The Influencer

The Cambridge Dictionary defines the word Influencer as, a person with the ability to influence the behavior and opinion of others.

Influencers have always been around in the marketing space. Whether movie celebrities promoting beauty products or athletes endorsing health products, these old school influencers have manipulated gullible minds into buying soaps and service for as long as we remember. But of late the market has changed, the game has evolved. It is not about promoting a fairness cream or a protein drink anymore. The role of influencer has evolved into influencing behavior and opinion. It is bringing an individual into a cultural subset. Once you are in that subset, the choices follow automatically.

What we read, what we watch, what we listen to, who we listen to, the brands we prefer, everything follows a pattern once we align to an influencer. Rightly so, these influencers are paid much more than their predecessors, because they simply add more products to the shopping cart than previously possible.

Few years back, I was participating in an art class. It was a group of diverse individuals with common affinity for the art form. Naturally the individuals bonded very well having a shared interest. Soon enough the bonding went beyond the classroom and extended to casual chats over tea and the occasional banter over beer. Like in all contemporary circles the next available platform for seamless bonding was social media.

Initially the social media forum was used to exchange experiences and ideas about the art form but that didn’t last long. Soon enough characters emerged. Individuals who were perceived as shy in real world emerged as flamboyant communicators while others who spoke eloquently in person opted to remain passive. Influencers emerged in due course and what was supposed to be a forum for shared interests was dissolved into something else.

I admit, I was an active part of the process. Whether I was acting as an influencer myself or reacting to another influencer is debatable but in either case I was culpable for falling in the trap. Since then over the last few years I have come to develop a steady aversion for influencers.

The one at the art class was a minor influencer, probably having a circle few feet around himself and was keen to grow it as further as possible. I hope he knew that he himself was influenced by someone else who had a much larger circle. Aversion is probably a wrong word, I don’t hate anyone for their choice, I have simply become allergic to that shadow, irrespective of who is casting it.

Having an opinion is great, but having an insatiable desire to thrust that opinion down the throat of as many as one can, is dangerous. What is even more dangerous and scary is when we willingly allow someone to force their opinion on us and shape our ideas.

If we observe keenly we are constantly pushed to subscribe to a certain world view. Our mind has become a mass of synthetic “isms” shoved inside it. Our thoughts, our choices, our language is constantly influenced without us even realizing the extent of that unknown drive. We are constantly adding more stuff to the shopping cart and thereby draining our personal resources.  

The story of the lazy fisherman and the tourist helps us to take a step back and reassess these influences.

A smartly-dressed enterprising tourist is taking photographs when he notices a shabbily dressed local fisherman taking a nap in his fishing boat. The tourist is disappointed with the fisherman’s apparently lazy attitude towards his work, so he approaches the fisherman and asks him why he is lying around instead of catching fish. The fisherman explains that he went fishing in the morning, and the small catch would be sufficient for the next two days.

The tourist tells him that if he goes out to catch fish multiple times a day, he would be able to buy a motor in less than a year, a second boat in less than two years, and so on. The tourist further explains that one day, the fisherman could even build a small cold storage plant, later a pickling factory, fly around in a helicopter, build a fish restaurant, and export lobster directly to Paris without a middleman.

The nonchalant fisherman asks, “Then what?”

The tourist enthusiastically continues, “Then, without a care in the world, you could sit here in the harbor, doze in the sun, and look at the glorious sea.”

“But I’m already doing that”, says the fisherman.

The enlightened tourist walks away pensively, with no trace of pity for the fisherman, only a little envy.

The tourist is an influencer, trying to influence the lazy fisherman. While in most other cases he is able to cast his shadow, in this case he fails and walks away. We must cultivate the ability to be like the lazy fisherman, it doesn’t mean we should not have any aspirations, what it means is, we should decide for ourselves and not allow influencers to bully us into a shopping spree.

The most difficult part is to sit quietly and segregate what is within and what is borrowed or thrust upon us. Our mental map is so horribly entangled that this segregation becomes a tough task. A lot of times we own up borrowed choices as if they are our own. But this is something we need to do diligently, with practice we will be able to sort, set in order and sustain.  

Influencers will continue to do their bit in whatever avatar they choose, whether as political leaders or business leaders or religious leaders or as cultural leaders. Those in their shadow zone will carry their influence further and that is how it spreads, that is how it keeps spreading. The core desire at the apex and at every intermediate level is to see everyone else subscribing to “their” version as “the” version. Once people are hooked to a version, the marketplace flourishes effortlessly.

In some cases, it is impossible to not get influenced, nothing wrong in that, in fact it is advisable to be a part of a community. Moreover, to pose as an outlier for the sake of it doesn’t make any sense either. Having said that, wherever possible it is important that we choose the influence wisely, by calibrating it with our needs, with the frequencies buried deep down inside us, which are truly our own. If we can do that, I believe our living will be lot more bearable than what it is today.  

As I type this piece, I realize that this is also a small effort to influence. But I am happy doing it, because I am not thrusting my ideas, I am asking you to pick your own. Don’t subscribe to my shadow, subscribe to yourself if you agree and if you can.