As the Internet has grown and society has shifted from document-based identity to digital, social media has changed everything. Identity now equals influence.
Many of us may not know our neighbours, but we know our status as social media tastemakers. We’re foodies, fashionistas and technophiles. You can have any hobby and all of the sudden you have a community, and you may have incredible influence.
As the Internet has grown and society has shifted from document-based identity to digital, social media has changed everything. Identity now equals influence.
Many of us may not know our neighbours, but we know our status as social media tastemakers. We’re foodies, fashionistas and technophiles. You can have any hobby and all of the sudden you have a community, and you may have incredible influence.
Henry : Hey everyone, it's Henry, Mike, and Chris of The Decentralists. We've got a very interesting hot topic today. We're calling it ‘Under the Influence,’ it's all about identity and influence. As the internet has grown and society has moved away from traditional document-based identity, the internet and social media have changed everything. Identity now equals influence. Many of us may not know our neighbours, but we definitely know our status as social media tastemakers, we’re foodies, we're fashionistas technophiles. You could have any hobby and all of a sudden you have a community and you may have incredible influence. So who foresaw this brave new world? BuzzFeed’s co-founder, Jonah Peretti, who in 1996 wrote a Marxist style, cultural theory, academic paper entitled Capitalism and Schizophrenia, contemporary visual culture and the acceleration of identity formation and dissolution. Peretti's insight is that the internet might just foster the adoption of what he termed ‘micro identities.’ This insight helped him build BuzzFeed, now, of course, one of the Internet's premier content companies. What a visionary. So gentlemen, why has identity become so important and why has it become so central to the internet? Mike?
Mike : Maybe what I can do is just step back a second and let's talk about identity and influence. This is what this is all about, the idea of identity when most people think about identity. You think about the traditional identity. You think about passports, driver's licenses, bank accounts, things like this. That's what most people think about as identity. If I asked you to think about the word ‘influence’… So back in the days, Henry, when you and I were young, even back to the beginning of time, the pre-internet age, let's say influence was usually directly connected to your status or your perceived status in society. Your identity could be John Smith, but if you were Dr. John Smith, the physician in the town you had influence or Judge John Smith.
Henry : Or maybe even you were the senior editor at the community or local paper.
Mike : Any of those things. Essentially, if you were above the pay grade of a manual labourer, you had influence in society. People would come to you for your opinion because you had influence that was commensurate with the statute of being more intelligent and therefore your opinion was more valuable. This is this idea of influence. It all got flipped completely on its head by the internet, more specifically by social media. Because the internet starts and it's the first time you start identifying yourself as something other than a driver's license. Because you had a little pseudonym that you would use in these early use nets and bulletin board things. You would go in and look for people with like-minded interests. We're all foodies, fashionistas; it's the same thing that we just mentioned in the intro. That was it. You were in this room, you were a peer-to-peer connection. When you communicated about food, you did it with somebody live and then you left. Now, what social media kind of did is add this never-ending timeline where you could go in and engage with somebody today and talk about a recipe for chocolate chip cookies. Then you could talk to somebody else and somebody else. And just continue to talk about chocolate chip cookies until all of a sudden you've got this huge newsfeed where anybody on the planet who wants to learn about chocolate chip cookies can read all of your past recipes, hints, and posts on chocolate chip cookies.
Now, what happens is you have ‘influence’, over the bakers of the world. But that also becomes your identity online. This influence has these groups of bakers saying ‘well, Chris is the chocolate chip guy’. Now he's got this new identity, at least amongst the baking community, as ‘the chocolate chip guy’. It's not because he's a judge or because he has a specific driver's license that says ‘Chocolate Chip Guy’. It's because he's got this influence online.
Henry : Absolutely. And don't forget, as you mentioned earlier, a judge or a lawyer would have a little bit more influence, but on a social media platform, it seems like everybody is equal and weighted the same way. It all depends on what they say.
Mike : That's pretty much it. You could be the Supreme Court Justice, the lead of the Supreme Court in any country. But if you don't have 10,000 or a hundred thousand or a million followers online, you have no influence. You've broken this fundamental tenant that it relates to identity and influence where it's, it's directly related to some kind of skill or talent that you have or time that you put in educating yourself and things like this, whereas now it doesn't matter. Sometimes that's a good thing but it can also be a very bad thing.
Henry : So Chris, is Mike talking about a micro identity? Is that what we're talking about or what exactly is that? Because I know that you've really jumped into that paper that Jonah had written.
Chris : Mike alluded to micro identity when he spoke about the chocolate chip guy. We all know that nobody can be completely a chocolate chip guy. That's a very one-dimensional identity. I pity the fellow whose entire life is about the chocolate chips.
