Transcriber: Denise Andréia Reviewer: omar idmassaoud
One of the richest people in the world isn't a top leader in STEM,
a CEO of a Fortune 500 company,
a pop singer currently on the Billboard 500
or even a high-ranking political figure.
Do you think that you can guess who this person may be?
Well, probably not.
Because this person just happens to be a child.
Meet Ryan, an eight-year-old
who remains Youtube’s top earner for his second year in a row,
with his channel entitled Ryan’s World.
According to the Forbes annual list of influencers, back in 2019,
Ryan received his own show on Nickelodeon, got his own clothing line,
earned a deal with the popular streaming service Hulu,
amassed nearly 23 million subscribers,
and raked in 26 million dollars in that year alone.
As a broke college student
who still struggles
to find enough money to do laundry each week,
one of the only things I remember receiving in 2019
was a bill notifying me of my impending student loan debt.
But once I read that a child is annually making more money
than I potentially ever will in my entire lifetime,
by simply posting videos of himself unboxing toys,
I did what any rational person would do. I began to question my life choices.
All of them.
But then I decided to look even further into this new culture
that our generation has created for ourselves: influencer culture.
To no one’s surprise, nearly three-quarters of Gen Z and millennials
follow influencers on social media.
But our generation is no longer just following influencers.
No, we’re becoming them, too.
According to the annual influencer report, back in 2019.
fifty-four percent of Gen Z and millennials
said that they would drop everything right now
to become an influencer if given the chance.
And to be honest, after hearing about Ryan's story,
it isn't hard to imagine why.
I mean, between earning upwards
250,000 thousand dollars per sponsored post on social media,
collaborating with luxury brands,
and even potentially earning your own reality TV show, I mean,
I would become an influencer, too, if given the chance.
And it is undeniable
that influencers are currently ruling modern-day media and marketing.
But aside from all the money, the fame, and glamour of it all,
what can we gauge from this information?
What do these numbers actually tell us?
Well, they tell us that our generation learns how to hold a vlog camera
before we learn how to hold up our self-esteem
They tell us that we are programmed to like the good in someone else
before first learning how to love the bad in ourselves, and yet we keep scrolling.
We keep subscribing, we keep searching for the right words to say,
the entrance to where, what caused us to stay woke about,
what fits we should be buying, what TikTok dances we should be trying,
and ultimately, who we should be in the identity of someone else.
They tell us that we’re the generation that claims to be influencers,
when it looks like the rest of the world seems to be influencing us more.
We are the generation that is influencing while being influenced.
Nowadays, the word influencer has become a buzzword for most of us.
When you may think of the word influencer, an image of James Charles,
Charli D’ Amelio or Logan Paul might pop up.
And I’m just going to go ahead and apologize in advance,
If any of these three people were canceled
in the last few minutes of me talking, I’m sorry for including them in here,
but I was not made aware.
But at the root of it, what does the word influencer originally mean?
Well, according to the Merriam Webster's Dictionary,
the word influencer refers to a person
who inspires or guides the actions of others.
This is me at the age of 10.
I’d just gone home and I was in the middle of telling my mom that I was just elected
the president of the National Junior Honor Society at my school.
And as you can tell from this picture, I was really excited.
I mean, I was going to pop out of my head excited.
But at that time, becoming president of that organization
and maybe even the United States one day
was my definition of what it meant to be an influencer.
Before that, my definition of being an influencer
was becoming Michael Jackson
or the equivalent of the queen of Pop, if you will.
And before that, my definition of being an influencer
was becoming a rapper, like Jay-Z.
But I don’t like to talk about that portion of my life for too long,
for obvious reasons.
But now, at the age of 18, I’m the host of my own podcast,
the founder of my own public speaking organization,
have been interviewed on Good Morning America and USA Today,
have been flown down to the Essence magazine headquarters,
and I’ve spoken on stages all across the country.
And yet I still do not know if I can truly call myself an influencer.
