It's not my civic duty to be famous

A thread that emerged from the post-election analysis is about how much the election was influenced by, well, influencers.

Makena Kelly over at Wired in The Future of Political Influencers writes in her conclusion:

The election, and the future of the political influencer, has forever changed as we know it.

Maybe so, but I need to pump the brakes on what comes next.

The internet is not built for nuance. If influencers had any demonstrable effect on the election, and they probably did, then the narrative will emerge that influencers decided the election.

And if influencers “decide” elections, then it’s practically your civic duty to become an influencer, or at least your participation in online platforms is equated more with civic engagement.

For example, Jules Roscoe of 404 Media published an article about a rise in interest in South Korea’s ‘4B’ Movement after the election. The article cites a post on Reddit as an example. Without getting into the substance of the 4B movement, I want to highlight something the original poster wrote to address men responding to their message (emphasis mine):

To the men asking in good faith what they can do to be an ally, I don’t know. It’s really up to you. Start a podcast or something and get more popular than Joe Rogan and the other manosphere influencers who peddle conservative-lite to suck men in and push them further right.

The poster’s tone is half-hearted and this is clearly not meant as capital-A advice, but what it shows is that to many people hurting and looking for answers, the influencer question is top-of-mind right now.

Over at The Atlantic, Spencer Kornhaber wonders aloud about political engagement with influencers and online platforms. Writing in Why Democrats Are Losing the Culture War he says:

Unfortunately, the only way to change what’s happening in an echo chamber may be to add your own noise.

I lifted that quote out of context, so I want to point out that Kornhaber is specifically talking about how Democratic politicians engaged with influencers in this election, but I bring it up because the same sentiment is repeated: More engagement in online platforms is the solution.

An answer that doesn’t challenge the powerful

The emerging narrative of an influencer election troubles me because it puts implied blame on powerless, regular people. It’s regular people’s fault for not being internet-famous or influential enough. That means it’s not the fault of corporate interests and their powerful platforms which favor sensational algorithmic content.

An influencer election narrative suggests that political action and our short-term next steps are to spend more time on internet media platforms. We just need to follow the good influencers, and produce more content for the platforms ourselves.

That doesn’t challenge anything about the status quo, so I imagine it will gain traction.

Do what you want, but please take care

If it’s your thing to start up a blog, a podcast, a YouTube channel, a TikTok whatever-they-have, then go for it. But if you’re anything like me, it will not help to feel that – on top of taking care of the very important business of your day-to-day life – you need to invest heavily in your online profile, or else you let the bad guys win. Feeding more of myself to the corporate internet media machine without any accountability for that machine is not for me.

The excesses of internet media have sown confusion, frustration, and noise that has bled out into real life. It’s a mess. It’s profitable for a handful of companies, public figures, and financial speculators, but it comes at everyone else’s expense. Any narrative that suggests that we aren’t engaged with the internet media slurry in the right way deserves scrutiny.