Are They Not Famous, or Are You in a Bubble?

The Hollywood Reporter announced its list of the “top 50 most influential influencers” to relatively little fanfare earlier this week. The list included names like Alix Earle, Kai Cenat and Nara Smith, as well as YouTube stalwarts like Rhett and Link and the TikTok darling Charlie D’Amelio.

Collectively, the people selected for the list have hundreds of millions of fans and command billions of views. (For scale, Ms. D’Amelio, who at one point ran the top account on TikTok, has 155.8 million followers.) Chances are good, if you consider yourself to be a person of the online persuasion, that you’ve seen a video from or at least have heard of one or two people on this list. Maybe quite a few of them.

On the social media platform X, however, things took a turn on Thursday when the same magazine posted a photo of 22 influencers in formal attire with a provocative intro of “Hollywood, meet your new A-List” and a link to the main story on influential influencers. Notably missing from the photo, and an accompanying story on influencers local to Los Angeles, were many of the larger list’s most famous faces.

The reaction to the post, which has been viewed more than 35 million times, was a resounding chorus of “who?”

“I literally have 14 hours of screentime a day who are these people,” read one reply. “Can I be edited into this photo?” the actor Rob Delaney wrote. “I am going through a rough patch personally & professionally & it would really help.”