Gurus, Besties, and propagandists

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 pants in public).

Then there's MrBeast (real name Jimmy Donaldson), a YouTube star with 183 million subscribers who got his start creating outlandish stunt-challenge videos and is now the most extremely online philanthropist in the world. He matches boundless creativity with bottomless pockets to orchestrate not only jaw-dropping feats but also acts of kindness such as supporting medical care for amputees.

Keffals is the streaming name of Clara Sorrenti. She got her start broadcasting herself playing video games on Twitch, though her content became more political as trans rights became the subject not only of factional battles but of legislative efforts in Texas. Kefals has comparatively smaller following but a strong niche appeal with a young audience disinterested in cable TV news, appreciative of a fresh, unrepresented perspective, and eager to troll mutual ideological opponents.

If you’re over twenty-five, you may never have heard of Khaby Lame, but these folks—and people who use social media to shape what they do—are the most important force shaping culture, entertainment, and increasingly, politics today.

Khaby Lame, MrBeast, Candace Owens, and Kefals are influencers. And they achieved their level of success partly through creativity and partly through skill at leveraging platform affordances for creativity and reach: the instant publishing, liking, and retweeting tools that TikTok, YouTube, and others provide.

These platforms offer “influence-as-a-service,” the same way Google and Microsoft provide office productivity tools as “software-as-a-service.” It’s a turnkey model: influence-as-a-service packages up the tools of creation and dissemination, audience access, and dashboards of metrics—everything necessary to amass reach, capture attention, and parlay them into power and profit.

But it’s not just the technology. Successful influencers are remarkably talented at connecting with their audiences on a human level which is what makes them resonant and sticky. People love them. Dedicated followers not only watch or read their content but spread it, remix it, and get chatty in the comments. The influencers develop relationships and, in aggregate, amass fandoms—or factions.

“Invisible rulers” may seem an odd way to describe influencers—after all, they’re highly conspicuous, brazenly seeking followers and dominating our feeds. But while the influencer herself is visible, her influence often is not. We may still see Sean Hannity or the anchors of Good Morning America as the de facto power brokers, but people, especially those under twenty-five, are increasingly taking cues from unexpected tastemakers like Kefals, Candace Owens, MrBeast, and Khaby Lame.

What Is Influence?

The internet teems with influencers, but influence is a surprisingly hard concept to define. Plenty of information flows past us every day; our minds aren’t it immediately changed simply because something hits our radar. Some of the information we encounter comes from people and sources with whom we already share beliefs and perspectives—while they might be reinforcing our own opinions, that’s not the same thing as shaping or influencing or echoing our opinions, that’s not the same thing as shaping or influencing them. Many academic definitions of influence therefore focus on effect.

“Influence is a way of having an effect on the attitudes and opinions of others,” wrote Talcott Parsons, one of the most prominent figures in twentieth-century sociology, in 1963. He emphasized that the person trying to influence others was acting intentionally and that the effect could be not only to cause a change in attitude or opinion, but also to prevent one.

But figuring out what actually has an effect—what really changes attitudes or shapes opinions—is very, very difficult. Why did hundreds of thousands of people suddenly decide that a perfectly respectable furniture company was secretly involved in online child trafficking? How did millions come to be involved in QAnon in the first place? How does anyone decide to become part of any activist social movement, for that matter?

We’re constantly bombarded by messages about information and nudges, by way of the media, social media, and our social circles. Apps and advertisers battle for our attention, sending pings to our ever-present phones. News is everywhere, and there’s a never-ending stream of content for us to dip into.

How does influence actually work ?

Social psychologist Carolyn Cartwright studied how influence impacted group and organizational dynamics and moved across social networks before Facebook and Twitter were even an idea. In 1965, he boited decis to down to a succinct idea: an agent does something to a target and results in a change in the target.² Maybe the target adopts a new opinion or takes an action.

Some influential figures—a celebrity such as Taylor Swift—may influence audiences just by being who they are. Others, however, are quite intentional, driven by age-old motivations of power, money, and clout in pursuit of a particular outcome. A salesperson wants to persuade a prospective customer to buy a car, while a political candidate wants to entice voters to vote for her. Influence is a means to an end.

Online influencers share these same motivations: Some simultaneously earn a living while also seeking to change the crowd’s mind about an issue or to galvanize action, like Kefals does with trans rights. Others seek economic gains: MrBeast is on the cusp of becoming a billionaire, and others are dozens of YouTube videos dissecting his success in an effort to replicate it.¹⁰ And still others, like Amazing Polly, are rewarded by the likes, attention, and sense of status within their (QAnon) community.

Cartwright pointed out that influence was based in large part on access: the agent has to be connected to a person or group in order to “do something” to him or her. The means of exerting influence might vary: it could take the form of reward and punishment, direct physical power, or shaping opinion. All of these means are still pertinent today, though their manifestations have changed.

In Cartwright’s time, access often involved knowing someone in “real life”—people in the same community or with common friends or family members influenced each other. But the access could also be more removed: authority figures (a senator, the president, the pope) were not directly connected to the average person, yet might be a significant presence nonetheless as their words and actions were conveyed through the media.

Social media has exponentially expanded the notion of access, and knowing someone online can result in as strong a bond as a physical connection. Influencers have significant reach and access to audiences within their own follower communities; you might not know MrBeast personally, but his relatability and constant presence in your feed create a sense of connection, of some sort of relationship. They also have reach and access across communities, by virtue of crowds sharing or algorithms pushing content.¹¹ You might not know who Kefals is, but her hashtags and ideas might cascade from her community into yours.

This increased case of access has transformed Cartwright’s potential means of influence in unexpected ways. The potential for “reward and punishment” has expanded: influencers and online mobs are now quite adept at threatening their targets’ livelihoods through collective campaigns.

to get people “canceled.” Consider Justine Sacco, not at all a public figure, who in 2013 tweeted a tasteless joke about AIDS shortly before boarding a flight to South Africa. By the time her plane touched down, a journalist had shared the tweet, #HasJustineLandedYet had become a top trend globally, and Sacco’s reputation and career had been destroyed.¹² There have since been many far more deliberate efforts in which online culture warlords and angry factions demand a target be punished—often, fired—for a “bad” opinion, a distasteful comment, or even something mundane but willfully misinterpreted.

The dynamics of online mobs have also led people to think quite differently about “direct physical power” and the risk it poses as a tool of retaliation against speech. Online rage has led to threats to election officials, public health workers during COVID, and to school board officials around curriculum debates. It has occasionally translated into late-night protests outside random people’s homes, people being followed to their cars after community council meetings, and even scattered physical violence.

The implied, and sometimes realized, threats have led to widespread resignations of targeted groups. There is no longer any real line between online and offline, no comfortable “in real life” designation that separates online influence and offline impact. The virtual world’s norms threaten to spill over into the real, and that can be extremely frightening. It might have been hard to pin down which specific post sent a man over the edge to rescue children he thought were being harmed in the basement of a pizza shop, but being immersed in that bespoke reality had an undeniable effect—it resulted in his going to the shop and firing a gun.

It’s that third mechanism of influence Cartwright described—the capacity to shape opinion—that has most significantly transformed in the age of influencers, algorithms, and online crowds, and it will be our focus.

