Influencer or preacher?

The new preachers

A preacher and an influencer are having a drink. The preacher says, "I preach the book of truth." The influencer thinks for a moment, "The truth of an ancient influencer, you should upgrade!". Yes, beliefs can change over time, unless they are facts. Fire burns, that's an easy one to check yourself. Walk on water? ... not so much! That a belief is a thousand years old does not make it any more true than today's influencers' words. No matter how many millions of people believe, it is still not a fact until proven or demonstrated, and magic does not count!

Influencers are modern-day preachers

The televangelists of the 1980s and 1990s were the first modern influencers, leveraging the reach of cable television networks in the same way that influencers are leveraging the reach of social media today. Strong words and impressive visuals always impress the audience ... for fame and money, the televangelists had wild fund raisings accompanied by constant begging, the influencers count the viewers and the click-throughs. They both understand how to turn a belief into truth with enough followers to affirm that belief without challenge. The more followers one has, the stronger the belief will be. But televangelists were another level: they were so good, people were begging to hand money to them, while most influencers are generally satisfied with you clicking on something that will earn them money from advertisers. Televangelists, like Benny Hinn (look him up), or "the top 10 influencers of lies and scams" (entertaining search results) all follow the same model: outlandish claims appealing to greed or gullibility.

Are influencers getting a bad rap?

Well, labeling oneself as an "influencer" is saying: "I want to influence people", which, before the social media era, would be called trendsetters or preachers. While there are always good people everywhere wanting to do the right thing, including on social media, achieving influencer status with millions of followers is not going to happen with boring facts. It takes much bigger and brighter carrots to excite a crowd. So, the bigger the influencer is, the more skeptical you ought to be about the claims and beliefs they are influencing you with.

Common lies and scams

The most common claims without any basis of fact or truth are about health, fitness, diets, and getting rich! That last one is possibly the most common: click my buttons because I am rich and you are not. Fitness and diets are not far behind, for exactly the same reason: I am fit and you are not. Follow me, admire me, help me get famous so I can make more money. But it is not always only about money, it can get far more nefarious, going down the road of cultism behavior where the benefit to the influencer is not so obvious, and most likely devious.

When in doubt

Use your critical thinking to assess the claims, to check the beliefs against facts, to identify their motivation. And what's in it for you? Are you learning or gaining anything from the time you spend watching these influencers?