Rise of the Influencer — Death of Typography?
For many people, particularly the young, THEIR mainstream media IS now the social network and whatever groupings they are members of within it. Analogue editor-curated news is being replaced by algorithm-curated views. What is read, heard or viewed is frequently dependent on algorithms tracking and detecting what they perceive to be our interests and so we are fed by what we appear to want. The sources of information for this algorithm-curation are now just as likely to be online ‘influencers’ or ‘opinion shapers’ or ‘thought leaders’ as they are to be traditional edited publications. Because controversy, sensationalism and entertainment attracts attention, the disruptive ‘shock-jock’ style adopted by some influencers on social media can rapidly build an initial bank of ‘followers’ which algorithmic-curation and recommendation can them identify as growing ‘popularity’ and so attract the online crowds.
Death of Typography? (AI generated image)
The unholy trinity of these three ingredients: influencer; algorithms; and online crowds was described by Renée DiResta as ‘bespoke realities’ in her book, Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality (2024). Bespoke realities easily incorporate disinformation and misinformation because those are ‘sticky’, i.e. their attention grabbing assertions hang around in the ether like a resistant virus to the truth with periodic resurgencies as recruits to a belief either disseminate — or are fed them — as evidence and proof.
Bespoke Realities (AI generated image)
Such bespoke realities have thrived in western democracies wtih some influencers having follower statistics vastly beyond that achieved by any mainstream broadcast outlet or newspaper. The trinity has also, arguably, seriously fragmented a common set of values and understandings. Citizens are decamping from the old media to whatever is their preferred information or news silo — usually one which is entertaining them, telling them what they want to hear, or is offering whatever version of the truth that aligns with their views. Views, therefore, that are always being reinforced or amplified rather than being receptive to alternative arguments or perspectives. It is ironic that while non-democratic states may also seek to act as ‘influencers’ or promote their particular choice of influencer in said western democracies they ensure they remain untroubled by the unholy trinity in their own kingdoms.
The influencer as entertainer (or reality-TV star) cannot be underestimated. Serving such an apprenticeship can indeed provide scope for even greater influence as witnessed in the 2024 US Presidential elections. These elections demonstrated how the mainstream print and broadcast media could no longer assume it was they who were the primary influencers of belief and opinion. It also demonstrated that the ability to tell only the stories and ‘truths’ that people want to hear, press the emotional buttons of their concerns, and having the ability to entertain an audience will trump facts, and statistics or entreaties to think beyond narrow self-interest. Panem et Circenses indeed.
The Influencer as Entertainer (AI generated image)
In 1985 the media theorist Neil Postman published his cult book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Showbusiness. In a later BBC interview about the book he said:
The problem at least in the American context not so much that television presents entertainment subject matter but that ALL subject matter become entertainment … Television is to some considerable extent hostile to language and lengthy exposition and discourse.” (in Appetite for Distraction episode 1 of 5, Matthew Syed, BBC iPlayer, 18 Nov 2024).
Note that here Postman was not criticising the television of sitcoms or drama but that of education and information, particularly that of news where what he called the ‘and now this’ syndrome would create a cognitive and philosophical whiplash as the news anchor made the jarring transition between significant world events and trivial advertisements for, say, a new model car. Disorienting transitions changing how people viewed important things.
‘And Now This Syndrome’ 1985 (AI generated image)
The technological changes since Postman’s book apply rocket fuel to his arguments. Today the devices in our pockets pocket and inside our buildings along with the social media always-connected offerings provide endless and, arguably, corrosive opportunity for entertainment and distraction from what matters and the massaging of people’s views about important things.
‘And Now This Syndrome’ 2024 (AI generated image)
A major influence on Postman’s thinking was Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel Brave New World (1932). Postman thought that George Orwell (who was a pupil of Huxley’s at Eton) got it wrong about the nature of ‘Big Brother’ and control in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Instead of the explicit oppression of Orwell’s novel in Huxley’s vision there is a more gradual almost benign way where control arises via the “pleasure of distraction”.
“No Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. People would come to love their oppression. To adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” (Aldous Huxley)
Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ (pub 1932) (AI generated image)
The following extract from the preface of Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Showbusiness (1985) was meaningful in 1985 but at the time of writing this post in 2024 — just post the US Presidential election — it screams applicability.
To say it, then, as plainly as I can, this book is an inquiry into and a lamentation about the most significant American cultural fact of the second half of the twentieth century: the decline of the Age of Typography and the ascendancy of the Age of Television. This change-over has dramatically and irreversibly shifted the content and meaning of public discourse, since two media so vastly different cannot accommodate the same ideas. As the influence of print wanes, the content of politics, religion, education, and anything else that comprises public business must change and be recast in terms that are most suitable to television.
Postman’s ‘Decline of Typography’ (AI generated image)
Prior to Postman’s influential 1985 book the transformational potential of media rather than the content they carry was highlighted by Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan in his book Understanding Media (1964) in which the first chapter was titled the ‘Medium is the Message’ which became an aphorism in its own right. McLuhan describes the content of a medium as
A juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.
In other words although we may think we are just engaging with the content it is the technology over time that is changing the way we do things. The way we think. What we value. What we come to consider normal. Our digital age is certainly doing that at pace.
McLuhan’s content as the juicy meat of distraction (AI generated image)
The message to politicians is clear, i.e. those comfortable swimming and diving in the new media sea — even if it is polluted — are less likely to drown. Lament if you will, but politics has become a showbusiness and those who understand it — and become good at it — can become influencer-in-chief du jour.
Drowning in the new media sea (AI generated image)
But Postman also said something even more prescient :
Introduce speed-of-light transmission of images and you make a cultural revolution. Without a vote. Without polemics. Without guerrilla resistance. Here is ideology, pure if not serene. Here is ideology without words, and all the more powerful for their absence. All that is required to make it stick is a population that devoutly believes in the inevitability of progress. And in this sense, all Americans are Marxists, for we believe nothing if not that history is moving us toward some preordained paradise and that technology is the force behind that movement. (in Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Showbusiness (1985)
Again Postman was focused on the US television as the medium of his time but the injection of technological and cultural steroids since 1985 has significantly amplified and magnified the issues, challenges, and dysfunctions — particularly for western democracies — he was alerting us to.
We will close this section with some quotes from Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) in which truth and nature are defined as compromising the contentment of the people and therefore the efficiency of their technological society.
A love of nature keeps no factories busy … Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning, truth and beauty can’t.
Brave New World (Aldous Huxley (1932) (AI generated image)
Food for thought as our world heats and the oil-drum beats?
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