12/21/2023 0 Comments Shakespeer influenceInfluence was worrisome long before it was digital. Election hackers and commercial influencers have wildly different aims, but both contribute to the unreal, distrustful tenor of our times, in which a language of fakery, deception, and inauthenticity has become fundamental to how we interpret the world. Based on the available evidence, it seems that we can’t construct an influence economy without stoking a culture of skepticism and paranoia.The fear of being influenced affects our sense of reality and our ability to trust our own judgments about what is true. Influence works best when it’s wielded obscurely, in the shadows and behind the scenes, and this has clear social consequences for a society engaged in building a digital-influence economy. The elusive quality of influence-the difficulty we encounter when we try to identify its sources or measure its effects-is equally destabilizing. Influence is a challenge to sovereignty, both political and personal to admit to being influenced is to give up the attractive idea that, as individuals or societies, we are entirely self-contained. The same image evokes our anxieties about hostile foreign states penetrating our defenses. In a fairly undisguised etymology, the word “influence” comes from the Latin for “inflow,” which provides an image of the way that, every second, our thoughts now stream into one another’s pockets. Digital technologies soften the borders between people and create a porousness upon which influence depends. Both flourish in our increasingly networked world, in which digital influence is sharply double-edged-a salable commodity and a threat to democracy, a commercial dream and a political nightmare.Ĭonnectivity is the basis for the heightened role that influence now plays in our lives. The social-media influencer has an eerie double in the hacker who covertly shapes political discourse. It’s no accident that the term has entered the lexicon at the same moment that influence of a different sort has become a geopolitical weapon of unprecedented proportions. And yet “influencer” also sounds slightly sinister the Influencer could be a Batman villain, alongside the Joker. On one level, “influencer” is an anodyne, commercial label, describing someone who monetizes an online following by endorsing products or services-a celebrity spokesperson for the social-media age. But his cuteness only compounds the sense of unease we feel whenever we contemplate influencers and their craft. His parents photograph him according to briefs they receive from commercial partners members of his extended family must seek approval before posting their own photos of Ralphie, lest an off-message picture harm his brand. For most of his life, he has been an unknowing model of baby clothes and other infant paraphernalia. Late last year, the Daily Mail identified Ralphie Waplington as Britain’s “youngest social media ‘influencer.’ ” Ralphie, who is two, has twenty thousand Instagram followers.
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