The propaganda machine and the rumor mill, formerly largely distinct means of shaping public opinion, have collided; now competition for attention and audience happens on social media, where access anyone in the world is just a click away. There are new agents, albeit with fairly old motivations, enabled by new means of connecting to targets.

Who are the targets? Anyone and everyone. Yet, as Cartwright pointed out in 1965, the person being influenced in some situations is the agent in others¹³—and today the online audience itself, _extraordinary capacity for shaping public opinion, actively participating in creating messages and spreading them. Indeed, in some of the examples we explore, a random person from within the crowd makes a claim, which is then boosted by an influencer, gets picked up by an algorithm, and winds up the focus of the nightly news on cable television. Having influence is about the power or profit, or both, and today that path is open to virtually anyone.

There is an important caveat, however, that Cartwright emphasized: the target’s attitude toward the agent matters. If the target rejects the authority, the target’s attitude—or the expertise—of the agent, the agent won’t be able to exert much influence. But influencers enjoy the trust of their followers. They are liked by their followers. They may not actually possess the expertise that Walter Lippmann describes. They may not actually possess the opinion that they feel that they do (along with their followers). But their followers feel that they do (along with their followers). In other words, they have access to the audience, a means of influencing them, motivation for doing so, and a high likelihood that their message will be well received, or at least considered.

And that’s because the influencer, while distinct from the crowd in some ways, is very deeply part of it—just like the women of Decatur in the twentieth century and just like Amazing Polly today.

The Influencer Emerges from the Crowd

Influencers often start out as members of a community. Before Kefals had fifty thousand Twitch followers, she was an adolescent playing Team Fortress 2. And before Candace Owens was a marquee name in the conservative movement, she was one in a chorus of voices attempting to raise awareness about the disproportionate online harassment that women face.¹⁴ But their unique talent for telling stories that capture their audiences’ attention, and their understanding and leveraging of the affordances of social media, turned them into centers of gravity.

Influencers are differentiated by a larger—sometimes much larger—number of followers than other members of their community. Their content is both relevant and resonant, inspiring the crowd to boost it. A flywheel effect then kicks in: once the influencer starts to amass a following, their

popularity is further reinforced as the ever-growing audience shares their content to their own networks. More and more attention goes to those who manage to accrue some. In fact, many social media platforms have what industry people call the 90/9/1 problem: 90 percent of the participants are simply lurkers, 9 percent participate a little, and 1 percent replicate very heavily.¹⁵ Influencers, who are part of that 1 percent of regular replicators, have far more engaged audiences than others on the platforms, which means that they have a disproportionate impact on information flow.

However, despite their larger followings, the fact that they emerge from the crowd means that they continue to be seen as fellow members of the crowd. Their audiences view them as authentic, believable, and accessible een if other don't . They also post as themselve; this makes them distinct both from the media-of-one outlets that social media also enabled and from larger-than-life celebrities.

Instead, they’re fellow participants in a shared identity—a fellow mom, a fellow gamer, a fellow Christian conservative, a fellow privacy activist. Sometimes the shared identity is demographic, but it can also be a mutual passion for some particular interest. The influencer comes to be seen as representative of that identity. Indeed, people who are not part of a particular community but are interested in understanding its position on a debate or issue will often check an influencer’s commentary to get a sense of the prevailing opinion of the group they seem to represent.¹⁶ (This does not always yield accurate results; remember the story of majority illusion plaguing the English village in Chapter 1.)

Influencers spend a lot of their time on social media, not just talking to but with their audiences. They engage like people, not media. MrBeast may have over twenty million followers on Twitter, but he still @ replies to fans with emojis and quick comments. Media outlets convey a message; influencers have conversations. They read what their audiences say, or tag them in, and then decide what to riff on or amplify. That combination of creation, curation, and chatter makes them feel accessible.

But, perhaps most importantly, influencers manage to occupy a liminal space in which they are simultaneously elite, in terms of what they can accomplish and the power they wield, and not elite, because they’re perceived as one of us. This is particularly critical, as we’ll discuss, in the political arena.

The value of being of the crowd is hard to overstate. It gives influencer an intimate knowledge of the language to use, the memes to reference, and the one to take to make their audience react in whatever way they’re going for. They are fluent in the in-group language and lore of their niche, which gives them the ability to immediately react to whatever is going on in the world and frame it for their audience—together with what is going on in the world and frame it for their audience to create the story.

The influencer often both the storyteller and the story itself, as storytellers, influencers use the same techniques as screenwriters, novelists, and playwriters: familiarity, novelty, and repetition. All stories are made of familiar building blocks. There are setting or plot tropes, like the Isolated Cabin in the Woods at Night and character archetypes like the Quirky Best Friend. These familiar elements bring an immediate sense of recognition for the audience, setting the stage and signaling that you’re about to see a horror movie or a romantic comedy. They help the audience feel familiar with the broad strokes of the narrative to come. But a good storyteller avoids being completely formulaic—and that is where novelty comes in. Plot twist!—the damsel in the cabin is actually perfectly capable of fending off the slasher; the quirky best friend has chemistry with the lead’s love interest. The novel details makes the audience sit up and take notice. Finally, the repetition of key motifs, symbols, or phrases—both within one story and over time—reinforces the important message.

Influencers’ content on social media—especially where political propaganda, rumors, or conspiracy theories are concerned—is no different. They have their tropes and archetypes: the claims they make repeatedly, the villains and heroes they recurringly highlight, weaving them into a cinematic universe. Knowingly saying, for example, “Soros” or “Koch” conveys instantaneous meaning to their audience. The individual rumors or claims they promote have the requisite element of novelty: the hacked voting machines were compromised… by sneaky election officials, or by Central Intelligence Agency supercomputers, or by Russians, or by Italians satellites (these are real stories, as we will discuss in Chapter 5).¹⁷ And they leverage repetition: sharing and sharing will destroy similar types of stories to reinforce an impression that the world operates in a certain way. Over time, as we’ll see, repeating particular claims can increase the audience’s perception that they’re true.

Influencers are good at producing content that evokes emotion, because they’re creating for people just like them. They intimately understand what they’re creating, memes, and narratives will get a rise out of their audience. They’re writing multiseason dramas that keep their fans not only coming back for more but amplifying what they put out. Influencers like Owens and Kefals and MrBeast are part of a new generation of highly storytellers, who know how to use tropes, how to create a sensational twist, and how to leverage any new feature that a platform comes up with to their advantage.

Influencers’ combination of storytelling acumen, understanding how to work the structures of social media, clicking with an audience around a mutual passion, and reacting quickly and fluently to the fast-moving world of information on social media grants them an important power: they become aggregators and curators of the beliefs of the crowd.

Contagion, The Discourse, and Vibe Shifts

How influencers curate and move information is just as important as what they create. Their posts shape what’s in their audiences’ feeds, both directly and through related “You Might Like” content that algorithms helpfully serve up. What influencers decide to talk about, or amplify, can have a huge effect on what—or whom—everyone seems to be talking about. This manifests as what the extremely online call The Discourse and vibe shifts.

