Under the Influencer

When I was a somewhat shorter and more energetic grade school aged person, my elders often told me that getting old was a mistake, and I shouldn’t do it. Always one to listen, I did my best by living capriciously and remaining as immature as possible for as long as I could. If one were to ask among the trail of people who have put up with me over the years, one would likely be told that I did a pretty good job. Unfortunately, I continued to age, and the foretold effects of doing so have come to pass. Being tired all the time, paying taxes, forgetting things, knowing for a fact that music used to be better, all of it.
     And you know what? Mostly, it’s not so bad. Sure, sure, I was forced to realize I’m not immortal and had to quit smoking and can’t drink twelve beers in an evening without wishing I was dead the next day and have to make sure I pay for health insurance, but I also get to have breakfast for dinner whenever I want, and no one makes me practice my penmanship.
     Also, I made it to a point where I found out there are people online called “influencers”, and instead of getting mad and ranting about it, I can laugh and rant about it instead.
     Now, I know being at this age also means I most likely learned about this after most everyone else, but just in case you’re not aware: there’s a “job” called an “influencer” wherein popular social media people are paid to promote some unnecessary junk or other, and then their viewers- or to use the more accepted and deeply foreboding term, “followers”- buy said junk.
     What this means is that people who started posting videos of themselves on the internet in order to get attention are being rewarded financially for doing so, and nothing could be more exemplary of the world today. Not only is it somehow okay to be a human commercial, but it’s a position people strive for and envy. People even try and peddle their influence as currency, asking people with actual creative talent to make and do things for free, in exchange for a “shout out”, which is probably an obsolete term, but no way am I going to get so invested in this as to find out. It is vexing to me, and wrong, that people are now trying to become the thing we hated most about watching television in the first place. Remember when everyone stopped watching regular television and started watching these streaming services because they (back then) didn’t have as many commercials?
     I remember, and I’ll tell you this, friends and neighbors: not once did I find myself envious of Mr. Clean, or the Domino’s Noid, or the Keebler Elves, or Toucan Sam. When exactly did being a corporate mascot become a career goal?
     I have to believe this is a direct result of our habit of making people famous for no reason other than their willingness to be terrible on camera. We’ve paid to watch people eat gross things, live and fight with their romantic competitors, participate in children’s beauty pageants, be intentionally terrible to their family members, and so many other morally empty things that now we look at a computer generated lizard selling us car insurance and think, “maybe if I get enough attention for falling down, I could get a job like that.”
     Although I have to admit, these days, it is a safer bet than going to college.
-John