Declaring a post as sponsored made it a status symbol rather than a liability

Evidence

A study in 2018 found that influencer brothers Jake and Logan Paul told audiences to buy their products 195 times over just fifty videos. Both mainstream celebrities, such as the Kardashians, and emerging online creators engaged in rampant, undeclared product placement. In 2017 the Fair Trade Commission decreed that creators needed to indicate sponsored posts. Instead of diminishing influencer allure, however, the #ad and #sponsored hashtags became status symbols. Engagement often increased on declared paid posts, as it signaled that an influencer had “made it.” Lesser-known creators even falsely tagged posts with #ad to appear more successful. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 559

Categorization

• XREF: Hooks directly into the ‘omnivore monoculture’ thesis: transparency labels collapsed into the very status-signaling game, evidence that nothing signals disinterest anymore. A concrete micro-mechanism for how even the death of the sellout fails to dent influence economics. — connects to: Conventions only confer status when performed publicly as signs — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 188
• DEEPTHINKING: The inversion where the disclosure meant to strip ads of glamour becomes the badge of having ‘made it’ — and where aspirants fake the disclosure itself to borrow prestige — is a genuinely paradigm-challenging loop about how signaling systems absorb and reverse regulatory friction.