Invisible Rulers

 Gurus, Besties, and propagandists  How influencers shape Culture, Politics, and Society Khaby Lame, a Senegalese Italian twentysomething, was laid off from a factory job early in the COVID pandemic. He took to TikTok with his newfound free time, making videos mocking other videos, often in the "life hack" and "thirst trap" genres. His "everyman" facial expressions as he watches someone, say, use a knife to peel a banana are relatable and funny. Sometimes compared to Charlie Chaplin, as of December 2023 he has the most followed account on TikTok, with 162 million followers. Candace Owens, a conservative commentator and firebrand, is hard to miss online: you may spot her on Twitter (over 4 million followers), on Instagram (4.6 million followers), or in countless podcasts and videos. She may be championing Kanye West, questioning the motives of Black Lives Matter activists, or exhorting young women to appreciate their natural beauty (and stop wearing yoga pa...

 If You Make It Trend, You Make It True: Influencers, Algorithms, and Crowds IN THE SUMMER OF 2020, as the world fretted its way through some of the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the popular online furniture store Wayfair started selling something highly unusual: trafficked children. That, at least, was the claim that exploded across a series of social media posts that popped up on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and  YouTube-basically everywhere that mainstream Americans spent their online time The argument: that product listings for certain industrial storage cabinets-costing up to $10,000 each and marketed with human names_ were in facode for abducted children who shared the same name . Pr possibly eves had the abducted children inside them.   The bizarre accusations were soon generating millions of engagements on social media. Posts appeared from as far afield as Turkey and Argentina, featuring pictures of girls who had been reported as missing — and even some who h...