably unintentional. It’s probably safe to give the benefit of the doubt.

The general readership on the fic and the number of kudos is pretty low, which means that it’s not getting much attention anyways. It was distasteful, it made you feel gross when you read it, but overall the damage is pretty contained.

Therefore, by this rubric, “It’s Just Fiction” still generally works, because of the limited number of people even aware of the fic’s existence.

Case 3

Person C made an AU with characters aged-up from the canon, and there are some N/S/F/W scenes or jokes!

AU = fictional

This is a tricky one sometimes, because there are absolutely people who age up characters just to “legally” draw them in N/S/F/W situations.

However, there is a difference between people who do that, and others who say, project out an entire timeline full of unique character interactions and are looking to explore the various aspects of adult life, which sometimes involves consensual sex. The authorial intent here is usually pretty easy to pick up on, because a well thought-out aged-up AU often takes a lot of mindfulness on the part of the creator.

Again, things limited to fandom spaces are by default pretty small in the public that they reach.

“It’s Just Fiction” absolutely applies here because of the amount of work that has been put into it to create an adult version of the world and characters, and it’s clear that the intent was not to expose minors for the entertainment of perverts.

tl;dr: If you’re going to treat fandom with academic scrutiny, please apply critical thinking to situations as they come. “It’s Just Fiction” does not work as a general statement because it wasn’t originally meant to be a general statement.

#long post #fandom wank #text #idk man #i'm tired

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casualenemykid-blog · 4 years

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theexistentiallyqueer · 5 years

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Okay so I’ve been thinking about that really bad Hot Take that’s been circulating about fanfiction. And it’s been kind of simmering in me. The root of the problem with it isn’t so much that it diminishes the quality of fanfiction so much as the way it characterizes two completely different genres of media.

Preface: at no point is this ever, ever, ever a diatribe or condemnation against fanart or the work fanartists put into their work. This is about the value that is ascribed to visual art vs the value ascribed to literary art. I am trying to talk specifically about the denigration of literary art in fandom spaces and the way it’s been recently, in a very popular tumblr post, martyred at the expense of queer and disabled writers and writers of color.

Fanart (as a collective genre, according to that post) - Good, artistically-driven, pure, wholesome. Fanartists draw for the sake of becoming better artists, and every work a fanartist draws or creates is made with the goal of becoming a better artist. Fanartists never draw anything that is base, silly, shippy, or smutty; if there is pornographic art, it isn’t pornographic but Erotica. There is no such thing as low- or middling-quality art, because all artists are striving to sharpen their skills and become better artists, and there are no fanartists who draw just for fun or shits and giggles. Fanartists achieve fame purely on the merit of their own artistic ability. There’s no room to criticize fanartists who attempt to cis-wash trans (or trans pesenting) characters, or fanartists who blatantly, frequently, and with frankly no impunity (as their art is reblogged, and reblogged, and reblogged) whitewash characters of color.

Fanfiction (as a collective genre, according to that post) - Smutty, ship-fodder, audience-pleasing trash. Fanfic writers write for the sake of expressing their inner boners or enacting their internal fantasies. No fanfic writers seek a sense of growth in their writing or work to improve their writing in any way. The only reason any works of fanfiction are popular is because they cater to the readership’s base instincts, and the True Authors, the Really Daring authors who write Real Literary Content, are cast the wayside.

It’s such a two-dimensional view of the situation--and it doesn’t even take into account edited content, such as gifsets, which makes up a huge portion of fandom content and has been a type of content, along with fanart, that fanfic writers have long voiced their (our) upset about getting more active & polarized attention than written works. It presents this dichotic view of fanart good/fanfiction bad. Which is also incredibly ugly and disturbing when you consider the fact that fanfiction is the earliest form of curated fan content, and fanfiction itself is inherently transformative in a way that fanart and edits are not, because fanwork in general, and and fanfiction in particular, is inherently in and of itself the public (fans) themselves overriding the corporate-owned landscape with their subversive interpretations.

