Disclaimer of Influence

We often operate under a solipsistic fallacy assuming that our words are ephemeral, that they dissipate like a butterfly’s flapping wings in a jungle. But these wings carry storms. A passing comment by a peer or criticism by a parent holds the power to alter the trajectory of another person’s self perception for years.

Nowhere is this myopia more consequential than in the strange new theatre of the creator economy. An influencer will spend an hour getting ready, adjusting the camera, resetting the background, doing take after take under the glow of a ring light until spontaneity feels just right — then look into the lens and say “ I would not call myself an influencer, I am just a person with a camera and a lot to say.” We are entering an era where the scale of one’s reach has outpaced the human psyche’s ability to conceptualize its own impact.

At the heart of this paradox lies a dissonance between the act of expression and the multitude of reception. Speaking into a lens in the solitude of your room might seem like an intimate act, isolated perhaps. The digital medium acts as a force multiplier, however. 

When that video reaches 100,000 views, the “just a person with a camera” is no longer in a private monologue; they are now broadcasting into a vast heterogeneous theatre. The audience is not a monolith but individuals with varying degrees of suggestibility. A passing remark about body image, a take on a political movement, or even a specific aesthetic preference seeds and colonizes the observer’s internal landscape. 

By rejecting the title “influencer”, the speaker subtly abdicates the ethical responsibility that comes with authority. The thoughts that might be ephemeral, subjective or fluid to the creator, might become blueprints for social behavior.

As argued by René Girard, our desire is not solely autonomous. We do not know what we want until we see others wanting it. Thus, this age calls for literacy about not only how we consume media but also how we perceive our own presence within it. Human consciousness is porous and abdication of responsibility in face of a massive audience is pure existential gaslighting. Our words possess a weight we rarely have the vantage point to measure. We are, all of us, influencers by default.