One Friday night at the Lyric Theatre in Hollywood, more than 400 people and their smartphones converged for a #whatever party, one in a series given by theAudience. On arrival they were all greeted, in the theater’s entryway, by that neon-pink #whatever sign, which regularly migrates from the office for this event. The attendees invariably wore bright-toothed, dimple-dappled smiles, dewy-tan skin and shiny hair, and in their smartphones were applications for all manner of connection to their collective millions of followers: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Vine, it goes on. A D.J. who calls herself Mahogany Lox (YouTube: 243,393; Instagram: 795,738; Vine: 828,573), and who dresses like a cat, played a set as the crowd mingled.

Smiling exuberantly near the entrance — everyone present was smiling exuberantly somewhere — were Acacia Brinley and Joshua Peck. Julia Kelly came with her friends, Kirsten Collins (Instagram: 52,513; Vine: 40,600; YouTube: 11,362) and her sister Karisma (Instagram: 36,844; Vine: 22,700). Kirsten is 20 and an aspiring musician. Karisma is 14 and has clear braces and a gregarious smile. That night, Karisma wore a navy dress with a silhouette that might be considered conservative, had it not also exposed her midriff. Most of Karisma’s Instagrams are very serious pictures of her in a field, or leaning against a building, eyes wide, mouth slightly open, accompanied by a bumper-sticker sentiment like “Perfect is boring” or “Dare to be different,” or, more inexplicably, “If u could be anything you want, what would u be [penguin emoji].”

Perlman was running around, making sure everyone was meeting. He created these parties in part because Luckett, ever driven by the data, predicted one crucial and indisputable fact about all these people: that Julia and Karisma and Joshua and Acacia, put in a room together, are constitutionally incapable of not snapping pictures of one another and posting them to Instagram. They tag each other in their updates, and their followers cross-pollinate, yielding them even more followers, and so more eyes and ears, and more influence, which is exactly where theAudience wants them, because theAudience can use those higher numbers to broaden the reach of the brands they do negotiations with, and those Influencers could eventually make a living just for posting updates. When the Influencers wield maximum influence, Perlman says, “all boats rise,” cupping his hands and raising them from low to high.

Not too long ago, artists would have been considered sellouts for calling themselves brands, to say nothing of partnering with corporations. Here, though, the artists weren’t just seeking out brands that suit their personal brands; they were positively open about it. At the Lyric, I asked a few of them their thoughts on selling out. “Like what?” one replied. “Like what do I sell? You want to know what I sell?”

“Traditional celebrities who came up through the traditional star system are immigrants when they’re participating in this medium,” Sean Parker told me the week before. “These kids” — the Influencers — “are natives.” Parker encouraged me to consider this less like an ad and more like a sponsor. It’s not a commercial; it’s the price of admission. “I think it probably feels a little bit like going to see an event and that event is sponsored by a brand and you understand that. It’s not so much like the person is endorsing it.”

As Luckett sees it, the money Kelly and Brinley and the other Influencers are paid is merely enabling their art. And yes, to him, they are artists. Julia Kelly and Acacia Brinley and Hugh Jackman and Steve Aoki are all creating content of some sort, which puts them on nearly equal footing in his mind.

“All of this might not be art art,” Luckett says. “But it’s brand art. It’s pop art. It’s their personal self-expression. And how is that different than more traditional definitions of art? Viners like King Bach and Nash Grier perfected the six-second comedy sketch. Acacia perfected the selfie. You have 10 million people watching. You are now the entertainment.”