There is another epidemiological metaphor, besides virality, used to describe how information spreads online: contagion refers to how an idea or rumor is passed from person to person. Simply hearing an idea does not mean that it will “infect” or find a home in the mind of the recipient. But the influencer is in a unique position when it comes to information contagion: a piece of content is more likely to infect someone with a large engaged following if someone pushes it out to thousands of people.19 The influencer becomes something like a curator and a gatekeeper for what goes viral, because they have a higher capacity to kick off cascades. They’re a tipping point in the rumor mill: if they choose to boost something, it can become a subject of rumor mass online conversation—like Far

How do influencers decide what to boost? They, too, are bombarded with information and posts from the people they follow. But they often have a well-cultivated understanding for what stories will work within their community and strong internal relevancy engines—gut instincts—that help them quickly see how a real-world event can be connected to a broader narrative that their audience already understands. And they pay close attention to their engagement metrics—they know exactly how much pickup they get when they share certain types of memes or talk about particular topics.

Sometimes the decision to boost something is an easy call: it’s familiar to the audience already. They’ll intuitively understand how to react to it. And react they will, spreading the message along. This simple contagion—the spread of already-familiar, well-accepted opinions—is an easy win for the influencer.

Other times, however, the influencer will see something novel that may make followers sit up and share (earning the influencer a clout boost), but which is a little outside the norm, something like a new technology—maybe a cryptocurrency—or a fringe political idea. There’s a bit of potential risk to the influencer’s reputation if they start promoting it.

Pulling a novel claim or idea from ambient chatter and moving it into the awareness of their broader audience can be a dangerous move—influencers stake some of their credibility on that call. In simple contagion, an influencer’s decision to spread a message is low stakes because the thing is already normalized—they’re boosting its reach but are primarily amplifying a message rather than introducing an influential new idea. This doesn’t mean the idea is normalized everywhere—a conspiracy theory that is widely believed within a faction is low stakes for one of its influencers to propagate but still a big reputational risk for a “normal” person. But when considering novel ideas, the influencer will have to see an emerging claim multiple times, from different people, before deciding it’s worth spreading themselves. During this time, incentivized members of the crowd who already hold the belief (or have adopted the novel technology) may egg them on, tagging them in posts about the new tech and encouraging them to read up on it, before the influencer finally decides that jumping on the bandwagon makes sense for them.

This process of novel ideas moving from the periphery of a social network to the center is known as complex contagion; understanding how it works offers insights into who influences whom and helps explain how certain ideas or behaviors become widespread. Influencers serve not only as conduits for ideas but as gatekeepers, waiting to get sufficient signal before moving an idea from the fringe to the center of the conversation via their boost. They may begin by using language like “big if true” as a hedge, introducing an idea to their followers while not fully staking their reputation on it—this gives them an out if raising awareness does not translate to community acceptance. But once an influencer has chosen to associate themselves with a particular viewpoint, meme, or even crazy conspiracy theory and has seen indications of acceptance through engagement, they will often repeat it—and, as discussed, the repetition is a form of reinforcement for the community.

Influencers thus help drive The Discourse—a slang term for heated debates or obsessive discussion of a particular niche social or political issue—by deciding what to amplify and how to frame it (or meme it). While members of the niche crowd often care deeply about the issue, those outside the community may find it somewhat ridiculous and a ripe opportunity for mockery; the Discourse generally involves both types of people, reaching abundance. With their larger-than-average reach, influencers can shape the way that their followers repeat an issue framed, in both how and how often they talk about a particular topic. They can something seem important (We are going to talk about policing) and then help create and propagate the memes that a community begins to use to describe it (#DefundThePolice).

What people talk about and how creates opportunities for influencers with a particular sense of the zeitgeist to rise. Think about it as an ecology: the online ecosystem lends itself at a particular moment to particular environment. As the species, which thrive and in turn reshape their environment. As the ecosystem evolves, in tandem with the offline world, some influencers (or influencer archetypes) adapt and continue to shape the conversation and public opinion; some wane in popularity and come to feel like relics of an internet past; new ones emerge that meet the moment, either through talent or because they can read the room and tailor their content to fit the mood. The early optimistic online influencers created very different content and set a very different tone than those who became ascendant during the mid-2010s, as harassment mobs became potent and visible and norms of behavior changed.

Transformations in the overall atmosphere, energy, or mood of a person, group, or environment—vibe shifts—are remarkably real in online spaces. More importantly, they intersect heavily with social, economic, political dynamics in the offline world. Is crime rising or falling? There are, of course, real-world statistics that can answer this, but the vibes matter a lot for shaping public opinion online—which also translates to organizing for voting. Are more people being shot by police officers? Is inflation destroying the economy? Is America on the verge of civil war?

The perception shaped in online communities, the collective mood over a sense of the issue, is often more important than any actual facts.

Influencers can introduce new ideas, push a new meme, or change the tone in which they talk about something, contributing to a sense for the audience that things have changed.24 This can reset the culture of a community, changing norms not only online but in the real world as well, for better but also for worse. A positive vibe shift can yield feelings of joy, inspiration, and motivation. A negative one can lead to a sense of unease or a feeling of being under threat.

In their roles as creators, curators and gatekeepers, influencers make a meaningful impact on how their audiences feels and thinks; they can harness attention and direct the energy of their audience—at times, both online and offline. Importantly, because of that liminal space they inhabit—as both the wielders of power and “one of us”—influencers serve as mediators between the propaganda machine and the rumor mill. They have the power to pull things up from the chatter of the crowd and amplify them. Media pays attention to influencers, covering what they and their followers talk about as an online-interest story.

This makes influencers pivotal figures in “trading up the chain”—getting a sometimes dubious idea from a social media niche to mass awareness on broadcast media.25 Was Seth Rich murdered by the Clintons? Fox News anchors Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity, in fact, asked just that question.26 In prior information environments, the ability to pull an idea from the fringe to mass awareness used to take a lot of time; now this strategy—beloved by propagandists—occurs seemingly daily in the major news cycle, sometimes multiple times per day.

And, of course, influencers serve the needs of the propaganda machine in the other direction as well: in their role as opinion leaders, they curate from the glut of media coverage and then frame and interpret it for their audiences. Both top-down and bottom-up narrative creation happens across media and social media today, and the influencer sits in the middle of the action.

Despite their similar origins, shared skill sets, and access to the same tools, however, influencers can vary wildly in their presentation and intentions—comprising a cast of archetypes as diverse as exotic animals in a menagerie.

The Influencer Menagerie

Describing the persuasive power of influencers by referencing their follower count (nano, micro, mega) or their niche topic area (gaming, cooking, fashion) misses important ways they establish resonance: how they present themselves, what rhetorical style they take, which particular roles they play in The Discourse.

We can better understand influencers through the types of information product or relationship they sell or what audience need they attempt to satisfy. While my menagerie of frequently encountered influencer archetypes is by no means comprehensive—in fact, it’s intended to be tropey, in keeping with our discussion above—you will likely recognize many.

There are the Entertainers, who produce videos, images, podcasts, and other content focused on a topic of interest. There are many different categories: photographers, dancers, writers, cooks, ASMRtists, cultural commentators. They want to entertain their audience, to make them laugh or cry. MrBeast is an Entertainer, trading in videos that mix comedy with tenderness, So is Khaby Lame.

