In Mensa events, one annoying character (generally ok person but annoying with an emphasis on the G) sometimes comes up to me and starts talking about my ‘influencer’ career and how I’m ‘influencing’ people in a presumptuous fashion, acting as if suddenly he is the be all and end all of ‘influence’.
Well, he is not and he is lovably mediocre as far as I know so I’m not too concerned about that, but I think it’s certainly an interesting concept to explore.
The concept of an ‘influencer’ is so interesting.
In purely technical terms, an influencer influences, and the derivational morphology is inescapable; to be an influencer, you must surely influence.
But the question naturally arises:
What kind of influence do we mean here?
After all, there are so many kinds, which the world almost invariably collapses into a few different and well defined stereotypes.
The comedic genius who specializes in fun, short, but stupid skits? The dancing girl thirst trap using every single part of her body to try to get you to click the ‘follow’ button and oh by the way buy some lipstick with a 10% discount code and 15% commission? The travel blogger cum exercise guru here to teach you the vastness of Borobudur on a diet of tempeh and budu budu?
There are so many kinds out there, all valid and all cool in their own way – the internet is a wonderful place with lots of incredible and talented people, after all, here to persuade you and to make their fortunes in ways inconceivable at the dawn of humanity and even now to members of an older generation who cannot deal with that idea in any way except to infantilize or look down upon it.
To be fair, it is not entirely the older generation’s fault that they think that way, because many such people do not succeed in their journeys and only a few people do rise to the top of a steaming pile of broken bodies.
Yet it is the older generation that is all too often sharing what I say, think, and do with their families, friends, and everyone else; it is infinitely more likely that a person of the older generation would know of me than a younger person, and to such a degree that even I cannot fully appreciate or control it, as my name ratchets unpredictably from WhatsApp group to WhatsApp group throughout this country. Will it ratchet overseas? Who knows – but I’ll look forward to shaping that outcome.
As one of the people who may rise in that way though (although naturally, it could go sideways), what I think is this:
It is a privilege to be able to rise, and to be able to influence thinking in different ways, and I should like to use that influence for what we might call good, and not evil – to speak for discourse and ongoing conversation – to shape our culture so that it becomes not only socially acceptable to think logically, but also socially unacceptable to be caught up in old lies that do not serve us.
However, it is not for a person to judge his own legacy – I’m sure that you are all intelligent people who can make your own conclusions, and you can talk as you wish. That is all part of the game, one in which I will make my own moves.
I didn’t misuse the word ‘game’, by the way. It’ll be a fun time – look forward to it!
