Within the spectacle, those with Natural talent are being replaced by those who wield more social influence

[6ft4]

Think about the spectacle of boxing
Some guy who has a natural talent for boxing who's had 200 amatuer fights who just turned pro who nobody knows about will not get a fraction of the viewers for competing in a pro fight that some well known youtubers would get for a fight despite the fact the pro would demolish the youtubers.

The same goes for football, some youtubers sell out a stadium and ger millions of viewers to watch them play football while a 4th division team who would completely obliterate them get a crowd of 3000 spectators and make minimum wage for playing football.

Now apply this to PSL
PSL gains popularity on tiktok by paying tribute to the looks icons (Chico, Barrett etc) and while Chico and Barrett get some additional engagement in this time from a new and younger audience, the audience quickly loses interest in them because they were not providing engagement and relatability to the audience, they were just coasting on their natural talent (being born with a certain level of looks)
The scene then finds new icons (Zeta, K-Shami, Clavicular) who aren't as naturally "talented" as the old icons lookswise, but they replace them because the old icons don't have the same social influence and engagement with the audience as the new icons.
Therefore being an icon is no longer about being at the absolute pinnacle talent wise (looks wise) as it was at the start, but now it's about belonging to the culture and becoming the people's champ.

What this shows is that lacking in natural ability will no longer hard cap people from getting to the top of a particular hierarchy

In other words, those at the very pinnacle in terms of natural talent will always get easy rewards, but those who wield social influence and audience engagement will leapfrog guys in the hierarchy who are miles ahead of them talent wise but failed to gain an audience and fell short of the top spot competitively.

 

[Sovereign]

What you see is a change of times and interest, the people of today are interested in what the person represent rather then what they do; when the few gathered it was not to so for their own sake but to get matters done, now what we see is a taste. We like our coffee sweet- the cost that it brings however is not worth every sip. In my opinion, the idea of boxing was to see the boxer, now its his status as a boxer and not the ability itself we care for. Theft has always been the same, but the methods of caring it out has changed, the idea is always original. So what now? We recognize that if we would obtain financial stability through a certain industry then we must learn that today learning the habits of the people you do business with is the name of the game- knowing that you have something everyone wants or needs is important in that you have enough people who want to do business with you.


There is a positive to this- used correctly and with purpose we can cast our words, wills and emotion with direction, if we speak that which is thus what have we to fear, but say you "You will be drowned out in the sea of stupidity?" or "who will WANT to hear you out?", in other words who will want to hear you by choice and willfully seek you out? My answer is, those who are coming will walk and make the effort and those who are not simply will not; we must not however forsake the idea that the power of our words will go unseen, if computers dominate every strata of our lives and we cannot go a hundred feet without seeing them, what makes you think we could not see the same with truth of the matter, even when we don't want to hear what we dislike we still see it right?

Those who have natural ability will persist and do not need to be told. Those without it will survive.

 

[cosmicx16]

Think about the spectacle of boxing
Some guy who has a natural talent for boxing who's had 200 amatuer fights who just turned pro who nobody knows about will not get a fraction of the viewers for competing in a pro fight that some well known youtubers would get for a fight despite the fact the pro would demolish the youtubers.

The same goes for football, some youtubers sell out a stadium and ger millions of viewers to watch them play football while a 4th division team who would completely obliterate them get a crowd of 3000 spectators and make minimum wage for playing football.

Now apply this to PSL
PSL gains popularity on tiktok by paying tribute to the looks icons (Chico, Barrett etc) and while Chico and Barrett get some additional engagement in this time from a new and younger audience, the audience quickly loses interest in them because they were not providing engagement and relatability to the audience, they were just coasting on their natural talent (being born with a certain level of looks)
The scene then finds new icons (Zeta, K-Shami, Clavicular) who aren't as naturally "talented" as the old icons lookswise, but they replace them because the old icons don't have the same social influence and engagement with the audience as the new icons.
Therefore being an icon is no longer about being at the absolute pinnacle talent wise (looks wise) as it was at the start, but now it's about belonging to the culture and becoming the people's champ.

What this shows is that lacking in natural ability will no longer hard cap people from getting to the top of a particular hierarchy

In other words, those at the very pinnacle in terms of natural talent will always get easy rewards, but those who wield social influence and audience engagement will leapfrog guys in the hierarchy who are miles ahead of them talent wise but failed to gain an audience and fell short of the top spot competitively.

Well someone who puts more effort into receiving attention will usually receive more attention. And in a market , where success scales directly with engagement/outreach, this effect is obviously stronger. So I don’t think anything has ‘changed’ or whatever so that you can say something ‘no longer happens’.

In addition, I don’t really know many of those names that you mentioned except for Chico and Barrett, but all the successful people who you mentioned definitely have had a great amount of talent, looks, whatever, in order to succeed , despite some of them demolishing whoever. They’re all already at a top level, or way above the average person who would (probably) fail miserably.
I speedran this post while walking so feel free to argue/disagree