The Explainers produce content on a topic in which they have deep expertise. They may be experts or academics or simply have passionate hobbyists, and they want to share their depth of knowledge and help their audiences make sense of the world. Some prioritize being useful—their audience to make sense of the world. Some prioritize being useful—their audiences make sense of the world. Some prioritize being useful; offering advice, and getting out of the clarea relation; and they may offer problem, someone on YouTube has made a video about how to solve it.

Influencers like the Bestie make themselves, not a topic, the focus of their posts. You’re there to get to know them. They largely stick to personal commentary—sometimes it gets political, but everything is presented in a way that reinforces a trusted friendship with their followers. A lot of younger influencers on TikTok will simultaneously share a new makeup product while talking about a date they went on or their opinion on some social issue. They create a sense of intimacy by sharing (and monetizing) their lives; it’s like reality TV, but in short snippets and with more actual reality. Charli D’Amelio’s TikToks, for example, grant viewers a “candid” glimpse of her coffee habits, her dressing room, her hangouts with friends.

Idols share and monetize their lives as well, but they offer something aspirational, not accessible: a larger-than-life bravado, glamor, excitement. The audience is there to be voyeurs into a truly fabulous life. Idols mimic the stylings of celebrities; each Instagram post could be straight out of a glossy magazine. The main difference is that they control their own content, and having the “day job” of the celebrity—for example, being an actor or musician, which in turn confers fame—is no longer required. They epitomize of Daniel Boorstin’s “famous for being famous” characterization. Why do you know who they are? An algorithm decided you should.

Then there are the Gurus. In a complex, chaotic, and confusing world, secular Gurus are a growing force: they are going to help you. Think of Tim Ferriss, exhorting his two million Twitter followers to sleep this many hours, eat this superfood, and use that psychedelic drug—success, wealth, and health can be yours in just four hours a week. This is not the drop-in type of information the Explainer imparts; it’s a guide for a lifestyle. As with their

legacy offline counterparts, charisma is more important than being on on __ solid ground; one can dismiss epistemologically solid ground; one can simply wave a hand and dismiss the expertise of others—particularly the establishment.28 The expertise is wrong, and if it is right, it is right, it is right for the wrong reasons; conclesom is central to the Guru’s appeal. Grievance is a common undertone: the establishment has conspired to suppress their supposed genius and keep the truth from the people. Their expertise is rarely confirmed by topic; they have a grand unified theory of the universe and the prescience of Cassandra.

A wellness Guru who Instagrams beautiful smoothies also presents herself as an authoritative source of knowledge about 5G technology. The audience may follow for one kind of content but will be taken on a journey through the rest. The Guru is a lunar in a forever position of influence—there are many opportunities to sell what their followers “need,” both informationally and in the form of products. More importantly, however, the Guru meets an emotional need. The world is in turmoil; there is a crushing glut of information, norms are in flux. The Guru offers not only soothing simplification but tangible actions that her followers can take to feel better.29 They can empower themselves, reclaim their agency, make an impact in the world.

As COVID-19 took hold in 2020, there was a notable convergence of wellness Gurus and the QAnon conspiracy theory, which highlights the complex ways in which influencers help propagate narratives across diverse online communities.30 Initially, wellness influencers, particularly on Instagram, had attracted followers who were seeking guidance on physical and mental health, drawn to the holistic lifestyles and alternative therapies the influencers discussed. Many—including the wellness influencers themselves—distrusted mainstream medical experts, the influencers themselves; distrusted mainstream medical experts, rooted in real experiences. That distrust of the established government rooted in real experiences. That distrust of the established in other topics. The pathway became somewhat familiar: description of a nagging feeling that things were not as they seemed, followed by a decision to dig into another type of purported government coverage.

For the women, particularly mothers, real concern about sex trafficking motivated their search for “the truth.” As the Guru herself became convinced, the popular wellness language and beautiful Instagram aesthetic was used to convey fringe beliefs; QAnon theories became interspersed with their usual content about clean living and nutritious baby food.31 The audience often participated quite directly; while some unfollowed, disgusted with this turn toward conspiracy theorizing, others suggested even more outlandish things for the influencer to look into to continue their mutual “awakening.”

Following a Guru as she spreads “forbidden knowledge”—things they don’t want you to know—offers the thrill of uncovering hidden truths. People experience a sense of excitement or hope rather than the disillusionment of their prior experience.32 Conspirituality, as this blend of wellness and conspiracy theorizing came to be called, gave people a sense of power and control over their lives and the world around them,33 even as some came to be immersed in very cultlike bespoke realities.

The Entertainers, Explainers, Idols, and Gurus of the menagerie may talk about politics occasionally or boost causes they care about. But there are species of influencers who are explicitly political, who significantly drive the political discourse, and they will be our focus through much of the rest of this book.

Influencers who are first and foremost partisans—whose content primarily focuses on endorsing a political position, cause, or candidate—who grow their audience around partisan political identity—are a growing force. They play the role of opinion leader, curating content and serving as an avatar for what it means to be a “good” Republican, Democrat, libertarian, neoliberal, socialist, and so forth. Some have deep connections to political elites, such as elected officials and party insiders in positions of power, and come to serve as modern propagandists. Others are good at galvanizing the crowd to action. While they exist on a spectrum with activists, political influencers are not quite the same: they wield their influence to shape political narratives and public opinion, but prioritize the cultivation of their personal brand. Activists, by contrast, are more focused on direct engagement with lawmakers, community mobilization, and action-oriented advocacy to bring about social or political change. While a particular activist may become the face of an issue—like Greta Thunberg for climate change or Chris Rufo for critical race theory—activists keep the focus primarily on the cause, not themselves. They may leverage propaganda, but they are primarily building a movement toward a goal, not an audience for their personal brand.

Among the political influencer archetypes are the Generals—like right-wing provocateur Ali Alexander (whom we will discuss in Chapter 3)—who keep the faction riled up. They are effective at mobilizing factions to act, both online and in the physical world. They fashion themselves as heroes fighting for a cause, and their active interaction with the group offers followers a chance for recognition. They may not actually achieve much—some are just the political version of famous for being famous—but they present themselves as being in the trenches with the crowd. However, their fight is often primarily rhetorical. As we will see, this kind of political influence does not necessarily translate to leadership or accountability if something goes wrong or violence erupts.

The Reflexive Contrarians are also quite adept at rallying the factions, often with a healthy dose of conspiracism. They are the Explainers of a mirror world who capitalize on novelty: everything you know is wrong, and they are going to tell you why. You think you know about a political event, but you were miseducated. You think that the outbreak of Zika was caused by a mosquito, but in reality they were behind it. The Reflexive Contrarians sell counterfeits in the marketplace of ideas. They understand the rumor mill and the tropes that activate it and are adept at the rhetorical stylings used by merchants of doubt in eras past: they’re “just asking questions,” letting insinuation and innuendo do the heavy lifting.36 It’s good to ask questions, after all—Why isn’t mainstream media talking about this? The media lie. Authorities lie. That other political party lies. The universal rejection of an idea by mainstream experts is a ringing endorsement in the mirror world. The Reflexive Contrarians have evolved the paranoid style in American politics: some of their most viral criticisms of elites focus less on tangibles, such as their tax policies, and more on whether or not they are baby-eating pedophiles.

