For those who are not caught up with teen slang of the 21st century, clout is defined to be someone who has a lot of power or influence in other words, being famous and having a lot of money. Going back as far as in the 1860’s, the term “clout” originated in the political influence like on Capitol Hill or Wall Street. Around in those years clout meant to “punch” or “force”. Now, many influencers have definitely made the word more relevant by using it in a song or basically having “clout”, and saying it in a conversation.
Clout skyrocketed in the 2000s from the help of all social platforms. In 2008, an app called Klout launched which paved a way for people to estimate a persons social media power with a “Klout score”. Do you have a lot of followers and likes? Yes? You’ve got clout congratulations! If you don’t, people with big egos try to not associate with you or be seen on social media with someone with little to no clout, which sounds ridiculous.
For whoever is reading this that is not a millenial I can see how this term could sound a bit ludicrous. A person the receives so much idolization from random people called “fans” on the internet….that defintely excludes variety of people in socials groups. For example, you do not see your grandpa wearing a whole outfit from Gucci and posting it on his Instagram for his 100k followers to see. Clout mainly has a big influence towards millenials, which if you can probably guess I happen to be one, sadly. To explain how far teens or young adults try to get clout they find other ways to gain not necessarliy followers but views on a video.
As seen on Twiiter or Youtube, there was a video of kids licking ice cream at grocery stores and putting it back, now I don’t know about you but I find that disgusting whether or not that person paid for it after the video stopped recording it’s just the thought of someone doing that is not worth the 24 hours of clout. This gets people talking and retweeting the video which gets the person who either was in the video or whoever posted it more clout through views.
Another way people display they have clout is by flashing their money while also wearing expensive outfits everyday like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Supreme. There is a difference between people being cocky who post about it everyday which results to gaining more followers compared to someone who is more appreciative about their possessions and is humble. With that being said, the usage of the term has defintely decreased due to the hundreds of people saying it on the internet and it gets so aggravating and repetitive to the point of which people do not use the term anymore. Sorry to break it to all clout chasers but no one cares about your “lifestyle” and it won’t last.
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