I have to run off to a dentist’s appointment in a little while, so this will be a quickie. We speak of “influencers” today as if opinion-forming bellwethers were a new phenomenon. Sorry, they aren’t. However, due to developments in communications, especially in the digital realm, the subject has acquired a scope far greater than it would have been in the radio years or the early television years.
This morning, a significant voice on Second Amendment rights has applied his intellect to understanding the divergence between the influence of influencers – sorry, Gentle Reader – and actual electoral performance:
Braden Langley might seem a bit rough-hewn, but he’s highly intelligent and has put a lot of time into studying the currents that run through American politics. His thesis in the above is simple, but it wouldn’t occur to persons who take opinion polls and the follower counts of influencers as something primary, impervious to question. “Influence” in real-world terms diverges greatly from the undifferentiated aggregates commanded by persons who reach and appeal to global audiences.
Influencers are themselves influenced by their followers. If the followers trend Leftward, they will exert a significant force on the influencer to position himself to the Left. He has a natural incentive to retain his existing followers and attract new ones. Money is often involved through advertising and sponsorships. The global audience made possible by the Internet is far more Left-inclined than the one that votes in American elections.
Remember back in 2004, when foreign figures such as Richard Dawkins and David Cornwall (a.k.a. “John LeCarre”) tried to persuade Americans to elect John Kerry to the presidency rather than George W. Bush? It didn’t work; Left-inclined foreign voices don’t appeal to many Americans. But superficial attention to how many persons admire those figures, without attention to where the majority of those persons are situated and whether they can vote in American elections, misled many casual observers. (Perhaps some wanted to be misled, but that subject is beyond the scope of this tirade.)
Americans are not easily led by persons who don’t share American values. But influencers, including American commentators who command large audiences of faceless followers, are a different story. This might just be another way of phrasing the old maxim “follow the money,” but what of that?
Have a nice day.
1 comment:
If you spend some time looking at videos on Facebook and YouTube you will encounter many "influencers" saying disgusting things about Trump or MAGA or Kirk, etc. You can then look at their Facebook or YouTube site and typically they have hundreds of similar and equally disgusting videos. It would be common sense to attribute their extraordinary effort to something more than an opinion or bias. What causes someone to make so many videos and tell so any lies risking a defamation lawsuit in the process. The rumor is that China and anti-American billionaires are in fact paying Americans and others to make pro-Democrat/communist videos and attack leading Republicans/capitalists. Interestingly Canada is also experiencing this with massive numbers of "Canadian" influencers making misleading anti-American videos which seem intended to gas light Canadians into weakening the U.S./Canadian relationship.
I am 100% in favor of free speech. Make a video hating or loving whatever political system or politician you want to I don't care. But paid sabotage, i.e. a paid saboteur is something different. What we need is someone, something that can expose what is actually going on. You still get your free speech but your motives and identity are made public. Expose the left's YouTube version of the "Learing Center".
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