There's No Such Thing as an “Influencer”
Same Goes For “Creator”
These assigned monikers are far too vague and broad to describe the activities to which they refer.
Years ago, the first challenge for journalists, when referring to various sectors in digital society, was what to call people who kept blogs. They weren’t writers in the traditional or professional sense, but they were writing on their blogs… They were “blogging”? They were “bloggers”? OK, new verb, new noun.
Next, were those talking into the camera on their blogs. They were blogging with video, essentially, so “vlogging”? “Vloggers”?
OK, new verb, new noun.
What followed were people who were vlogging exclusively on YouTube, and then adding kinds of skits, and making money from the ads there. “Skitters”? “Vlogging Skitters”? At this point, journalists went straight for a more general classification of “YouTube Stars.”