The Propagandists, as they were in the age of mass media, are tightly aligned with a power center or political party. They produce content and work in alignment with politicians and leaders who hold real power. As in media eras past, their content serves to advance the ideological aims of the faction. Today, however, the new Propagandists present as charismatic individuals, not prominent mass media or shadowy public relations figures. These influencers are often closely aligned with hyperpartisan outlets, sometimes taking contributor roles at such outlets, but they remain their own brand. Perhaps most importantly, the new Propagandists develop deep ties to audiences as accessible individuals. They are simultaneously trusted opinion leaders—chatting about their interests, hobbies, the latest article they read—and invisible rulers. It’s a potent mix: they are idol, friend, comrade, and persuader.

Because people still largely associate propaganda with “media,” and political influencers present as individuals, they manage to achieve the reach of media while being perceived as somehow exempt from its incentives. In reality, they may well be true believers of an ideology, but they also benefit financially. Candace Owens, with her unique blend of conservative talking points and lifestyle advice, is a signature Propagandist: magnetic, dogmatic. She got her start producing her own content, was picked up by conservative activist organization Turning Point USA, and eventually became a regular voice on the partisan news site the Daily Wire until the site parted ways with her over antisemitic commentary. Throughout, she has maintained her own brand.

There is a particular undertone to the content of many prominent political influencers, one which draws in audiences and is potent for growing factions of the like-minded. And so, finally, there are the Perpetually Aggrieved, who are also professionally aggrieved. They amass significant clout and massive audiences by channeling the real rage felt by a niche public and exaggerating it to create nihilism and more rage—which they sometimes direct at specific political enemies. The Perpetually Aggrieved have a solid understanding of how platform algorithms drive amplification and a nuanced understanding of how to avoid moderation. Being dinged by the algorithm for inappropriate posts can have long-lasting repercussions for visibility and revenue, so many become vocal opponents of platform content moderation and “free speech absolutists” who work to sway policy in ways favorable to their content. Ironically, these influencers often experience less moderation than ordinary users. Platforms are often hesitant to moderate the most inflammatory and prominent political influencers because their audiences and their aligned political elites will become enraged. There’s a threshold at which influencers become too big to cancel.

The Perpetually Aggrieved have a way with words and memes and a knack for the sort of personalized online dunks that can instantly turn targets into the “Main Character” of the day online. (One astute Twitter user pointed out that each day there is one Main Character on Twitter. “The goal is to never be it.”) They are chroniclers of the last days of morality and the fall of empire, articulating and creating a center of gravity around a sense of injustice felt by many across the political spectrum. Their ability to tap into this very real sense of injustice—which does not exist in a vacuum—is what makes them so resonant. Brace Belden, for example, is a left-wing provocateur who first gained fame chronicling the Syrian civil war on Twitter from the conflict’s frontlines. Today Belden hosts the TrueAnon podcast, which rigorously covers sex offender financier Jeffrey Epstein’s very real crimes—but also leverages them to argue that nearly all institutions are hopelessly corrupt and virtually all elites have the most nefarious of intentions.

Painting with a broad brush is as old as time, and a grain of truth or real justifiable outrage is what makes this kind of content potent: Mass media often doesn’t cover the powerful as forcefully as they should. There is injustice in the world. Highlighting and channeling outrage is critical to the political process, and influencers are very well positioned to do just that. But, as we will discuss in Chapter 8, the unique superpower of some political influencers is an ability to channel that sense of grievance, turning aggrieved factions into online mobs who attack their perceived enemies both online and off.

Clicks, Clout, Capture, and Cash

All of these influencers, from the Entertainers to the Perpetually Aggrieved, are driven by their desire to have some kind of effect on their target audience. They’re also responding to various incentives—including financial. Influencers are looking to earn money and clout—and, particularly in the political sphere, to amass power.

Influencers compete for their audiences’ time, which means that many hop from topic to topic. They generally maintain the same tone—some the sentient fortune cookies, others are rhetorical bomb throwers—and the same degree of confidence, even as they weigh in on everything from the latest celebrity gossip to attempted Russian coups to imploding submarines.¹⁴ This competition, however, leads many to present their opinions in increasingly extreme ways—they have to, in order to grab attention from both algorithms and human followers that reward moral righteousness, provocative claims, and outrageous rhetoric.

As writer Helen Lewis put it while describing online gurus, “the internet is built to enable extremophiles.”⁴² She highlighted Maajid Nawaz as one example. Nawaz hopscotched from membership in a political Islamist group (during which he was imprisoned in Egypt), to anxiety-extremism activist and advisor to the UK government (at one point falsely accused of being anti-Muslim by the Southern Poverty Law Center),⁴³ to heterodox intellectual, attempted-politician (he was not elected), and talk radio host. He lost his radio host position in January 2022 after nearly a year of recurring conspiracy theorizing: he’d opined that COVID-19 lockdowns were a “global fraud” perpetrated by the Chinese Communist Party, propagated some truly outlandish claims about the 2020 US presidential election, and repeatedly argued that various world events were connected to a “New World Order.”

In response to his contract ending, Nawaz started a Substack newsletter, Radical Media, and encouraged his followers to subscribe, saying that it was now his family’s source of income. Nawaz’s livelihood, in other words, was now being provided directly by an audience interested in Maajid Nawaz, Investigator of Conspiracies. As one astute analyst of social media dynamics summarized the situation, “Instead of performing real investigation, he [Nawaz] is now merely playing the role of investigator for his audience, a role that requires drama rather than diligence, and which can lead only to his audience’s desired conclusions.”

Nawaz also became quite vocal about how media and Facebook were silencing him (Facebook had labeled some of his posts); the Wrongly Censored Truth-Teller is a popular and highly monetizable figure today. He currently has 509,800 followers on Twitter and tens of thousands of subscribers on Substack. During the week of a submarine imploding while taking people to view the Titanic and Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin marching a mercenary army on Moscow, Nawaz simply declared both events to be scams, willfully boosted by mass media.⁴⁶

Feminist writer Naomi Klein has beautifully described this process of influencers and audiences mutually shaping each other, using the case of Naomi Wolf, Klein’s self-described “doppelganger” and another prominent extremophile who fell deeply into the mirror world of COVID-19 conspiracy theories: “By claiming to possess some secret piece of knowledge that she alone had uncovered, and by claiming she was being terribly persecuted by daring to share it, she was able to insert herself in the middle of countless trending cultural conversations. Where there was heat, there was her.”⁴⁷ Although most on the outside see descent into a bespoke reality as a fall, the influencers who go down this path still get engagement and influence people. They are still doing what they set out to do: capturing attention, accruing clout, and earning a living.

Influencers of all stripes—even the most dignified—can feel the allure of producing sensational content and capturing audience engagement. I’ve been lucky enough to get to know a few top-notch science and health creators with millions of followers. They’re truly passionate about their work and bubble over with enthusiasm while describing their projects. They are motivated by a deep sense of mission: to teach the world cool things about science and to serve as educators and communicators who make complex concepts accessible and entertaining. They are extraordinarily creative, and they work very, very hard.