Like, I have seen not-good fanart. I have seen bland, unimpressive, generic fanart. There is fanart from artists who don’t have their own unique sense of style. Fanart from artists who are just starting out and haven’t developed their skills yet. Fanart from artists who draw as a hobby, and damn they may be good, but they don’t give a fuck about contributing to The Body of Artistry because they have bills to pay and career interests outside of art, and damn, they’d really rather draw these two characters making out, or blushing at each other, or straight-up fucking, than they would create something of Great Artistic Importance. That art gets so many notes. It is liked and reblogged and shared.

And that’s all valid, because art ISN’T A COMPETITIVE SPORT. I embrace fanartists who draw just because they want to, because they don’t care about quality or artistic ideals or whatever, and just want to draw someone being happy, or sad, or angry, or getting dicked down, or whatever!!! It doesn’t matter. Draw because you want to draw. Because your art is an expression of yourself that speaks of your experiences and transgresses the definitions of the world you’ve been told to adhere to. You make art for yourself, to say fuck the system!!!! We’re just the lucky souls who get to appreciate it afterwards.

The complaints that come from fanfic writers--and yes!!! I am one, so proceed with the accusations of butthurt--are that fanart and edits get more social media attention (in the forms of likes, reblogs, retweets, shares, etc.) than fanfic does.

And it’s a valid complaint! It isn’t rooted in some alien reality that fanfiction is inherently more base and less artistic than fanart. I’ve seen some pretty aesthetically displeasing fanart get a high reblog count. And I’ve seen some incredible works of literary attention get no recs, no likes, no comments. I’ve seen works of middling writers who have a lot of fucking talent and show it in their work, and yeah maybe they write porn, but their prose SINGS, and no one comments, no one shares it, no one makes their love of it public the same way they do the fanart, the same way they do the edits and the gifsets.

It’s rooted in two things:

1. Literature (which fanfiction is a subgenre of) takes time to appreciate. You can look at a piece of art and reblog it without thinking about it. It could be a work on par with the Mona Lisa, and you could still look at it without any aesthetic or artistic sense and say, “Hey, that looks pretty.” But you can’t read without thinking; reading is an active mental pursuit you have to engage with. (If you try to pull out Twilight on this point to fight me, I’ll fight you back. I’ve actively read Twilight. Even reading awful literature takes effort; arguably it takes more effort than reading something good).

2. Literature is hard to market with words, because when you’re trying to encourage other people to read it, you have to use even more words. You have to use words to convince someone to read even more words! Some fanartists draw comics or fanart inspired by fanfiction--I love those artists and they do more for us than they could possibly know--but for the most part, you can’t use visuals to show someone why they should invest their time in reading a thing. And unlike fanart--when it’s a tribute, when it’s a showcase of the character’s or characters’ canonical attributes--fanfiction can’t be green-stamped by creators, because fanfiction is inherently built in narrative, and canon-compliant or not, that opens the legal owners of the property up to legal disputes.

So much easier, then, to focus on fanart, which distribution and publishing companies love because they see free advertising in sharing it, to complain that fanfiction is a dispirited genre of unartistic creators who just want to read the queer version of a bodice-ripper.

And then we get to the question of: why is the bodice ripper so bad? Are you willing to critique Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski with the same derision you have for queer writers? Are you going to hold the wish-fulfillment fantasies and introspective examinations of sexuality in relation to gender, race, class, and physical ability written by writers expressing their own experiences as inherently debauched and debased because pornographic fanfiction is popular, but not hold George R R Martin to the same standard? Are you going to criticize the prejudices and disparities and biases in publishing that prevent marginalized writers from being able to break into the industry?

Are you ready to combat the enduring popularity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is overwhelmingly a series of heroism tales about shitty and mediocre white men?

Are you going to take aim at HBO for taking a fantasy series that, while still written by a sexist author who has a disturbing fixation on female sexuality has uplifted its female characters as heroes in their own right, and then drove it into the dirt to end on a note with the male “hero” murdering his female lover, an abuse survivor, after engaging her in an intimate kiss?

