In our wondrous era you keep reading lines about this or that person, generally on the youngish side, being a noted and significant “influencer.” I suppose some in the golden-oldie age group, me included, wouldn’t mind knowing exactly what such an occupation entails, and how one sets about becoming one. To lay it more simply on the line: what exactly IS an influencer? In terms of me alone, I ask the question, knowing it generally involves social media or podcasts, and a new sort of salesmanship, I suppose; but really, I don’t want an exact answer! Snooty, old-fashioned, out of it? Probably…
This whole trend, a sorry one in my doubtless hasty view, reminds me of old jokes that could use new riffs based on this novel métier now so pervasively hyped. Want to hear one?
It’s about a proud grandma in Miami (when grandmas used to look authentically aged), introducing her two grandchildren to a bystander. She points to the three-year old, clearly beaming, and declaring emphatically: “THIS is the lawyer,” and then to the one who’s four: “THIS is the doctor!” I know, I know — it’s a truly dated joke, and one I’ve also put forward here with my own tweaks.
Here’s another of the same ilk: Susan (we’ll give her the full name of Susan Sheila Kahn) has made it past all the hurdles to become no less than America’s first female president! Over and over she begs her mother to attend the inauguration, but that old-fashioned lady pleads a lack of suitable attire, feeling this venue would simply be too “shmancy” for her. Thankfully, however, she overcomes her hesitations, and there she is as the oath gets administered in cold D.C. weather of late January.
Then a well-clad admirer comes over to this newly-famed mother, declaring something like: “You must be so proud of your daughter’s great achievement!” To which the perplexed mom replies: “My daughter, Susan? Not her so much … but my SON, the doctor!”
These days, and beyond my own embellishments here, it could become “my son, the influencer?” Is it possible? Could there even be a movie made on the subject? With mothers and grandmas, as well as aunts and uncles, and long-retired card-playing friends, proud as well, but maybe wondering (as I do) just what an influencer can be; and why such a calling has become so crucial to the health and well-being of our civilization.
Wouldn’t it be more useful to be an LNG or steel manufacturer, or an accomplished electrician, roofer, plumber, snow plower, nurse? Or a New York fashion designer, or at a supposedly lower level, a tailor (fewer and fewer of those sadly about now); or…
I was going to add pro basketball player, but due to betting scams, team tanking problems, and the rest, I might append that one to our occupational litany with a small asterisk beside it. Ditto for some of the financial specialists, hedge fund-meisters, “consultants,” and so forth who sometimes verge on being demi- hucksters like … well, like influencers? (Whatever THEY are…)
You can tell I keep asking this question over and over, but as noted above, don’t really desire the answer! What then of the etiology here, i.e.: why have these “influencers” hit so big? One obvious reason: the fact that we’ve become such an over-the-top, online civilization. Which was bound to spawn new job descriptions and life orientations, right?
In other words, get with the program, pal! Why be so flummoxed by this recent trend? Grow up, be today, not yesterday, stop crying in the beer over the era of Doris Day and Rosie Clooney, Bing and Bob, Jerry and Dean et al.
Points well-taken, I’d say, and given that we must all heed certain politically correct norms these days, I promise that the next time someone coos enthusiastically re his/her offspring, “the influencer,” I’ll make suitable cooing sounds back, and look very impressed, indeed! Promise…