They will also tell you that sometimes it’s audiences who do the capturing. Influencers are acutely aware of their engagement metrics, because creating content is their livelihood. It is a struggle, sometimes, to remain true to their vision and eschew putting out spicier takes or clickbait titles that they don’t love but which they know will get that extra algorithmic lift. This is the realm of audience capture⁴⁸—a feedback loop in which creators produce content their audiences will approve of and gradually begin to internalize it themselves (the fate of Guitar Guy in this book’s introduction). That feedback loop spins and spins and can drive a content creator into a particular niche that’s difficult to escape, taking them in a completely inauthentic or extreme direction. They are aware that they have to continue producing more and more sensational content to keep earning a living, because the audiences looking for outrage and conspiracy content are hard to keep satisfied—if they get a sense that the creator is fully aligned with their ideology, they will depart for something more extreme or someone else willing to reinforce their beliefs. This is how an influencer who starts off as an Explainer talking about some anodyne topic—wellness, cooking, yoga—becomes a Reflexive Contrarian ranting on about GMO crop cover-ups, if it gets them a lot more views.

As these influencers find the community that takes them seriously and even financially supports them, they change, becoming ever more what their audience seems to want them to be. It’s sometimes hard to tell, as an outsider, whether they’ve had a genuine conversion or are driven more by financial incentives than deeply held beliefs. Ultimately, their fans will make the call, and they will succeed or fail.

Audience capture happens as a result of influencers’ desire to grow their following. They want to grow their audience, because large audiences enable them to earn more money, accrue more power, and get more clout. These things, too, are related. As Naomi Klein put it, “Clout is the value-free currency of the always-online age—both a substitute for hard cash as well as a conduit to it.”As these influencers find the community that takes them seriously and even financially supports them, they change, becoming ever more what their audience seems to want them to be. It’s sometimes hard to tell, as an outsider, whether they’ve had a genuine conversion or are driven more by financial incentives than deeply held beliefs. Ultimately, their fans will make the call, and they will succeed or fail.

In fact, many people who have followed influencers or been active users of social media for years still don’t understand how the people whose content they see every day get paid—and, in some cases, get extraordinarily rich—by posting online. Influencers, even those with followings nearly as large as broadcasters, style themselves differently than media, emphasizing their ordinariness, relatability, and authenticity. Because they seem like ordinary people, even those who understand that media incentives shape coverage—including those most concerned about “corporate media”—rarely stop to wonder about how influencers’ incentives are shaping what they post or talk about.

Influencers make money in several ways. Some have their own domains and use their social media profiles and content to direct people to visit their websites. They can monetize site traffic with ads or simply sell “merch” (branded products), like Charli D’Amelio’s hoodies, T-shirts, or tote bags.

(“i hope we have just the right collection of product to create your vibe,” she writes invitingly.)¹ Some platforms, like Instagram, enable merch selling right in the app. Influencers can also monetize their social media channels and content directly. When MrBeast posts a video to YouTube, YouTube shows one or two short ads before the video plays. MrBeast gets part of this revenue from YouTube. The more people who watch the content, the more money the creator earns as the platforms share the ad revenue. About nine months after Elon Musk purchased Twitter, he introduced a similar model to the platform: the Creator Ads Revenue Sharing program.² Twitter began giving certain influencers—initially right-wing political influencers that Elon Musk regularly engaged with—a percentage of the advertising profits generated by their content. The lucky few in the pilot tweeted screenshots showing monthly incomes of between $1,000 and $20,000.³ The program was eventually opened to more users, and many of the payouts began to decline.

And then, of course, there are highly sought-after sponsorships. Influencer marketing is now a fairly established strategy for brands, who recognize that these opinion leaders, trusted by their audiences, have the power to shape culture and drive purchasing decisions.⁴ They “sponsor” posts with influencers who speak to audiences that they care about. A young mom, posting photos of her messy-but-adorable children on Instagram, sponsored by Tide. A teenage girl, doing a mascara tutorial on YouTube, backed by Maybelline. You get the idea. Subtle product placements and word-of-mouth endorsements were a novel change from slickly produced ads and celebrity spokespeople. A big brand might pay $10,000 to a decent-sized influencer for a two-minute sponsorship pitch at the start of a video and offer the creator a revenue-sharing affiliate link—a code to give viewers or readers that lets the brand track how many new customers click through and purchase the product. The company can see how many sales the influencer delivers while also letting the influencer earn a cut of the profit. It’s very low lift for a creator, who is then also still able to monetize the rest of the video with ads. Collabs—cobranded collections with prominent brands—are another way to generate buzz.

Companies pursue influencers in part because audiences report thinking highly of them. One recent study by Pew Research Center found that three in ten adult social media users have purchased something after seeing an influencer post about it. I’ve certainly bought meal kits and kids’ toys promoted by mom influencers on multiple occasions. Edelman’s 2022 Trust Barometer reported that 67 percent of respondents changed their lifestyle in the last six months because of an influencer they followed, such as starting a new hobby, trying a new beauty style, or supporting a cause. It also found that 58 percent who followed influencers reported trusting what they said about brands even when they were paid.

A large audience can equal a lot of money; in 2019, brands were paying upward of $50,000 to top influencers to make videos promoting their products—or shaming their rivals’ goods. Those with truly incredible reach, like Khaby Lame, were reportedly able to command $350,000 for a post in 2022.⁵⁸ The Top 50 Creators on the Forbes 2022 Influencer List—which featured Charli D’Amelio right up at the top—have a combined 11 billion followers and in aggregate made $570 million.

Contributor relationships are another avenue: some prominent political influencers produce their own content but move in and out of relationships with niche media outlets. One such political influencer is Steven Crowder, the right-wing provocateur of YouTube and Rumble. In January 2023, Crowder published a YouTube video of himself outraged, accusing conservative media outlet the Daily Wire of offering him a “slave contract.” The deal would, in his telling, gag him and prevent him from speaking the truth to his audience. But Crowder’s adversarial rhetoric and the attention his allegations attracted inadvertently revealed a much different reality. The “slave contract” simply compelled him to create content that wouldn’t be demonetized—as he had been on several occasions—and it would have netted him $50 million. Being a political provocateur can be quite lucrative.

These are the cream of the crop, of course, but there is a very long tail of nano-influencers who make much less, yet still pull in respectable livings or supplements to their income. Influencer marketing platforms that connect massive brands like Clorox and Nike to databases of influencers sprung up in the mid- to late 2010s and still operate today.

And yet, talking about the financial perks—and the incentives they create—is a tightrope walk for influencers who want to project authenticity.

The wellness influencer getting a cut from the essential oil she’s touting prefers to keep the focus on how she’s teaching her fans to live their most natural, best lives. The seemingly amateur political vlogger is just sharing his thoughts, though his monetized YouTube channel brings in revenue per view, incentivizing him to make the most attention-grabbing videos possible.