Did you take issue with the streaming blockbuster Stranger Things only confirming a character as canonically gay--after planning to have her be a straight romantic option for a major character--because the actress is the one who repeatedly badgered the showrunners about how she didn’t feel her character fit that role?

Are you invested in the fact that video games continue to be majority white, majority male, majority able-bodied, and majority inaccessible to disabled gamers?

You want to complain about fanfiction having too much porn and somehow that deligitimizes fanfiction as a genre as a whole?

Fuck off. There are hundreds, thousands even more likely, of other authors of equal skill to you or greater, who are struggling to have their works recognized in fandoms that don’t want to put the effort in to reading them, the effort into sharing and appreciating them. It’s harder to make someone care about a fanfic. You can reblog a fanart, and your followers will see the art itself right away. If you reblog fanfic, they have to make the conscious choice to engage with it. And none of that is your fault, because you can’t control how other people engage with fan content, but you can advocate, vocally, for the fair and equal respect for fanfiction and fan-written content. You can remind people, again and again, how fanfic writers do so much for so little.

But you want to come into my house and compare fanart to fanficton and claim one is inherently better? You’re the Banksy to my Catherynne L Valente, to my N.K. Jemisin, to my Seanan McGuire.

Start understanding the system is built against us all and start understanding why your battle is uphill. What’s oppressing your creative success is a white, straight, cis monopoly on what the good story, what the correct story is, limiting your options, tying you to a narrative you don’t belong to. Queerness and marginalization exist beyond what’s depicted in mainstream media, and fans expressing that through their own written content?

That’s us taking back the corporate-owned narrative for ourselves. It’s self-liberation through the written word. And yeah, some of it is porn.

It’s porn when it’s a drawing too.

