All that you need is a bunch of followers who keep liking, and commenting on, your posts

In this age of hustle culture, a breed of new-age professionals are on the rise, and are called social media influencers. They are the cool-looking, working-from-home smart individuals who lure the youngsters to join the ranks. Fame, money, success, you name it! They have it all.

But what real ability do they have to influence others? That’s a million-dollar question.

The fact is most of these influencers are studying in college, dumped college, or passed college only to become an influencer.

Earlier it was considered that to influence you have to first learn, then you have to implement, and then you might come in front of the public to present your opinion and experiences. We would have thought of influencers as mostly social activists, intellectuals, politicians, or change-makers in society. Not that those people ever claimed to make an influence on the ordinary but they had the natural ability in them to make an impact on others.

Gone are the days! Now is the time of the self-proclaimed influencers. Buy a cheap bookshelf and 50 books from Amazon and become a book reviewer on YouTube. Start writing on LinkedIn and claim yourself as a writer. Put some of your brilliantly filtered photos on Instagram and inform people that you are a model, a blogger, or whatever. And yes, you are there! You are an influencer.

It doesn’t matter what influence you have as long as you have a bunch of followers who keep liking and commenting on your posts, and brands approach you to endorse products. These days becoming a “public figure” is not that difficult thanks to social media. Anyone can label themselves as a public figure on Instagram.

It’s good to see the young generation flourish and prosper on their own. But here’s the thing — do they realise the goal should not be to influence others? To specialise in a field should be the motto.

Being an influencer could be a lucrative choice for many but if they are not educated enough, their influence on others might do more harm than good.

Martin Luther King said, “Not everyone can be famous but everyone can be great because greatness is determined by service. You only need a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love.” With the help of social media, being famous seems far easier these days.

Everyone is striving to be famous, no one wants to be great. The amount of work you need to put in to become great is a tough ordeal especially for a generation that enjoys instant gratification!

We have to reflect seriously on the advice the real “influencers” of the past gave us or we will have a growing number of people meddling with our minds without doing any good to us or society in general. 

Source: thehindu