I influence therefore I am

You may belittle social media influencers as dipshit airheads only interested in their own cosmetic fame and promo fees.

You may see influencers as only interested in being famous for being famous. And you wouldn’t be wrong.

But you’re probably missing the larger point. We care about people who are famous for being famous. It’s an evolutionary phenomenon.

When we feel intimidated in a new environment, we imitate people who are successful in that environment.

Our online world ebbing with social media is a narcissistic wonderland. Influencers are society’s’s most successful narcissists.

This survival characteristic is a deeply ingrained and the mechanism by which culture is propagated. A dash of grandiose narcissism in our public sphere is not a bad thing. Sometimes it’s highly entertaining. But social media has elevated narcissism far beyond what’s healthy.

Social media is the narcissist’s playground. Through likes and shares, it re-engineers their social feedback loop towards the superficiality they thrive on, fuelling a sense of superiority and rewarding manipulative tendencies.

No wonder narcissists are more likely to become addicted to social media. (Interestingly, studies show that narcissists on the right show greater tendencies towards entitlement while those on the left towards exhibitionism.)

Social media is a self-validating hall of mirrors where the narcissist stares at their reflection until they die.