This is the second part of my observations on Clubhouse and Nepali social media in general. Read the previous post if you want to get caught up. This is a direction follow-up.
The part I found most concerning -- and it was not the amateur audio sex groups with thousands of members, not by a long shot -- was the astroturfing. There's a LOT of astro-turfing going on, and it goes rather deep. Allow me to explain.
It appears there's large groups of women, mostly from smaller towns in Nepal, who'll dress up nicely and put cute insta and twitter profiles and DP's on their profiles, and show up on various clubs and shows. And in return, they're paid. And they're paid on the basis of how much interest they've drummed up for a club. So somebody can say, if you can get up my subscriber count to 5000 people, I'll give you a hundred thousand rupees, and they'll drum up the interest, pretend to flirt with people, play those 'dating games', where they'll pretend-date with their friends, froth up fake drama, create a lot more interest, and a mirage of natural interaction. And when the groups have enough followers, they bail onto the next project, having been paid for their project.
Two things.
First, it appears at this point, the position of 'influencer' is becoming a lot more cynical, base, and dare I say, despicable. They're hype-folks, but they don't care about what they're hyping, and they'll hype seven things in a day. And they don't let on that they're hype-people. It's misleading. It's a mirage. It's all lies. And the biggest lie is they keep insisting there's nothing unnatural.
Second. Why are people paying so much money to get more followers? Because it's become big business. Shit facebook and instagram groups have become oligarchy in the Nepali social media world, they charge hundreds of thousands, they're unrelated to the original cause. They've commercialized every possible interest group, in the most at-your-face, disgusting way possible. A group that was against strikes is now the biggest meme slash social media influencing group. A lot of money involved, and those people don't want to let their influence fade away in new media. Welcome to the new feudal oligarchy of online social media influencers. I fuckin' hate it.
That's my first concern, how obviously scripted online interaction is, how much big money is shaping online interactions, and the cynicism and crass consumerism it's bound to breed. The only way to win is to not play, as they say.
By second concern is the messed-up politics of online Nepali crowd, gonna post that in another post, because it's gotten longer than I was hoping.
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