4: Creators and Genres

In a prior body of work, I traced the connections between internet celebrity and Influencer cultures, focusing specifically on some shifts that were occurring in the latter during the 2010s.¹ Here, I recap five of these shifts and explicate how they have shaped change in the content strategies by Influencers and subsequently how they enacted change in the sociocultural norms experienced by followers (see Table 4).

Influencer culture in the 2010s was shifting from ‘archive culture’ to ‘streaming culture’. Livestreaming platforms like Twitch (launched 2011)² and Discord (launched 2015)³ became mainstream outside of video game and e-sports subcultures, Bilibili (launched 2009)⁴ and BIGO LIVE (launched 2016)⁵ rapidly became major players in livestream shopping, and major Silicon Valley platforms released in-app live video stream features too: YouTube Live was launched in 2011,⁶ Facebook Live was launched in 2015, Twitter acquired and integrated Periscope in 2015⁸ and Instagram Live launched in 2016.⁹