Summary
Ramsey Khalid Ismael, known online as Johnny Somali, faces trial in South Korea for disruptive behavior at a convenience store and is banned from leaving the country.
Somali, infamous for offensive stunts, has provoked outrage with actions like desecrating the Comfort Woman statue in Seoul and mocking historical tragedies in Japan.
South Korean authorities imposed a travel ban due to flight risk, though he remains at large.
Somali’s antics, often streamed on Rumble, have drawn widespread condemnation as part of a growing trend of “nuisance influencers” disrupting communities abroad.
The concept of “influencers” and “content” is just some dystopian shit that came out of some corpo’s mouth at a tech company boardroom meeting and stuck. The fact that our modern culture is built on this kind of bullshit is a condemnation of modern people.
Absolutely, I’m still regularly shocked how normalized those words have become. They are absolutely accurate from a corporate perspective, but why are we all using those same words? They reduce any creative endeavors to the positive effect on the extraction of wealth by the rich through influencing others into buying shit they don’t need or want. “Influencer” should be a pejorative, not a job title!
Yep. I’m glad you see it that way too.
We don’t make art or music anymore, we make “content” for YouTube, Twitch and TikTok. Kids don’t grow up dreaming to make the next killer movie or fun game, they want to become a rich and influential “content creator”. If they are lucky, the “content” that they make for big tech company “platforms” will eventually lead to them gathering a dedicated group of loyal followers over whom they can hold a strong “influence”, and that influence can be traded for money via advertising corporate products.
What it comes down to is that the tech corps have money, and they will use some of that money to entice people to make “content” for their “platforms”, and that’s a big part of the framework of the modern era. If they ever gain the ability to create genuinely desirable “content” using AI, they will instantly cut out all of the human money-sinks from their business model.
Influencer was always just a slur to me. I had no idea it’s an actual job description or “way of life”. Then i dated this girl that told me on our first date that she’s thinking about to stop buying things from influencers. To me it was like saying: man, maybe i’ll stop sending money to these kenyan princes.
Eh, bards and other old actor types are kinda similar. They’re doing public actions for fame and money. Wasn’t Socrates also considered an asshole? Not that I’m equating these influencers to philosophers, but at the time the people considered him to be mocking their culture (religion). Not nearly as bad as mocking tragedies, but the idea of living off of attention, including being a troll, isn’t new. It just usually resulted in much harsher consequences than the modern day, and usually paid less.
Everything we know about historical Socrates we know from his students, and I don’t think there’s a lot of evidence to suggest he was an asshole. Socrates was allegedly put to death for thought crimes against the city-state and the state’s patron gods, as voted upon by a jury of his “peers”. His philosophy was not counter to the idea of gods, nor do I think it was particularly anti-authoritarian, but clearly people didn’t like what he had to say or the questions he was asking, so they up and killed 'em.
Personally I think that makes the Socrates the good guy and the people of Athens circa 400BC the assholes, but to each their own.
Either way, there’s a big difference in my view between a person who is influential for their ideas, creations or achievements versus someone who is an “influencer” because of the “content” that they create for the corporate tech platform of choice…
My intent was not to actually complain too much about Socrates, but just use him as a more tolerable example. I generally agree with your opinion on who was in the wrong there, but part of my consideration was the reports that they knew he could flee and supposedly were OK with that, but he decided to stay on principle. Also the joke he made about them treating him like a hero for his punishment, probably not quite in good taste given the circumstances.
That aside, while I do agree with your last statement, there have also always been conmen, fame seekers, and less influential but more… annoying people throughout history, especially if they had nepotism or class differences in their side.