Dark Monetization

Laurence Scott’s history of the influencer “from Shakespeare to Instagram,” published in the New Yorker, noted the emerging power—and danger—of influencers in 2019. Writing during the days of the Donald Trump presidency and Robert Mueller’s report, Scott observed, “It’s no accident that the term [influencer] has entered the lexicon at the same moment that influence of a different sort has become a geopolitical weapon of unprecedented proportions. The social-media influencer has an eerie double in the hacker who covertly shapes political discourse.”¹

The methods that Scott describes for marketing—like influencers’ murky commercial relationships with brands and politicians—echo Bernays’s argument that invisible rulers create demand for everything from shoes to candidates. It is not a surprise to most people today that political candidates reach out to high-follower influencers, seeking promotion to their niche audiences. Indeed, during the 2016 election cycle, the Trump and Bernie Sanders campaigns engaged heavily with social media influencers to help with messaging and capturing attention.² One strategy was to use influencers and their crowds to help get things trending and inform media coverage. The efforts were largely invisible; outreach happened via text messages and direct messaging groups. Then, in the 2020 Democratic Party primary, Michael Bloomberg paid Instagram influencers to publish tongue-in-cheek posts in support of his campaign.³ The effort was funny, and there was no attempt to conceal it, but it prompted questions about how audiences would know, going forward, whether a political post was sponsored (since influencers are not always the best at disclosure).

Databases similar to the influencer marketing platforms mentioned above also exist for political efforts. In July 2022 I received an interesting phone call from Ben Wofford, a reporter at Wired. He was looking into a Virginia-based marketing firm called Urban Legend, which enabled influencers to sign up and participate in paid political advertising campaigns. Urban Legend’s website made no secret of the fact that the firm saw political advocacy as a natural fit for influencers who wanted to earn some money off their audiences while calling attention to a cause or policy they supported. “Meet the Lobbyist Next Door,” Ben titled his eventual article.

Urban Legend staff combed the Internet looking for the “right” influencers who enjoyed resonance and trust within a particular niche. Reach was secondary, subordinate to the influencers’ understanding of how to communicate with their audiences. Interested influencers identified by the team could sign up with Urban Legend and were given access to look over client campaigns—clients ranged from labor union SEIU to the conservative Heritage Foundation and the National Republican Senate Committee—that they could participate in. Influencers interested in a campaign received a brief detailing the key points they had to make and an action they’d ask their followers to take: like a page, sign a petition, and so forth. To track their conversions, Urban Legend gave each influencer a unique link with a special tracking code that connected the action to the influencer’s specific post. (Social media companies and the Federal Trade Commission [FTC] require that this affiliate marketing be disclosed, but no one is responsible for enforcement.)

Ben had uncovered a particular URL format, known as a shortener, that made it possible to find posts specifically tied to Urban Legend campaigns. He’d gone looking at some of the posts that bore the special affiliate URL code but didn’t disclose it. He was interested in tracking down more and was curious about how this operation compared to other affiliate efforts. Was this new for politics? Should it be regulated?

I’d seen affiliate campaigns before, often undisclosed. For a while they were popular with health pseudoscience communities. Ty and Charline Bollinger produced one quack webinar series, titled The Truth About Cancer, and amassed millions of followers and views by encouraging other pseudoscience pages to boost their content and paying them affiliate fees. The Bollingers followed on this success with a subsequent webinar series,The Truth About Vaccines. The pages that shared it, including those of prominent anti-vaccine leaders like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Children's Health Defense foundation, made it sound like they were genuinely enthusiastic. Maybe they were. But they also didn't disclose that they were getting paid, sometimes a lot, to boost the content. One affiliate participant reported income of $240,000. The sharer's audiences, meanwhile, were paying the Bollingers for the content.

After chatting with Ben, I pulled up a tool called CrowdTangle, which Facebook makes available to journalists and researchers who want to search public Facebook posts for particular types of data. I searched for the unique URL shortener that Urban Legend had used, and up came hundreds of posts by very famous political influencers, media figures, and elites. Benny Johnson of right‑wing media property Newsmax had posted a Twitter thread culminating in a petition to support pilots against vaccine mandates that cumulatively received over 24,600 likes and 7,900 retweets. Diamond & Silk, the pro‑Trump influencer sisters who were frequent guests at his rallies, had posted several campaigns to their Facebook page. Dan Scavino, Laura Ingraham, Donald Trump Jr. posted numerous exhortations: join the “war against CRT,” tell Democrats to secure the border, protect parental rights in schools, all positions that he likely authentically holds. But there was no indication to his followers that in these cases he was positioned to profit from sharing those URLs. Indeed, some of the links posted by the influencers percolated around the internet as their followers shared them along, unwittingly helping the influencer earn even more money in a kind of information cascade pyramid scheme, while making none themselves. The political Left, of course, participates as well; the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State was on Urban Legend’s public client list, and a handful of left‑leaning institutions and influencers appeared among those sharing the links on Facebook.

Influence, activism, and profit are increasingly intertwined. The line between authentic enthusiasm versus paid promotion blurs the line between content and propaganda. It’s not subterfuge per se—but when online presence is monetizable, truth/untruth and interest/disinterest lie along a spectrum. The influencer may genuinely believe what he’s saying but is also benefiting financially or gathering more attention (which increases future monetization potential). The influencer is therefore incentivized to promote the causes that their followers will respond positively to, even if they themselves are not true believers. What matters is that the audience believes they are being authentic.

Urban Legend is just one of many companies and political organizations shaping (and responding to) the incentives of the present communications ecosystem. In 2021 researchers found that groups like Turning Point USA and Prager University (both conservative) and The 99 Problems (liberal) were funding what amounted to political ads masquerading as organic content on TikTok, despite TikTok’s avowed ban on political ads. And in 2023, the Texas Tribune published an exposé about Influenceable LLC, “a fledgling company… that recruits young, conservative social media figures to promote political campaigns and films without disclosing their business relationship.”

There's very little transparency around the money flowing through the

influencer ecosystem. From a basic consumer-protection point of view, this

is not good: when we see a video touting, say, a pair of headphones, we

should know whether the praise is real enthusiasm or a compensated

testimonial. If the content is political—calls to sign a petition or call your representative about some prescription drug bill—it's even more important to understand if the position is paid for by a political action committee or a company.

This is not, of course, a new challenge; celebrities have endorsed

products for centuries.69 And, indeed, in 2009, as influencer marketing

began to boom, the FTC created what was described as the "mommy-

blogger" rule (blogs started by mom influencers were a big deal at the

time): any blogger receiving any form of compensation from a company the

blogger was reviewing had to disclose it "clearly and conspicuously."70

This was, interestingly, distinct from rules for celebrities: in 2012 an FTC

commissioner argued, "Everybody understands that a celebrity is not going

to be in an ad for a product unless they're paid to do that."71 However, even

as influencer marketing continued to grow, the rule didn't involve any plan

for finding rule breakers (short of responding to news exposés of egregious

violations or searching for potentially harmful products such as

medicine). Since there was minimal enforcement, and it fell to influencers

to proactively disclose, most simply did not.23 In the decade since, the FTC has issued updated disclosure guidance for social media influencers several times,24 but still doesn’t seem to be doing much enforcement.25 And so, it was not much of a surprise to see the political influencers of Urban Legend not being transparent either. However, as more and more of our political discourse happens on platforms built for commece and powered by advertising, the blending of personal expression and commerical and political speech is at the forefront of legal and regulatory debates.

From Five Filters to Four Fire Emoji

Sponsorships, ad revenue sharing, and—in the case of political influencers—even dark money schemes are all prevalent online today. But joining their ranks more recently is another monetization option that sidesteps the transparency issue entirely: subscriptions.

