Sue MurphyI saw a news segment last week about a professor who was offering a college class designed to teach students how to be “influencers.” The story went on to say that the students would be trained in how to gain large amounts of followers on various social media platforms.
The thing that struck me was that not once did the professor mention what the students were going to say. Like it didn’t matter.
I get it. Being in the “Watch me! Watch me!” position can be intoxicating. “Follow me! Follow me!” even more. And apparently, now you can make big money online by being somebody that people want to watch do … well, anything. I’m sure it’s fun to coerce a bunch of people to do your 30-second cha-cha dance but easy to forget that, while you’ve got your followers in the palm of your hand, they are not somewhere else. Those are moments of their finite lives that they have ceded to you, which makes you not only their leader, but their caretaker. You’ve persuaded these people to follow you; you have, let’s face it, been wrong on occasion, so it might behoove you to do some serious self-editing before you put something out into the ether, with your name on it, for heaven sakes.
Careless misdirection, even meant in jest, could have dire consequences. The ice bucket challenge was harmless enough, but the suggestion that it would be funny to dismantle public restrooms was worse than irresponsible, it was criminal. You don’t want to be on the record – or get a record – for that.
Maybe, before you ask people to follow you, you should take a minute to ponder what you would like to be the outcome of the power and fame that you are seeking, for college credit, I might add.
Perhaps you could put that horse back before the cart and begin by crafting your message. If you want, you could start with an exercise I used with some sixth grade writing students. (You can audit this course.) I asked the kids to imagine they were going to be allowed to speak to a large group of people of their choosing, given time to say anything they wanted to, and everyone there would have to listen. The kids set to work with their spiral notebooks and pens and when they were done, each one wanted to talk about some wrong that they had observed – cliques and bullying or unfairness of certain teachers. They got a glimpse of themselves as people capable of altering an outcome and set about doing that with great earnestness. They edited and reedited, and at the end of the term, when we published our chapbook, the words went out to empower their classmates.
Maybe you can’t change the world with your tweets or TikTok videos or Instagram posts, but maybe, just maybe, you could tilt things in a more positive direction. It just helps to know exactly what you want that to look like.
If you are currently in a place where what you want is to undermine and ridicule, hold off. You’re not ready. You could bring fresh harm to yourself and others, and even if you go on to be Mother Teresa, your posts will never, never go away.
We need influencers. We need leaders, but please, lead where you feel like your followers would be better off being. Before you look for the power, (even for college credit) look in your heart for a worthy message.
English (US)