Robert Downey Jr. Slams Modern Celebrity Culture — Calls Influencers “Self-Aggrandizing”

Robert Downey Jr. has some strong feelings about influencer culture, and he was not shy about sharing them.

The actor, best known for playing Iron Man in the Marvel films, sat down for an appearance on the Conversations for Our Daughters podcast and used the opportunity to push back on the idea that social media influencers represent the future of celebrity.

He did not hold back. When someone suggests that influencers are the stars of tomorrow, Downey Jr. said his immediate reaction is, “I don’t know what world you’re living into, but I think that that is absolute horse—.”

That said, he was careful not to write the whole thing off entirely. He acknowledged that the landscape has genuinely changed and that fame now works differently than it used to. “Nowadays, people can create celebrity without ever doing much besides rolling a phone on themselves,” he said. “And I don’t look at that as a negative thing. I just look at it as more like the challenge for individuation is being upped.”

What he really seemed to be getting at is that the bar for standing out has actually gotten higher, not lower. With so many people chasing attention online, he argued that the young people who choose to go a different route will be the ones who actually leave a mark. “Hopefully the grosser part of the youth of – let’s just call it America for locality’s sake – you know, is gonna say, ‘Yeah, but that’s not my thing. I want to go do something, I’m going to make something, I want to build something, I want to educate myself and I want to have more inputs, so whatever my output is, it isn’t just a self-aggrandizing kind of influencer-type thing,'” he explained during the podcast.

He also made it personal. Downey Jr. shared that his own 14-year-old son, Exton, got pulled into the influencer world for a bit. He recalled with a laugh that it got to the point where Exton was asking his video game viewers, “Hey, if you like the way I’m playing this video game, do you wanna send me a donation?”

The comment about religion was another memorable moment from the conversation. He compared today’s influencers to a very specific kind of figure, saying, “There’s something about the influencers today are almost like the evangelical hucksters of the information age.” He did soften that a little, adding that it is genuinely new territory and that he tries not to judge it too harshly since nobody fully knows how it all plays out yet.

When the topic turned to his own social media presence, Downey Jr. was honest about why he keeps his distance. He said people often tell him his followers love seeing candid glimpses of his life, but he finds the whole thing a bit hollow. “I’d be manufacturing that aspect for them,” he said plainly. “So it’s B-.”

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