Subscriptions are hardly a novel idea: newspapers and magazines have relied on them since the nineteenth century. But grafting that model onto the modern influencer ecosystem is a new—and wildly profitable—development. Today, adult performers on OnlyFans and pop culture pundits on Patreon can earn comfortable salaries from their content, even if it reaches a relatively small audience. Substack newsletters—featuring everything from salad recipes to economics commentary to 9/11 truther content (classified under “education”)—are a burgeoning outlet for creators. An influencer with an audience of just two thousand, each paying $5 a month, can bring in around $100,000 per year (Substack currently takes a 10 percent cut; OnlyFans takes 20 percent).

Whatever the kink—from nudes to recipes to conspiracy theories—consumers can find their niche, sponsor it, and share its output across the internet.

Subscription models, particularly on Substack, have been especially fruitful for the media-of-one figures we mentioned earlier: individuals who brand themselves not as influencers but as journalists of the Fifth Estate. Using social media infrastructure, a lone pundit can operate with the veneer of a traditional newsroom: slick branding, daily newsletters, and other affordances. Of course, the trappings of a traditional newsroom—fact checkers, discerning editors, ethics policies—are absent. Since social media platforms reduce the cost of providing commentary but not the costs of investigative journalism, these outlets are primarily editorial pages, staffed with one voice and absent the rest of the newspaper. Creators, however, deeply understand that making content for a niche offers a path to attention, revenue, and clout.

The media-of-one figures who focus on politics and the culture wars regularly position themselves as anti–Big Media; as intrepid Davids battling entrenched Goliaths like network news stations and newspapers of record. This is not an accidental strategy; it is one that Bernays described in his book Crystallizing Public Opinion, which preceded Propaganda and describes instruments and techniques for molding the public mind. Invisible rulers, he argues, are most effective when they discredit not only a specific idea but also the authority that promulgates it. “The counsel on public relations,” Bernays writes, “after examination of the sources of established beliefs, must either discredit the old authorities or create new authorities by making articulate a mass opinion against the old belief or in favor of the new.”78 Fundamentally undermining the trust and legitimacy of the old authorities opens the door not only for one new idea but for whatever the newly trusted emergent authorities want to convey going forward.

And while David versus Goliath makes for a neat narrative, it is also deeply untruthful. Media-of-one Glenn Greenwald reportedly earned around $2 million from Substack each year;79 a staff editor at the New York Times can expect to make about $100,000 annually. (And Substack was just one of Greenwald’s revenue streams; he also has a Rumble channel with 450,000 followers, a YouTube channel, and in 2023 migrated his print audience to Locals, Rumble’s Substack competitor.)80 The new independent media, the Fifth Estate, may wish to represent themselves as anti-elite, but they are in fact simply a new elite, dominating a new system of shaping public opinion.And while David versus Goliath makes for a neat narrative, it is also deeply untruthful. Media-of-one Glenn Greenwald reportedly earned around $2 million from Substack each year;79 a staff editor at the New York Times can expect to make about $100,000 annually. (And Substack was just one of Greenwald’s revenue streams; he also has a Rumble channel with 450,000 followers, a YouTube channel, and in 2023 migrated his print audience to Locals, Rumble’s Substack competitor.)80 The new independent media, the Fifth Estate, may wish to represent themselves as anti-elite, but they are in fact simply a new elite, dominating a new system of shaping public opinion.

Media-of-one figures are still beholden to incentives. They remain at the mercy of Noam Chomsky’s five filters, just slightly updated for the digital age. For example, patronage may depend on patrons, not advertisers. Yet, deviate from what the patrons want, and you lose subscribers—and money. Double down on what they want—embrace the audience capture—and the till remains full. There is little incentive to create content for everyone—catering to a distinct niche that will boost and promote you makes more economic sense. Meanwhile, the “flak” that Chomsky-era media once feared is now coveted. Patrons love drama, and so every political newsletter, every scoop, is encouraged to be explosive and combative. In fact, Substack initially recruited creators to its platform based on how engaged their followings were on Twitter, ranking them on a scale of between one and four “fire emojis.”

The other filters have been reoriented as well. Sourcing concerns are less about appeasing the powerful and more about platforming those who reinforce patrons’ worldviews. Constellations of ideologically similar creators guest on each other’s podcasts or cross-post on each other’s Substacks. And fear of the other—the worthy versus the unworthy victim—remains a potent filter but is now incredibly granular. It’s no longer the United States versus the Communists; the “unworthy” party is the mom down the street who has different political opinions about charter schools.

The negative effects of these incentives are self-evident; just like Chomsky’s original five filters, the contemporary incentives breed manipulation and misdirection. But rather than creating a single filtered picture of reality, this system enables a galaxy of bespoke realities.

In the 1920s, Walter Lippmann and John Dewey worried about the dangers of irreconcilably fractured publics and stressed the need for a shared understanding of the world. A century later, that objective seems impossible. The public fractures further every day, “coming together” only to assail each other in factional warfare. And while the propaganda machine of mass media was indeed manipulative, it is hard to see what we have now as objectively better. Relentless online propaganda, now at the niche level, entrenches people within bespoke realities, diminishing the chance of bridging perspectives and reaching consensus.

Although influencers are still closely associated with dance videos, e-commerce, and marketing, their role in shaping public opinion—especially around politics—is outsized. Influencers can harness attention, radiate trust, evoke emotion, and direct energy—all to great effect. They capitalize on atmospheric vibes and intuitions, giving people the right evidence to substantiate what they feel intuitively.

Influencers may present themselves as the every(wo)man: Khaby Lame, MrBeast, Candace Owens, and Keffals appear to be just like us, broadcasting from their living rooms and posting goofy memes. Or they present themselves as plucky Davids: Glenn Greenwald appears to run on movie alone.

But by all measures of influence that matter, they are Goliaths. Influencers are very much a new elite, born of the present information age. They shape the culture not through older establishment power centers, like universities or media, but by forging a new space.

In his New Yorker piece, Laurence Scott aptly summarizes both species of influencer, the apolitical and political: “Both flourish in our increasingly networked world, in which digital influence is sharply double-edged—salable commodity and a threat to democracy, a commercial dream and a political nightmare.”

ស្វែងរកប្លុកនេះ

Invisible Rulers

Gurus, Besties, and propagandists

មតិយោបល់

ប្រកាសផ្សាយមតិយោបល់

ប្រកាសដ៏ពេញនិយមពីប្លុកនេះ

2. If You Make It Trend, You Make It True: Influencers, Algorithms, and Crowds

The Crowd Contagion, Consensus, and the Power of the Collective

Gurus, Besties, and propagandists

មតិយោបល់

ប្រកាស​ផ្សាយ​មតិយោបល់

ប្រកាស​​ដ៏​ពេញនិយម​ពី​ប្លុក​នេះ

2. If You Make It Trend, You Make It True: Influencers, Algorithms, and Crowds

The Crowd Contagion, Consensus, and the Power of the Collective

ប្រកាសផ្សាយមតិយោបល់

ប្រកាសដ៏ពេញនិយមពីប្លុកនេះ