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topicprinter · 5 years

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We had been working to create podcasts as a hobby and side hustle for about a year and a half before we came up with the idea to brand ourselves as a single company (or duo) creating multiple shows. As we create more shows, we established Fool & Scholar Productions as a way to organize our works and establish brand recognition.It was a gradual decision to start our own company. We saw that, over time, the podcasting space was becoming more prevalent in our lives and amounting to more of our income, so we sat down, worked out the numbers, and set about starting the company and solidifying our lives as entertainers. By the time we started Season Two of The White Vault, we knew we were in for the long haul.How did you get your first hundred listeners?Travis: We surprised ourselves quite honestly. It was a mix of good timing, word of mouth, advertising at live events, and marketing on social media. I feel like if there’s a particular event that got us over the 100 listener mark it was maybe a particularly successful Imgur post that Kaitlin put together showcasing Modern Audio Drama. The post reached the front page of Imgur overnight, and got a spike in listeners for almost every show on the list.Kaitlin: We tried a lot of different things in the beginning, from normal social media marketing, to spending hours making curated lists of shows to help establish ourselves as quality listeners and creators. There are a lot of shows out there, so when you say ‘Hey, I make a show you may enjoy’, people need to trust you enough to believe you. We work on Twitter to discuss our favorite shows, we started talking to others about how we wrote/designed/edits our works, and we built from the (digital) ground up. Our first 100 listeners seems to materialize rather quickly, and after that, everything kept growing.How did you validate the idea?Travis: Podcasting is still a new and growing medium, with only about 70% of Americans even knowing what a podcast is, so the metrics by which creators in our space can validate their work is ever shifting, based on the growth of the industry.Our original lofty goal of 100 listeners has long since been surpassed. We’ve won awards. We’ve far exceeded the dream of getting ‘1 million downloads’, and we’ve done the impossible in making podcasting a full time career. Those were our goals. There are many sources of validation both internal (lines in the sand or cool factor variables) and external (awards and download numbers), and we’re still struggling to find what we feel is valuable validation.What are the keys to a good podcast?Kaitlin: ‘Quality, character, and consistency’ is my go-to mantra for creating a good podcast. Without quality, anyone who listens will turn away after the first few minutes. Without characters that attracts emotion and connection, be it in a podcast host or in a story, listeners won’t have a string tying them to your creations. Without consistency listeners would never know when to expect your work, or when to return, and this is breaking the trust podcasters try to establish with their listeners.How many listeners do you need to start making money from podcasting?Travis: This is a tricky question, because if you don’t spend anything creating your podcast then your first dollar is considered income.Because every podcast is different, I’ll answer the next best question and you can reverse engineer the math to suit your personal goals. Expect to only see about 1% of your listeners support your show through merch sales or crowdsourcing with any regularity (assuming that you are offering something of value). If you are able to get a sponsor, assume that you will see between $20-$50 per thousand listeners, per sponsorship.Did you have any experience/expertise in the area?Kaitlin: Podcasting? No.Writing? Does a thesis count?Marketing? I wish.When we started creating our first show, it was the first time I had written anything for entertainment purposes in… years. I was still at university studying Archaeological Sciences and drowning under the amount of work Oxford could pour over me in a single week. My only free time I spent writing, and I’ve written nearly every day since. Now, I have the experience and I try to encourage others to pursue creative endeavors, even when they don’t have the training for it. I’m proof that this can be done without a professional background in creative writing, marketing, or media.Have you raised any money? How much?Travis: We actually did this backwards, creating multiple seasons of free content, then realizing afterwards that we might be able to break even if we asked listeners to join our Patreon. To date, we still haven’t done any type of project-based fundraising in podcasting, but our Patreon has grown to 500+ active members.Who is your target demographic?Travis: Our listeners are comprised largely of women and men between the ages of 24-34 who speak English or are learning to speak English. We have listeners in over 80 countries and from all walks of life. Most of our listeners are in the US, Canada, and UK, but we have a growing number of fans from Australia.How do you attract listeners now?Travis: I spend a lot of time on social media, using new hashtags, promoting our works, and adding meaningful dialogue to places where people talk about fiction podcasts. Kaitlin does 10x what I do and spends a great deal of time marketing.What is the funniest/most strange request you have received from a listener?We don’t get many random requests, but one fan has a tattoo from one of our shows.How did you fund the idea initially?Travis: The initial seasons were done on almost no budget. We did everything in our spare time. The sound effects at our disposal were whatever we could record in our Oxford flat, and all of our actors were friends and family. It was only after we expanded our resources and tried to improve upon our shows that we found we needed funding. At that point we turned to our listeners for support to offset the costs of these improvements. They really have allowed us to get where we are and realize the growth we’ve seen.Any tips for finding first employees?Kaitlin: Think about the people you trust in your field. Ask them to recommend someone, rather than putting out a call or a listing. If you trust someone, trust the quality of their work, then the odds are they’ll be able to recommend someone who would easily fit into your workflow.Did you run any companies prior?Travis: I’ve had some experience in the corporate world as the president of a collection agency, the managing partner of a property management company, and the creator/president of a small publishing company. I’m still involved in all of those businesses.Kaitlin: No, I was still a graduate student when I started podcasting.What were your family and friends first thoughts you creating your own your company?Kaitlin: By the time I had decided to make podcasting my full time job, we were already doing very well within the podcasting community. When we established the company, it was something my family supported because they saw it as a way to legitimize the time, effort, and money I put into creating my future career. Nowadays, my family and friends come to see me talk, or to our live performances, and they listen to most of our podcasts. My father is actually my script editor for most of our shows, so he’s very supportive and enjoys having an inside scoop on the shows before their public release.Travis: When he was alive, my father didn’t understand podcasting and couldn’t grasp the crowdsourcing side of it. My mother has been extremely supportive from day one and said that this is exactly what I need to be doing. We moved across the country a year ago, so I haven’t really told most of my friends from Florida as it doesn’t organically come up in conversations.What motivates you when things go wrong?Travis: At first it was the finished product in and of itself. I was fascinated by the process of bringing a story to life, hearing the voices read the words on the page, and the soundscape bringing us to new places. While this is still true, a bigger motivator for me of late has been the enthusiasm of our listeners. I take a particular delight in considering how they will experience the show, and working to make that experience memorable, even as things sometimes go horribly wrong during production.Do you have any advice for someone just starting out?Kaitlin: Podcasting is still new, still growing, and still expanding. Even if you already have a business and just want to start, say, a real estate podcast to better reach your potential clients, then just start. Look up how to do it, look up how it works; the recording, editing, uploading, marketing, and more. And then do it. The most difficult hurdle for me has always been my own mindset.‘It looks so complicated, I couldn’t possibly do that.’ Well, now I am, and it doesn’t seem impossible from the inside.Travis: I’d also add that if you’re already podcasting or innovating, focus on creating more new and meaningful content regularly. The more you make, the better you’ll get.What is stopping you from being 3x the size you are now?Kaitlin: Time. Travis and I are the core of Fool & Scholar Productions. We are the dynamic duo. People trust my writing and his sound design; they know our names and our works. So, to triple our reach and our audience we would need to create more shows and work even more diligently at getting out work out there. Problem being, we are booked-up already as it is. Even with new ideas stacked up like blocks on my desk, I don’t have time to write new stories given that I’m still actively writing our core shows. And even if I did, Travis would not have time to give them life as producer and sound-designer. So, time is our limiting factor, because we certainly have no shortage of ideas.What apps could your business not run without?Kaitlin: Creating podcasts is all well and good, but without marketing the shows we would have a difficult time building or engaging our audience. Even though our shows are audio based, much of social media relies on visual marketing. For crafting visuals, both at home and on the go, I use Canva religiously.Travis: We rely heavily on Dropbox to share files across our devices and with our teams. I also couldn’t function without Mixcraft, which is my Digital Audio Workspace (the program I edit in). I’m working in Mixcraft every day and it’s both affordable and reliable. Another very important tool is Microsoft Excel, which we use to track download numbers, growth, sales, and expenses. Beyond the accounting benefits, it shows us what was effective in helping us grow by creating a timeline with a perspective.Are there any new podcasts you’re working on?Travis: We just returned with Season 3 of The White Vault. I cannot recommend the show enough if you’re a fan of horror, or just value hearing voices and languages from around the world showcased.Would you ever sell the company?T&K: Fool & Scholar Productions is so tied to our identities that the brand is somewhat useless without us. We are able to build ourselves as a company because of community trust in who we are; if we were to remove the Fool and Scholar from Fool & Scholar Productions, we would have doubts that our community of supporters and fans would stay loyal to just the name alone.If you enjoyed this interview, the original is here.

