What does it mean to influence?

Is it just dancing weird dances, using affiliate links to make money while recommending products you may not even use, or doing live sales to no end?

I’ve spoken a bit previously about how I think being an ‘influencer’ entails changing people’s behaviors, and I spoke about influence in the context of institutional power though I didn’t elaborate at that time.

Some of us believe that we have no influence on others, or the way that algorithms may decide to shape how we show up to others or who would seek us out – the latter point is what Tim Tiah seems to believe, even as he says that none of us have influence anymore.

I disagree with that point still.

Well, in any case, we had a nice chat with the man about this topic and a couple of other things just the other day, and that conversation is now on YouTube.

Check it out here!

But I guess beyond the question of what an influencer is and whether humans really have influence or not, I guess I would ask – whom do we influence?

If you had talked to me a while ago, I might have told you in the long or deep conversation (if it ever got to that point) that maybe it is really all algorithmic (and therefore) we don’t need to go out of our way to impress people or go out of our ways to impress people – you cannot change people or the way that they behave on a large scale (let alone individuals), so why try?

Just take the world as given, and do your thing. Your crowd will find you and if you serve them you serve them.

I think that that’s true still – because one of the very worst things I can imagine a person doing is just sublimating themselves, trying to optimize, change people, you know? Going out there and then acting out “I will pander to every single thing that I think you want, everything I think you will like – I will become your dream destiny desire!!!”

For me, that’s intuitive – you have no reason to try to impress every single person in the world; most people will not change their thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors for you – and what do you care about what goes on in the head or heart of a random person in a country you have no connection to, who doesn’t speak the same language(s) as you, has no money to buy anything you might sell (not that money should be the only or primary reason that we interact with others), and has totally different attitudes, values, and principles from you?

But as time has gone by, my thinking’s started to become more nuanced – cause at the end of the day, whether we like it or not, this is true:

As human beings, you don’t need everyone and surely you should not always respond to others by changing yourself either frequently or even at all in some cases – but I believe you do need other people, and in responding to that need, you are influenced by others as so you influence others however imperfectly this is modulated through the algorithm and however more frequently algorithms cause you to be seen relative to whether people seek you out or not.

Sure, we might not want to impress everyone or bungee jump off tall buildings to make every single person in the world look and scream and algorithms to go wild as digital hearts explode into a fusillade; it seems silly to scream about that, really – but it’s a fact that as human beings, we relate to others, we converse with others, we rise and fall with others as our feelings rise and fall; friendships are real, commerce is real, and love, like the very concept of money, is intersubjective – it isn’t something that you can share only with yourself – and you could argue that algorithms alone govern this in an impersonal, gaslit, engagement-driven way that reshapes the very architecture of our desires.

And it feels to me that we need the identities of others in life still, that agency matters, that who says something matters even if an algorithm patterns our choices and an FYP determines the difference between visibility and invisibility – that our identities still shape how we are seen and whether we are seen beyond just a like and a subscribe.

It seems to me that we could break down the total number of people who look for you into at least three parts:

• #1: The number of people who find you via organic algorithm
• #2: The number of people who search for you intentionally, modulated by chance encounters, community vibe, choice of topic or admittedly, through a route facilitated by #1.
• #3: The number of people who find you via paid advertising.

…And that those things interact with one another.

I think that this applies to everybody in this world, whether fat or thin, tall or short, breathtakingly beautiful or downright Jar-Jar-Binks ugly – whether we understand, know, or appreciate that or not.

Sure, some people are more popular than others and some people get more heard because of the algorithm, and some people say things that may make you want to disconnect from it all in a crowded world and shadowbanning is surely a thing, but I don’t think that just because that is true that #2 disappears just because it is small – or perhaps, more importantly, that we should behave as if we think #2 has disappeared while attempting to optimize ‘for the algorithm’.

For one thing, I feel that this is icky because the way that algorithms are designed is that they are meant to correlate with human behaviors – the more you find your crowd, the more followers you get, generally the more you do find your crowd, the more likely you will influence in the sense of getting more followers at a faster rate.

But I think that regardless of whether you find your footing via #1, it’s part of a human journey to find your crowd, and it is meaningful and possible that human connections can shape the person you are seen as, the way, rate, and means by which you are followed, that the people who resonate with your voice and what you can bring to the world even if technology is what would bring you the lion’s share of the views, the sales, the comments, and any actions that people might take in relation to your existence, even if the algorithm does not favor you.

Surely some people might not like you, you might not like everyone, and maybe there is a destiny out there that affirms that like parallel lines, you can go on and on into eternity without ever meeting one another because the algorithm has not chosen you.

But I don’t think that means we should start treating the algorithm the way some people treat God – as a God of the gaps whose will we cannot explain – but also recall that people need one another, and that algorithms may satisfy that need on an outsize scale, but that doesn’t disconfirm or deny that human identity or presence matters in ways that algorithms may approximate but do not necessarily capture, even if they are becoming better at doing so.

In many ways, I don’t think that people should go out of their ways to become social, to be gregarious, life of the party and everything to shape and reshape how they are seen by an algorithm – But I think we can’t deny that so as we need others, others may need us, and that that need, even if an algorithm captures it in the space where we have our accounts and we aren’t blocked, will ever be totally subsumed by an algorithm and its whims – and in a world we need others and others need us, I think it is meaningful to grow in life to become someone that others need or want to be with or to work with, whatever the algorithm may say this day or another.

Off to the next part of the plan, and to expanding that small space out there of the ones who matter deeply on this journey 😀

I don’t remember the last time I just thought – felt the breeze of the air conditioner pass over my skin, every oscillation after every oscillation a reminder that I was growing up in a controlled environment where things were somehow regulated and modulated, that this space that I was a part of was a part of a training, it seems, for the broader world.

The thing I’ve learned about training though is that life seems to be an unending series of trainings or exams – and how well you do in the ‘training’ determines whether you can progress to the next stage; there is no real ‘final’ moment or exam – everything is merely a preparation or a test to see if you can get onto specific paths, where again you will be tested. 

In school, you go for your first trainings – arithmetic, English, literature, history. In classrooms you sit, listening to the teacher either wax lyrical or drone (most likely drone), told that you must sit for the first term exam; after the first term, you’re told not to get complacent – the second term awaits. A succession of second terms come and go and before you know it, they’re telling you about an SPM, an SAT, a GRE, and before you know it, you are 50+, the SPM becomes PMS (if applicable), and you realize that whoops, it was all exams all the way down. 

…But that’s if you’re ~ privileged ~, as society might say.

If you’re not ~ privileged ~ in that way, surely you don’t have exams – surely you wouldn’t be tested.

But nope, life isn’t that simple. Job applications with no degree? Those are exams. They’re harder though, since you didn’t take those other exams. Marketing and sales to a random prospect? An exam. Dating? Exam. Meeting in-laws? Exam. Marriage? The ultimate exam… 

And you get to do it all over again when you have a kid and the exams continue!

Life is interesting in that way – an unending test, a continuing challenge that never really ends. 

In that sense, I think it could be easy or tempting to think about slowing down, retiring, stopping, having the challenge disappear – but I think it is rather more healthy to think that challenges are normal, and part of the basic structure of the universe; they can be arbitrarily difficult and tough, but even ‘overcoming’ any particular exam or challenge is never the end.

In a way, I feel that life is an eternal overcoming of oneself – I’ve definitely felt this to be true in recent days, whether the objective results match my aspirations or my sense of self.

The challenge is to accept that and to continue to strive, knowing that in the best of worlds, from the greatest men that history provides, that the challenges will not end – but they will only become more grand and interesting.