If Martin Luther King had Snapchat, do you think he would be taking selfies with his new Air Jordans rather than fighting for his cause? But what if YouTube channel Unbox Therapy’s Lewis George or “Lew” didn’t have YouTube? Would he still be spreading his love and passion for opening boxes?
From grills to paintbrushes, today you can find a person on Instagram or Youtube promoting almost any product that sells. And I applaud such an evolution of our culture, because I see it as a catalyst for a potential better future; think about how much free information was available to people before the internet and how many options you had just 50 years ago to spread your ideas and beliefs from the US to Europe (preferably for free or close to it)? I can’t say I know from first hand experience, but I hear “not a lot” to be more or less accurate among those who do.
Yet ideas still spread, maybe not as fast as the current social media trend, but they did nonetheless. And obviously the idea of influencers isn’t really a new one (shocker), because Ghandi was an influencer, and so were Malcom X, Napoleon, Kurt Cobain and Stalin. And while some good and others evil, the amount of change they created was incredible.
But I like what marketing has done with its usage of the term Influencer; isn’t it funny that it’s used o describe people who make make-up videos on looking like a zombie or tutorials on how to draw a nice paysage. Not saying there is anything wrong with any of these, I like both halloween and nature painting, but is this really the definition of an Influencer?
Depends on who you ask; Malcom X didn’t promote Nike sneakers and Ghandi surely didn’t sign a deal with Coca-Cola, so their messages didn’t influence buying decisions or changes in market share for anyone. If you asked the capitalists, they probably wouldn’t have viewed either of them as an influential figure, while those concerned with social change, ethics and human rights would hold both in the highest regards.
And we all know who decides today. A hint: Googles GDP for 2014 was about $66 billion, more than almost 2/3 of the countries on our planet (Iceland, which boasts a comfortably high average quality of life with low crime and high wages, only reported a GDP of $17 billion).
But this is exactly the issue, were it not for Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Youtube and the like, most people today, who are called influencers, wouldn’t be doing much in the way of “influencing” anyone, because no-one would be willing to pay and support their content. Were it not for consumerism, many would do something else, probably unrelated to what they are doing now. I am not saying everybody would, because I strongly believe there are people who would genuinely help others, promote change, do good, no matter on what platform or medium (be it radio, TV or just shouting from a cliff), and those are the real influencers.
But not every person online, who lives off of his or her social media income, because of a strong affinity with various types of slimes, would do the occasional campaign to help others, were it not for that exact medium. I have no problems with social media; I love it because it gives me the option to write this text and talk to hundreds of others from around the globe about ideas on art and philosophy, but I can’t say I can agree with the idea that another marketing term has become a job title, wrapped in quasi do-goodery while forgetting what real Influence that matters actually looks like.