There are two kinds of influencers. First are the visionaries who can move a crowd into action, or inaction, simply with their presence. They inspire or provoke, invigorate or sometimes placate, and their thoughts and ideas get transmitted to the teeming millions which then fan the flames of social change.
Then, there is the other type, the kind you find online who have no less than four-digit likes on every post, mostly from people living in distant, obscure countries. But what happens once Instagram switches off that metric? Just like felled trees in silent woods, does it really matter if you put up a post but can’t show the ‘organic’ (read: paid) likes for it? How will you tell if a person is an ‘influencer’ then? How will they themselves know? Here’s how to spot them:
1. Content creator: Blogger is passé and influencer is a dirty word, like foodie. Today, everybody online is a content creator, no matter that the ‘content’ is a mug shot from a mildly different angle five times a day. As a general rule, an influencer must have more stories than the latest Vogue issue. Every day.
2. Discount code: Are you really worthy if your name can’t get lesser mortals a 10% discount somewhere? In Delhi, however, this is not a big deal because knowing someone’s dad’s name can even keep you out of jail, so…
3. Daniel Wellington: A chief influencer trait is that they can sell their souls many times over, so they will market anything — from a cheap cosmetic to a luxury vacation. But you haven’t truly arrived if you haven’t done a campaign with the ubiquitous Daniel Wellington, discount coupon et al.
4. Comments: You know you are seeing the page of an influencer when a majority of the comments on their posts are from other similar influencers, showering praise endless. Of course, there is reciprocity, it is an unwritten code of sorts; this is nepotism at its politest and most socially visual.
5. Posts: Apart from the fact that no more than 10% of the posts can feature a mug (or body shot) of you, there also must be a post about dieting, weight loss, or applying make-up, and that last one preferably with a slick hyper-lapse routine.
6. Emojis: There has to be a few posts accompanied only by emojis. If not, then the responses to received comments should be in emojis, conveying that either one is too busy for grammar or else is fluent in Klingon.
7. Birthdays: It is beneath an influencer, albeit the younger Gen-Z lot, to use the word birthday, especially since they are used to receiving a gift a day as it is. Instead, they keep it ‘subtle’, like “Wish me on…” or subtler still, “Blow candles on…”. All class!
8. Quotes: Speaking of Gen-Z, since an entire generation of millennials never focussed on language and literature — speaking in abbreviations like FOMO and YOLO — these new tots on the block think it their duty to revive it. Sadly, they have the linguistic skills of a juvenile Bonobo monkey, often demonstrated in quotes accompanying their posts which manage to be literal and guttural at the same time. No, I can’t furnish examples, we have standards to uphold.
This column is for anyone who gives an existential toss.