Mike : Unless he works for Hershey's and sells chips.
Chris : Sure. But even on a level, even, even if you work for Hersey’s you're still a husband, a father, a friend, maybe somebody who likes to go fishing once in a while.
Henry : A person.
Chris : Yes, you're a person, not just the chocolate chip guy. When he was speaking about micro identities, he was talking about identity stripped of context. He was alluding to MTV culture, how you see these quick visual images flash before your eyes. If you lived in the 90s you know full well, what that was like, because that was 90s advertising everywhere. Immediately, when you saw these images there would be some sort of identity attached to it. The internet itself has quickened the pace of micro identity adoption.
Henry : Like about a thousand times.
Chris : The specific reason why is because of a technology adopted in the early 2000s called the Semantic Web. If you've ever done blogging and you've seen a little thing called ‘tagging’, that's a semantic web in practice. Or hashtags, that's a semantic web as well. The semantic web allows people to create their own categorizations for content.
Mike : Then they can own that categorization by doing it a lot or something, or being in the first one or whatever it is.
Chris : This helps companies like Google advertise to people who are looking for this kind of content. Somewhere along the line, this is where Peretti’s insight really picks up steam. It didn't just become about content, it became about identity so it's no longer Chris, he's the expert on chocolate chips. It's now here's Chris, the chocolate chip guy. That's how everything has escalated into influence. Because now if you want to know about chocolate chips you don't just do a Google search, you go on Instagram and try to find yourself a community all about chocolate. That's how and why micro identities have become important.
Henry : That's fascinating.
Mike : Well, to add to your point also, Chris that you made it's out of context or what would be normally the context. In the world before the internet, if somebody wanted to learn about how to make chocolate chip cookies, they would look for…who was that baker? Remember the lady?
Chris : Betty Crocker, right?
Mike : Betty Crocker, exactly. But one of these cooks used to go online; they'd have these cooking shows like they still do. You would look for one of these people who was an expert, they had, let's say influence as a baker, whereas now what you've done is given anybody the ability to create their own influence as a baker. It takes it out of context. One interesting story I just want to stick in here is you alluded Chris to the idea of the 90sa and like even maybe the late 80s, 90s, the music videos and all of this type of stuff, and the advertising that came out around this stuff. At this transition stage when like MTV and things like this came online; which was a new medium to share music. There was this song called ‘Video Killed the Radio Star. It was all about Chris Cross. Where before the music video Chris Cross was the number one or one of the top-selling male song artists in the world; great voice, great lyrics, great everything, a great musician. But the problem Chris Cross had is he wasn't a really attractive gentleman to look at. When music transitioned into video, Chris Cross' influence and identity as the top recording artist disappeared almost overnight. I think it's very important to understand that when you take identity out of context, can you really even trust that it's real? Let me ask you this; let's throw this one out there. Chris, we've got these internet users now. They've got the ability to create these micro semantic tags and all this stuff. Why is everybody rushing to tag themselves to basically the minutia create all of these micro identities?
Chris : I think, not to sound too much of somebody who worships the old days, but I think as we've progressed from an industrial society to a service-based society, to an internet society, that a lot of the bonds that we used to have been cast away. A lot of us used to know who our neighbours were. We would know their names, we would know their faces. We would participate in neighbourhood watches. Maybe some of us still do, but the majority of us don't. A lot of this has to do with the fact that cultures become very transient. You may not be living in the same neighbourhood for 20, 30, 40 years. You might be moving around in a couple of months. Especially with the way rent has become. People are looking for not just identity, but a community online. They’re looking for community-based upon their taste, based upon the food, they like, the clothes they wear, whether they're an Apple user or a Microsoft user, whether they're a gamer or a designer or somebody who makes music so on, so forth. There's a lot of positivity that comes out of that. But the negative aspect is people are constantly on the hunt to categorize themselves. It's getting to the point where you have identities based upon how big your feet are, what, what kind of body jewelry you have.
Henry : So therefore, Chris, isn't there something going on here, in other words, so social media is designed to make it easy to categorize yourself so that they can target you with advertisers because you have to segment people so that advertisers have a target.
Chris : That's why companies like BuzzFeed exist. Jonah Peretti who wrote about this whole thing eventually he said ‘Hey, this is all a good identity. This is all a good idea. Why don't I make a media company based upon that?’ His whole company, BuzzFeed, is predicated on the fact that people like to categorize themselves and find out what they are like. When you go to BuzzFeed’s site, you see things like 23 reasons that ADHD kids in their 20s have it all wrong. Or 40 reasons why once a Disney Princess, always a Disney Princess. Stuff like that. This is capitalized BuzzFeed into the number one media company on the planet. That has outpaced old stalwarts like New York Times. The reason why companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter all love this stuff is because now they don't have to guess about what kind of person you are. You've categorized yourself.
