Nick Bilton's HBO documentary Fake Famous portrays influencers as superficial, purposeless and purveyors of staging their lives, followings and engagement. The film is compelling and certainly exposes the worst practices of social media influencers trying to just create fame. But it leaves out the rest of influencers, I would argue most of them, that build genuine trust and engagement with real followers through great content and personality.
Bilton joined me on Winfluence to have a little intellectual sparring match over the issues I had with the show. The discussion was, frankly, an amazing back and forth and exploration of some of the problems with influence marketing we both agree are problems and should be addressed. Bilton's overall point in making the film aligns with a notion I think we can all get behind—social media's impact on society needs a good cleaning up.
But he sees influencers as being overrun with the peace sign, duck lips, selfie-addicts who do buy followers and engagement. I see that segment as a problem, but not nearly the majority of what's out there. The back and forth was healthy and fun. I applaud Bilton, who is a seasoned journalist who writes for Vanity Fair and formerly wrote about technology and politics for the New York Times from 2013-16, for agreeing to an interview he had to know would potentially be combative.
It was, but in a very respectful, friendly discussion. Yes, I believe the film misses the boat on the full spectrum of influencers. Nick doesn't. And that's fine.
The movie is well made and written and is certainly worth watching. You can find it on HBO and HBO Max. Just keep in mind there's some disagreement on whether or not his portrayal of influencers is representative of them all.
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