Or if I can call any of my peers
or the people I look up to influencers, for that matter.
People who inspire and guide the actions of others.
So, attempting to find a better word
for what myself, you, and thousands of others do on a daily basis,
I began searching for what words are synonymous with the word influencing.
Strangely enough, one of the first words that popped up was mirroring,
the act of unconsciously imitating
the gesture, speech, attitude, and pattern of another.
To illustrate this picture, a two-sided mirror.
On one side, a person is able to see a reflection of themselves.
However, if they walk over to the other side,
the person would only see a reflection of somebody else
standing on the side from which they came.
In an attempt to become the highest trending,
most relevant, most widely known,
we have started to place our originality and relatability
in looking, sounding, and acting like everyone else.
So we buy the same fits, we vibe to the same music,
we use the same filters, we maintain the same themes on our feed,
we lose weight to feel more whole, we act more cute or more tough to pass,
we’re being straight and we lose ourselves at the cost of becoming someone else.
And it doesn’t just stop at mirroring, no, instead of influencing,
we are also flipping, changing one state, position, or subject to another.
We are increasingly shifting people’s bodies, their values,
and their feelings of self-worth.
We are increasingly causing what is psychologically known as paradigm shifts,
when one way of thinking is replaced by a slightly different perspective.
And fittingly enough,
these paradigm shifts can be illustrated with a literal dime.
From up-close, a person is able to tell that the coin holds two distinct sides.
One heads and one tails.
However, at a distance,
one would only be able to see a coin and no sides.
Taking this visual and applying it to the concept of influencing,
we can start to see how easy it is to take one story, one coin,
and have two distinctly different perspectives for sides.
We disowned family members and friends
for who they voted for in the last election.
We hate others for their love of religion,
and we cancel people out of an entire society for being ignorant,
when, to be honest, some of us only know about global concerns
because of our morning scroll through our Instagram feeds.
And I’m talking to you.
I’m coming to your house,
your school, your home,
wherever you’re listening to this right now
because even though we're two sides of the same coin,
we flip the script and we flip out when someone else can’t follow our narrative.
Instead of influencing, we are hiding.
Hiding.
Isn’t this something that we’ve all collectively felt?
In fact, it’s something that some of us are doing right now. Hiding.
We hide behind our accomplishments, our followers, and even our screens.
We hide who we are in order to be widely known and accepted,
instead of seen and risk getting rejected.
As a member of this generation, I’m not going to stand here
and point fingers at you,
when probably just moments before this,
I was using them to scroll through my feed myself.
However, I do think it’s time for our generation to power down our screens,
keep this one on though,
to power down our screens and open up our eyes
just long enough to realize what our generation is truly made of.
I mean, they tell us all the time that our youth is the future of tomorrow.
And yet today, our generation
has been defined by mirroring, flipping, and hiding who we are,
all in the name of being perfect.
This message right here of exploring
the intersectionality influencing has with imperfection
has stayed on my heart for quite some time.
But after opening up my laptop
and staring at a blank screen for over two hours,
I realized that my difficulty in coming up with a takeaway for this talk
lied in the fact that I am an 18-year-old who is the host of my own podcast,
but is too scared to release more than three episodes
in fear of no one actually listening.
That I am the founder of my own public speaking organization,
but I have not publicly promoted it
because I think the website that I designed isn’t good enough.
My difficulty in coming up with a takeaway for this talk
lied in the fact that even though
I have been interviewed
on more segments than anyone
cares to remember, including myself,
and spoken on stages all across the country,
I constantly battle with anxiety and stuttering.
I constantly battle with tripping over my words,
watching my pride fall to the floor,
holding the pieces of my pride in my trembling hands
just long enough to piece together a broken smile.
My difficulty in coming up with a takeaway for this talk
lies in the fact that I was, I am, and always will be
imperfect.
This is what is so interesting, and yet this is what is so daunting.
How do we influence without needing to have a perfect image?
On the contrary, how do we become influencers
because of and through our imperfection?
