Influencer ethics

tompoland Well, there are plenty of valid points made for/mostly against influencers, bwahaha… Sure, threads drift a bit off topic often, but makes for interesting reading at times. Problem with H-B is they tend to get butthurt if you go against their ‘logic’ and rarely see there’s more than 1 side to the discussion.

@tompoland not at all its great discussion and will show you what you will be in for,

every time i post a vid of a simple extraction i get a youtube expert telling me what i did wrong, its going to come with the territory im afraid,

what i would plead with you is to be a breath of fresh air and use measuring tool and give real world evidence not just opinion, as taste is way too subjective, but if you can give refractometer and kurve sift grind numbers etc, it would be soooooo amazing.

tompoland Sure, ripping people off with misinformation is not to be tolerated

The mainstream media does this every single day yet people keep watching

tompoland Come on Tom……this is a great discussion. Not many forums allow things to flow like this forum. Sure it creeps off topic a little but so what matey? You never know what you either might learn, or be able to pass on your own info by remaining in the discussion.

tompoland
They certainly make my coffee hobby more colourful, it would be very dull without them.
IMO we are all adults, you can only be influenced if you allow yourself to be, they are not grooming the vulnerable here.
Not all content is about encouraging people to part with money.

Speaking as an old fossil myself, I appreciate the role that influencers and other voices play in the marketplace. I’m glad that I can hear about things other than through the traditional gatekeepers of information and marketing. Yes, there is something distasteful about the facade of impartiality that is really just lower rent advertising, but, at its worst, it’s really no different than the days of glossy and wholly beholden magazine reviews that just so happened to feature flattering reviews of their advertisers. My industry heavily relies on reviews and ratings. I get daily solicitations for various types of purchased reviews. One industry magazine even gives me a list of prices to appear on the cover, to be interviewed, to have a favorable blurb, yearly awards, etc…

There is simply a lower threshold for others to jump into the reviewing game now. Some will be terrible, some will be new versions of the same old marketing crap. Others will be interesting and relatively independent sources. It’s still buyer beware, we just have a lot more dreck to sift through on the way to finding useful information. It means relatively small players with a good product can get good buzz. And it means a lot of gullible people will believe stupid promises across every subject.

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. It’s just that we old folks will disapprove of how the next generation will make an easier buck doing it differently than us.

In times gone by, experts earned their laurels through training and experience. Sadly, the downside of the Internet age is that we are all experts now - all we have do is upload a few videos and Bob’s your uncle.

Systemic Much the same was said after the introduction of the printing press in the fifteenth century. :-) Publishing across all media continues to become increasingly more accessible, some might call it democratised. With that you get the good and the bad - with printing it led to the moral horror of nineteenth century penny dreadfuls. With the internet we get the moral horror of hipsters making little videos of them talking about things they barely understand. On balance though, the good outweighs the bad.

The increasing amount of information available demands that information consumers develop a new skillset - that’s the ability to sort the wheat from the chaff. Once you are able to do that, the wise thing is to ignore the chaff. That means inter alia, identifying the YT channels that you think are full of BS and ignoring them.

If others haven’t developed this skillset and are watching stuff you disapprove of, and being misinformed that’s their problem - not anyone else’s. There are some on here that seem to think that they have the right to police others’ viewing habits. It’s all a bit Mary Whitehouse and prescriptive.

Gagaryn the wise thing is to ignore the chaff.

The trouble is, most people cannot……thinking it to be nothing more than harmless entertainment

dfk41

That’s true and I think the changing attitudes of debt have probably not helped. When I was growing up debt outside of a mortgage was frowned upon whereas now it’s rare to find someone without a credit card, car on finance and personal loans or all of the above.

Not necessarily a bad thing if you’re smart with interest rates but it’s far too easy for people to get very deep in debt these days.

Back on topic though I do think young people are being forced to find additional incomes. Salaries are ridiculously low in almost every industry. For much of the country, certainly south of the Midlands, most traditional professions don’t even come close to affording people a home even after many years in the job. House prices will go up and down and I appreciate they’ve been inflated for some time, but wage growth is viciously flat.

You can see why the allure of big bucks on YouTube, Twitch etc can tempt people to go all-in on their online persona.

HarveyMushman Yep, a lot of truth in that but we are straying! I had been tempted to start on the modern trend of products coming to the market by not using their own money therefore no risk to themselves, but instead fundraising on Kickstarter……..but I fear Tom might pull out his remaining hair! Still Harvey, you could always start another thread!

Systemic Agree but not sure I see that happening. I think there is a problem with shortening attention spans requiring the subject matter in question to be reduced to easily digestible bites.

Having spent some time reading through this thread, I fear you are correct. :-)

None of this matters as the Epstein client list will be released soon and all hell will break loose in the world exposing all the elite pedos. Brace yourselves

MWJB I didn’t know who any of these people were one year back. Then I stumbled on James H and was originally ambiguous. However, I read his Coffee Atlas, which is excellent and highly useful, and made him credible to me.

Then I looked a bit further and found that a percentage of his videos were informative, highly nuanced, well thought through; that he does respond (sometimes) to comments (impossible to do all if you look at the numbers), that he would modify his position if new knowledge convinced him to do so and would do this publicly without prompting, and that although many, perhaps most, of his videos are entertainment, those intended to have solid content were usually useful.

BTW, not what to buy but rather what questions to ask oneself and vendors too before buying.

This made me think it was worthwhile to look at other YT channels. MAJOR FAIL! I found myself experiencing a range of reactions from “well-intentioned at best; his mother is proud of him” though “entirely repulsive”. Very occasional exceptions include a few noted on this forum, TWG et al.

On reflecting further I found a small number of persons, some now deceased, online in forums, whose posts were so packed with evidence-based opinions as to be very worth following. One of them left the primary forum I used then and I wound up here to keep listening. (Thank you Jake & Dave)

And thanks to the many non-YT persons who post across several forums with intent to provide good data, seasoned opinions, sound advice. If all those of good intent simply ignored “influencers” they would eventually disappear in puffs of hot air.

dfk41 There is definitely some truth here, however Harvey is also right.

The global economy is squeezing those in the wrong part of the pyramid. Not the first time mind. If you look carefully at the history of Athens and Rome, you will see many reasons for their declines, but fundamentally unsound economies were certainly among the primary faults.

I modify your position when speaking with those younger than me whom I care for to understand the squeeze is occurring and will only worsen, and to live life on that basis, not some Hollywood fantasy..

It’s a recent news, an italian influencer ( not specifically in the coffee business) claiming she was participating in a charity operation while she promote some third part products, even under her brand, but was not true at all and she has been sued for misleading advertising….maybe even the companies that collaborate with her will have some juridical consequences.

Obviously this is a matter of greed and dishonesty, but i think that it’s a first step to increasing a control to the whole field by authority.