There once was a time when selling out was viewed as a bad thing. A time when celebrity was balanced against the temptations of lucrative sponsorships, product placement, and corporate involvement. Particularly in the 90s among Gen X, selling out was worse than death, a sign of submission to the man. Celebrity was generally achieved through art, and that art was highly coveted if it was free of capitalist intrusion. Today, it’s a completely different story. The rise of influencers has shown that there is no underlying substance required to achieve celebrity. It’s a somewhat circular phenomenon—people are famous simply because they are famous. Celebrity is no longer a byproduct of some other endeavor; it is the entire endeavor.

Modern influencers’ existence is dedicated to obtaining celebrity. You’ve “made it” as an influencer when you’ve obtained enough of a following that advertisers will use you to promote products. Since there is no underlying product being created, success as an influencer comes in the form of becoming a human advertisement. Podcast breakouts talking about a new miracle supplement, some hipster artist talking about a new coffee alternative startup, a “follow me” video advertising a new restaurant. It feels as if modern social media exists simply to advertise.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when this shift occurred. In the early days of the internet, going viral felt completely organic. There was no financial motive to go viral in the early days of YouTube and Facebook. Characters like “Numa Numa Guy,” Tay Zonday (the Chocolate Rain guy), and the Charlie Bit My Finger kids were international sensations in the mid-2000s. They booked spots on talk shows and were lampooned in shows like South Park and Tosh.0. Despite their celebrity, these people made basically no money. The content they posted was simply for the hell of it, with no motives outside of hoping a few people would see their videos. In this sense, these figures still embodied some of the anti-corporate ethos of the 90s. What they posted was simply for fun or to get a few laughs. Without the modern infrastructure that can literally turn a nobody into a celebrity overnight, there were no incentives to post online content outside of the pure desire to do so.

MrBeast represented a real turning point in this dynamic. MrBeast frequently speaks about how his goal from the beginning was to get clicks and attract viewers. His earliest viral video is him sitting at his desk counting to 100,000. Looking back, it’s sort of genius. MrBeast understood clickbait early on, creating content that existed simply to have you click on it. But even back then, the infrastructure for modern influencers didn’t exist yet. MrBeast simply wanted to go viral for the sake of going viral. The money just sort of followed. Love him or hate him, I have always respected his mad-scientist passion for going viral simply for the sake of getting more views.

MrBeast was at the forefront of the clickbait revolution. YouTubers and other social media influencers soon followed in his footsteps, producing content that existed simply to get views. Advertisers began to catch on to this phenomenon and began to advertise through these people. It was a financial win-win: cheap advertising for the company and a steady income source for the creator—or really, the only reliable way to make income as an influencer. Social media is completely free to use. There is no subscription or admission cost. YouTube and Instagram made their bones on being completely free to use. The only way to make these companies profitable was to advertise. This had a trickle-down effect on the creators. They too needed to advertise to make money.

The irony of all this is that our own taste for free content is what has led to a constant stream of sell-out influencers promoting products on our feed. The public probably would have turned on YouTube had it changed to a subscription-based service. The only way to make it profitable was to advertise. Maybe if we were willing to pay for YouTube, none of this would have happened.

The “Ibiza Final Boss” appears to be the newest overnight influencer to grace our feeds. A British chav with a bowl cut, he went viral overnight after a video of him dancing at an Ibiza day club blew up. He signed with an agency within a week; soon enough he will have a sponsored podcast and meme coin. The Ibiza Final Boss got to skip all the traditional steps it once required to become a celebrity. He frankly didn’t do anything to become famous. Even someone as recent as MrBeast worked hard to exploit the YouTube algorithm. The Ibiza Final Boss sold out before he even had anything to sell. He seems like a normal enough guy who is genuinely shocked by his rise to fame. I don’t blame him at all for trying to make the most of the moment—I would do the same thing.

Despite the attitude held by those in generations prior about selling out, people have been doing it for decades. Even staples of the no-sell-out generation like Nirvana and Pearl Jam ended up selling out eventually. They were just better at hiding it. In my opinion, the only thing that’s really changed is the infrastructure. In the past, selling out was reserved for traditional celebrities. Today, anyone can be a celebrity, thus, anyone can sell out. In the past, people who never had a chance of ever being famous would often lament on how their favorite band or creative sold out. It was a concept so far removed from them that it felt unimaginable. But now days, it’s easier to understand how someone could sell out, because it’s not a stretch to think it could happen to you. God knows I would sell out in a heartbeat.