In order to answer those questions,
we must completely redefine what influencing means,
what an influencer is, and how to become one.
Starting with the word imperfection.
Is imperfection a lack of wholeness
or rather is imperfection simply our “in progress” stage?
And since progress has no finite end,
we can't possibly enforce our imperfect identities on someone else. Why?
Because we still have a need that we cannot supply to someone else.
Influencers fill a need.
Whether that need be entertainment, business engagement or escapism.
According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs,
a psychological theory that depicts what humans need to survive
after the tiers of physiological needs, which is water, food, shelter;
and safety needs, health, employment, and resources have been met,
only three remaining tiers of need remain.
And ironically, these three remaining tiers of need
give us an insight on how to meet the needs of external influencing
through our internal imperfection.
First, we all need love and belonging.
Through family, relationships and friendships,
and even our community.
One truth is that influencing provides us with a sense of connection.
However, that connection comes with a prerequisite of gaining attention.
On most social media apps like Twitter and Instagram,
a person must gain one thousand followers before getting to collaborate with brands,
making them a nano influencer or an influencer on a small scale.
If we take this concept of needing to have one thousand people or followers
in order to influence others into the real world,
we start to see how truly damaging that lie is.
Not only does it prevent us from influencing the people
that are already in our circle,
but it preaches that in order to receive love and perfection,
and belonging and connection,
we must first pretend to have relationships with people
who half the time we don’t even know and who do not truly know us.
However, imperfection teaches us
that we shouldn’t strive to earn people’s love and affection.
Rather, we should strive to extend that love and that belonging to others,
so that they can be inspired and guided to do the same.
Imperfection teaches us that influencing starts with love and belonging,
and it starts by extending that rather than looking to receive it.
Second, all humans need to have self-esteem,
the feeling of being respected, appreciated, and to feel important.
Influencing teaches us that that self-esteem
comes through the prerequisite of needing validation.
Research shows that receiving a like on social media
incites the same chemical brain activity as seen when gambling,
when doing drug use, and when going through addiction.
Simply put, receiving a like on social media makes us like ourselves more.
And in essence, our generation is inherently addicted to validation.
On the other hand, imperfection teaches us
that we shouldn’t be striving to be validated.
Rather, there’s something far grater out there
that can fulfill us more and not leave us hungry with the void.
That thing is affirmation.
Affirmation that we are not alone in experiencing our own flaws
through seeing them in someone else.
Affirmation that in a perfect world, an imperfect timeline can exist.
By embracing our insecurities and flaws,
we can give people the permission to do the same.
Influencing starts with imperfection,
which then continues through affirming others rather than validating.
And lastly, all humans need self-actualization.
We need to maximize our potential.
We need to reach the goals we have set for ourselves.
However, influencing culture teaches us
that the way to do this is through comparison.
And instead of leaving us with a maximized potential to want to grow
and a motivation to be better, comparison always leaves us feeling more empty.
Perfectionism, while influencing,
teaches us that the way to finding ourselves
is by looking on the pages of everyone else
and by minimizing our accomplishments that will never match up to someone else.
However, by embracing our imperfection,
it gives us the shortcut on our journey to self-actualization.
And who doesn’t love a good shortcut?
I know that I do. Listen closely. Lean in.
The key to possessing self-actualization through influencing
is actually being yourself.
Imperfection teaches us that real influencing
ends with maximizing our truth and our authenticity
in order to reach our full potential.
Rather than influencing while being influenced,
we should all be striving to be influencing while being imperfect.
Before, an influencer was defined as being a person
who inspires or guides the actions of others
through mirroring, flipping, or hiding.
Now, an influencer is someone who inspires the actions of others
and guides the actions of others
through extending, affirming, and exposing who they really are.
This is a definition that we can create.
This is a definition that we should hold ourselves to.
A definition that preaches that it is better
to be deeply known than widely known.
A definition that preaches that you are not nothing
just because you don’t have everything.
A definition that preaches you are still loved even without the like.