, the HBO documentary that sells itself as exploring “the meaning of fame and influence in the digital age through an innovative social experiment.”
Without oversummarizing her review, I was also immediately turned off by the tone of the film from the beginning. It was directed and narrated by tech journalist Nick Bilton, who introduced his experiment by gawking and looking down at flocks of people taking photos in front of Los Angeles’s famous pink wall. It’s the backdrop he wants to frame the documentary around: that we are robots without autonomy trying to chase fame for empty reasons.
But these talking points, and the way he presents them, feel so stale and dated. I want to believe we can progress past the stage where we looked at influencers like zoo animals, or as doing something so unproven that we dismiss it, and don’t want to understand better. I will admit thatcome from a judgmental place about influencers, and it’s taken some time to talk to them, to get to know them, and to understand what’s really valuable about what they do.