Mike : That's a disgrace.
Henry : There's another reason that people are doing this because they've seen, as we all have, there are very famous influencers, this is all done of course online, who have become very rich. That's obviously driving people to do this, but we all know that the internet and all these platforms are free. How do they get rich?
Mike : I think it's pretty simple. If you believe that influence and identity are linked, then what that does is that allows Chris to become the chocolate chip guy or Kim Kardashian to become the person that people go to when they want to see pictures of rich people hanging out next to nothing, that type of thing. And what happens is you've got this baseline where the social media guys are going ‘look, we can target. We can target teen jewelry stuff to anybody who's following Kim Kardashian or whatever the case may be.’ Because Kim Kardashian has kind of created this influence over the people that come into this channel I like this jewelry. They can target it. But if you want it to be your jewelry that's targeted not somebody else's jewelry that's targeted, you need to have the influencer that controls or has the most, the loudest voice in that community has to be the one that you target. And that's how you get rich.
Chris : Absolutely, Mike. I just want to give an example of something like this. So last week a term on Instagram went viral due to its aesthetic. That term was ‘Christian autumn girl’, three words, ‘Christian autumn girl’, and what Christian autumn girls like to do. One of which is to drink pumpkin spice lattes.
Mike : You’ve got to be kidding me. Christian autumn girl? If somebody just made that hashtag up and said I like to drink pumpkin spice lattes…
Henry : …in the fall.
Chris : It became a whole aesthetic. Mike. It became what do Christian autumn girls like to do? They like to around in forests where the leaves are falling. They like scarves.
Mike : So there's now a category called ‘Christian Autumn Girl’ and people are identifying themselves with being a Christian autumn girl.
Chris : Pretty much.
Henry : Don't forget the pumpkin spice.
Mike : Wasn't that the fifth of the spice girls? She's taken over for scary because scary is not coming back.
Chris : So core to this micro identity is Christian autumn girls like to drink pumpkin spice lattes. Now, can we guess which multinational coffee chain probably perked up when they heard about this?
Mike : You wonder Hey Chris, what role did Starbucks, let's call it out, the pumpkin spice… Maybe Starbucks created Christian autumn girl.
Henry : I don't think they're that creative.
Mike : Is that a stretch of the imagination? Think about it, what would stop them from doing that?
Henry :Throw it out there. It costs nothing.
Mike : Well, exactly.
Chris : Let's peel the layers back because there are ‘Christian Autumn Girl’ influencers. Not one, not two, not dozens…hundreds.
Mike : You’ve got to be kidding me.
Chris : It's true. That exists on Instagram. And if your Starbucks maybe you’d want to give them a little bit of money. Make some of these influences rich and this is how they become rich.
Mike : What happens is this is again another illustration of how somebody who, let's say is Christian, it's October, is female, because they have a pumpkin spice latte in their hand or whatever it is that influence or that identity Christian autumn girl and the ability for that one of them or two of them, or three of them to rise to the top and start making money and get more stuff out there has literally created another kind of micro identity that people can identify with and that Google and all these guys and Starbucks can send ads to them about pumpkin spice. It is something where why should somebody care that a Christian autumn girl likes a pumpkin spice latte and not a Muslim summer guy. Where's that connection? Where's the connection between somebody who spent 20 years learning how to make a pumpkin spice latte and created the pumpkin spice latte and they, and they have an identity as the pumpkin spice latte person. Then they have influence on what pumpkin spice lattes and things are, when did that break? It leaves to me this is where you start to get into this gray area of… Now you can start to see. Henry and Chris, you can start to see how things like Pizzagate and quinone and stuff like this can actually happen because there is no connection between somebody having influence because they have an identity as the pumpkin spice person.
Henry : So that was leading to my final question, to a certain extent is, is this a good thing that identity and influence are now completely one? Is there a danger to it? Where do you think it's going, Mike? I think you were getting into that.
Mike : I think it's here. I think the important thing about the thing to realize is if you look at identity there still is a certain reality to it. To me, if you have an influencer, PewDiePie, or somebody like this, without the face and the name being associated together with a person, then there really isn't any influence. This is even happening, they're creating these fake avatar animated people who have more influence than real humans. They literally have these little…They look, they show pictures. There she is walking down the boardwalk and it looks like a real human walking down the boardwalk in Singapore. It's actually an animated person. I think what you're seeing here is the internet has broken the connection between identity and influence. Because of that, to me, it's all up in the air. You cannot rely on anything. You cannot rely on anybody being real. You need to find a way to make them real again.