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sempiternalsandpitturtle · 5 years

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8 influencer marketing statistics that will guide your strategy in 2019 and beyond

Remember Beanie Babies?

These stuffed toys inspired perhaps the quintessential collector fad of the 1990s, giving Gen-X and millennial consumers their own little taste of Tulip Mania. All the enormous hype and eye-popping price tags got a big boost from a then-innovative source: one of the first real blogs, maintained by parent company Ty, on which different Beanie Babies would “post” their ghostwritten updates to an online diary.

The Ty blog entries showcased the early potential of influencer marketing, the practice of building brand awareness, cultivating an audience and shaping purchase decisions via the power of well-known and persuasive personalities. In that case, it entailed personas modeled on highly sought-after toys, meant to drive word-of-mouth about their appeal in lieu of conventional ad buys. Today, “influencer marketing” as a term is nearly synonymous with the recommendations of peers and online content creators, as well as celebrity endorsements.

You wouldn’t be mistaken to think that influencer marketing is as much about the messenger and their chosen medium – whether that’s a blog or, increasingly, a social media platform – as it is about the message in question. So does it actually work? We’ve put together these influencer marketing statistics to help answer this question and guide you in incorporating it into your marketing initiatives.

1. 70 percent of YouTube viewers trust YouTube creators more than other celebrities

Everything from an in-depth product review to a quick how-to video has a natural home on YouTube, making the platform an especially versatile channel through which influencer marketers can reach and affect their audiences. And those audiences are huge.

