Influencer: Another Word To Loathe

Goodness, is it already Tuesday? Sorry about the podcasting failure yesterday. We recorded one over the weekend but then Matt did not put it online. He thought he could just leave town and would be able, on the literal phone, to tell me how to put it up, which is just absurd. One, because the dog kept me awake all night. Which meant that Two, I slept in so that I wouldn’t die during the day. Which meant that Three, I wandered around in a complete stupor thereby precluding any possibility of turning on any computer and following any kind of instructions at all. So, there will be a podcast and links this week, There Will. But Matt has to come back here and put the thing online.

Anyway, on to more important matters. I just discovered another terrible word on the internet. The word “Influencer” was right there in plain black and white, in the middle of the title of some article about Instagram and body image. As in, ‘Twelve Fitness Influencers Who Aren’t A Size 2 And Don’t Intend To Be.’

What on earth is a Fitness Influencer? Is this the next iteration of Thought Leader? I ask, but I, so that you won’t have to, have gone ahead made an educated guess by means of an angry and uninterested skim through the piece. It turns out there are real people out there who, having tirelessly and diligently built up popular and beloved social media platforms, are able to influence other people to do certain things and feel certain ways. The Influencer posts pictures of herself and the Influencee, also known as the Consumer—that beleaguered person casting about for meaning and purpose, but at the same time trying to avoid the gaping maw of existential dread which is why she is even on Instagram looking at other people in not enough clothes staring out over the surf at sunset, #blessed—scrolls past the pictures pushing Heart, hoping that just one more thumb stroke down will make all the sorrow just go away. For a single tiny moment they, separate and yet bound by the webbing entanglement of Mark Zuckerberg, nod, breathe in, and whisper, ‘I totes love and accept myself.’ The one scrolls on and on and the other adopts another pose, sending thoughts and hopes to buzzfeed. They both know that this is best and easiest way to beat away the darkness. It’s the new technical definition of To Influence, but in its now more acceptable form, ‘Influencer.’

So anyway, as you know, with great power (a ton of Instagram followers) comes great responsibility (making sure not to body shame anyone—or something). Use your influence for good and not for evil.

Then there was this title, ‘This Influencer Realized a Habit She Learned Growing Up Was Seriously Messing With Her Body Image.’ I don’t think I’ll take the trouble to find the link because, truly, it doesn’t matter. The very idea that articles are being “written” about Instagram accounts, as if any of this could possibly be construed as news, means that we don’t, as culture, have enough to do and the end of the world is just around the world.

I mean, isn’t that your highest aspiration? ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ ‘Oh, I want to be an Influencer on Instagram. Or, if that doesn’t pan out, I want to be one of those YouTubers who earns millions of dollars by playing Minecraft.’

Influence me this, maybe you don’t need to look to other people to figure out how you feel about yourself and what you think about anything. Maybe you could live your life doing the thing in front of you, being the person you are right now. If you are dissatisfied with yourself you could turn to the scripture to find some sanity. You could read it and go to church and stuff, and interact with real people who aren’t crafting a special image of themselves to move you in one direction or another, to prey on your insecurity about yourself. Maybe you could take responsibility for yourself and confess your real sins and incline yourself towards the law of God—lean in towards that which is actually perfect rather than that which appears to be shiny but is unnecessarily weird and also badly expressed in English.

Influencer forsooth. Even Autocorrect is not trying to make me change it to something sane, et tu Autocorrect? My goodness, what a grammatically terrible time to be alive. I beg you will forgive me, I have to go stuff myself with some Wodehouse and Shakespeare or literally any of the books sitting next to me right at this moment, lest my aesthetically sensitive soul perish. Tinkerty Tonk, and I mean for it to sting.