Henry : That's a really good point. Is it real? Is it just designed? Is it a bot? What is it?
Chris : I just want to speak to Mike's point about why corporations are creating fake influencers. By fake I don't mean real people who are fake, I mean influencers that are basically generated in a creative lab.
Henry : In a marketing department.
Chris : Why would they do this? They would do it because as we've seen on social media again and again over the past few years, there’s scandal after scandal where one big influencer is taken down because of some controversy that has come back to haunt them, Chrissy Teigen being one notable example recently. She used to be the number one influencer on Twitter and within a few months now she's a nobody. If you're a brand and you're trying to hitch your stuff to an influencer, you want an influencer who is as controversy-free as possible.
Mike : And as under your control as possible.
Chris : This is where we make up a name, make up a profile, make up a bio, and lo and behold, there's your influencer. Who by the way, if we go into their Twitter feed, we'll find that they've never done any bullying, never said anything offensive, they have no political opinion.
Henry : You know that is so fascinating, Chris. Because you can go straight back to the way it used to be in the 30s, 40s, 50s, and only the early 60s when it came to the way the film companies used to own their actors and actresses. Because it was a movie everything was scripted. There was an entire team that would enable you to say your lines and do whatever there. They were never alone for interviews. They were never allowed their own life. And so everything was controlled and that was the studio system back then. But of course, here we are on the internet where you could be my brand's influencer, but that influencer stays at home and just types out whatever they want. Be it racist, be it an accidental mistake. It could be anything. So I can see now what you're talking about, the marketing companies want to be able to control something to a T with perfection that will last.
Mike : But Henry, look at this slippery slope you've just started on. Because what we started this discussion with was how identity was as a human guaranteed by a document and influence was directly related to some sort of either expertise or position that you got by virtue of your identity. You are the king. You were born to the king and the king died, now you're the king. You have the influence, the ultimate influence. We had this influence related directly to a human being and their identity. Then we go to the internet and we allow people to bite by using Chris’ semantic tags. I create a tag called chocolate chips and I can now create this identity and this influence as the chocolate chip person. That's crazy enough. There's enough danger there. But now what we're talking about is a future where even the influencers, they're not real. The chocolate chip person, whose opinion that you're trying to get on how to make chocolate chip cookies, is owned by the Nestle Tollhouse guys. It's not even a human. It’s fracturing it even more, now even influence isn't identity anymore, because I would argue that I don't care how much money you spend at the animation studio making your avatar for chocolate chips. It's not a real person. There is no identity there. What you need to do is you need to be able to find a way where this thing that is influenced, which is your ability to post lots of content and compelling content of interesting things that let's say garnered you a community, which is what builds your influence and in effect your personal brand.
But you've got to be able to do it in a way where your personal identity is separated. Like Chris said you don't want to walk around and go to the bank and they say ‘Hi, Mr. Chocolate chip cookie’. And you have to change your name to be your influenced name. Imagine that when you hand your driver's license over to the police officer and it says ‘Chocolate chip guy’. What you need to be able to do is recombine the data that people put out there that gives them influence with a personality or literally the internet is going to become dominated by billions and billions of avatars. Facebook, all of a sudden could tomorrow ‘Hey Chris, we've now got 10 billion members’. ‘You're like, there's only 8 billion people on the planet. How can we have 10 billion members?’ ‘Well, we just made them’. It's not even an honest relationship where human beings are creating this influence on Facebook anymore. It’s a freaking robot that's owned by Nestle or the Tollhouse cookie guys.
Henry : We need a new system. We need a new way of verifying identity. And legitimate communities. Chris, you're an expert on communities. You know, we need a new paradigm.
Mike : What we need to do is we need to tie identity to people but allow them to speak their topics and create their metadata without being under the influence.
Henry : Exactly. I'm sure that our solution, Manyone, it'll help us get a lot closer.
Mike : What people need to start to be able to do is break this link between identity and how that relates to the access to their services.
Henry : Control that link.
Mike : Totally. If I want to be the chocolate chip guy on the internet, I can be that. It’s to cure the knowledge that it's not related or linked to me as Michael in Vancouver. That's what I need to do in order for me to safely have equal access to the internet. Because otherwise, I just get drowned out. My message will get drowned out by a bot that's owned by some company. So I need to be able to have a real identity and we need to be able to prove that everybody on Facebook actually is a real person, not an avatar. The way you do that is everybody creates their own identity, their own access. That's how they can get into these systems freely, create the data, create the posts, but keep their identity separate.
Henry : Absolutely, Mike. Chris, thank you for another really interesting discussion. I had never really closely thought about the relationship between identity and influence to that extent. So I really thank you so much for your time guys.
Mike : Thank you.
Chris : Thank you, Henry.