The above number, taken from a Google-sponsored study, indicates that literally 1 billion+ plus individuals place YouTube stars among the foremost trendsetters and tastemakers. Popular channels like those of fashion reviewer Grace Helbig and podcaster Joe Rogan have millions of subscribers apiece.

More importantly, their followers are highly engaged and likely to act on what they hear. Six in 10 YouTubers would give more weight to a content creator’s advice on what to buy than they would a traditional celebrity endorsement.

A successful influencer marketing campaign on YouTube could take the form of a hands-on demo, careful product placement or daily vlogging. There are so many ways to build and monetise an audience on YouTube for marketing efforts within your particular niche, whether that’s beauty product recommendations or power tool guides

2. Instagram topped 1 billion active users in 2018 – and most of them are millennials and Gen-Z

If we had to point out where influencer marketing crossed the Rubicon from “oh this is kind of a neat idea” to “wow there is serious power here”, it would be Instagram’s launch in 2010. Instagram took influencer marketing mobile, dramatically expanding the potential audience.

Its distinctive aesthetics and user demographics, which skew younger than the general population, also made it an ideal platform for posting the aspirational content so conducive to building brand awareness and loyalty. You don’t have to take our word for it, though – 87 percent of influencers cited Instagram as their favorite platform in 2018.

Between 2016 and 2017, the number of Instagram posts bearing the FTC-required #ad or #sponsored hashtags for sponsored content surged to 1.5 million. These updates generated over 1 billion likes between them that year. But those numbers don’t tell the whole story, as influencer marketing efforts on Instagram are often subtle and organic.

Almost two-thirds of the top-performing Instagram posts feature products and find their audiences through carefully selected hashtags, filters and additional details such as geotags and video captions (these are very important, and a lot of people don’t even know they exist). The Instagram users who engage with influencer posts are relatively young millennial consumers; over 60 percent of them under 35. That puts them squarely in the lucrative 18-34 segment that many marketers target.

Bottom line: Almost any modern influencer marketing campaign will be #blessed to have a strong presence on Instagram. As much as three-quarters of purchasing decisions by Instagram users are influenced by what they see on the platform.

3. Nine in ten Pinterest users use their pins to plan purchase decisions

Other than Instagram, no platform is so closely associated with influencer marketing as Pinterest, the image-centric social network that launched in 2010. Pinterest’s pinboard-inspired design lets users assemble collections of pictures, GIFs, videos and other items, many of which serve as blueprints for future purchases.

If services like Pocket and Instapaper offer the web’s version of a “Read It Later” button, Pinterest is a close as it gets to a “Buy It Later (Probably)” button. Ninety percent of Pinterest users saying they use it to make purchasing decisions and 60 percent buy something from a brand after seeing a promoted pin.

To influencer marketers, Pinterest offers a great balance of branded content opportunities and organic reach. To Pinners, the site is a much more trusted source of product recommendations and exposure than search engines, other social media or even friends and family.

Pinterest offers greater flexibility than the other major influencer marketing platforms. A Pinterest campaign might entail curating a special board that mixes products from top brands, using promoted pins or participating in the official Pin Collective program, which pairs businesses with content creators who are experts in producing beautiful, high-engagement pins.

The long half-life of Pinterest pins also allows for highly protracted marketing efforts. The typical pin takes 3.5 months to generate half of its engagement, compared to 90 minutes for a Facebook update and only 24 minutes for a tweet.

4. Twitch averaged more than 3 million unique monthly broadcasters in 2018

A Netflix executive once identified the hit game “Fortnite” as a bigger competitor than Hulu or HBO. That’s because on top of actual playing time, users collectively watch billions of minutes of lengthy live playthroughs of “Fornite” and other games, along with non-gaming content. Influencer marketers are capitalising on the platform’s notably high levels of engagement.

Users who spend only a few seconds engaging with marketing content on Instagram or Facebook might spend minutes with it on Twitch, since they are giving the live video their full attention. There are plenty of effective ways to reach an audience on Twitch via an influencer campaign, including:

Unboxing videos.

Product shout-outs.