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| "Keep Obama in president!" |
Surely you remember the "Obamaphone lady," pictured at right, a somewhat endearing idiot who was voting for Obama because he was giving all the people on welfare free cell phones, as opposed to his opponent Romney, about whom she succinctly said, "He sucks." At the time I was appalled that such a large portion of our population believed such rot and acted upon it. But by today's standards that Obamaphone lady was a Rhodes scholar.
An article in today's
Wall Street Journal describes the rise of an Instagram superstar who has 1.5 million followers watching her every move. Her name is Miquela Sousa, a.k.a. Lil Miquela, and she's about to become an even bigger "influencer" than the Kardashians, if such a thing is possible what with Kim's ginormous butt. But here's the rub: Miquela is a fake. As in not a real person, but a so-called "CGI-based social media influencer" represented by a Los Angeles startup called Brud. CGI stands for computer-generated imagery, and Miquela came to be in 2016 as part of a digital art project with an Instagram account.
Her agents have Miquela inserted into photographs of actual high-end restaurants or wearing expensive fashion brands. Billboards in London and Japan currently feature her touting Ugg products, testing the power of a social media
celebrity. "I think the success of digital talent is in their engagement and their
authenticity," said Adam Westcott, partner at a talent management firm for social media influencers. (Yes, he said that.)
While Kim Kardashian has a fake butt, at least she's got a beating heart. Suddenly she doesn't seem quite so bad.
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