Influencers are just a symptom.
The whole culture has become all about profit. And unless you keep this in mind at all times – that everyone wants to sell you something – you’re bound to become a victim of marketing and greed.
What’s more, this has become so normalised, that sellers now think they have the right to be able to extract from you. I use a browser with an ad blocker, and I regularly get a pop up from Fragrantica reminding me to switch it off – so they can make more money. Why should I care? They don’t care about the feedback of users, they only care about their profits and the profits of their advertisers. I have the right to support whom I want, and in this case, it is the ad free browser, which lets me enjoy the internet without being constantly bombarded by ads.
Anyway, yes, influencers are ruining things, but they’re here to stay, for as long as long as they’re able to generate profit.
Fragrantica using ads isn’t about making a profit though. This is probably an expensive website to run. They’ll be lucky to just cover the costs and keep things going.
Take a look at Base-notes for example, they’re probably going to have to shut down, because they can’t cover the costs anymore, not even if they plaster every page with ads.
