You, Too, Can Be a Mainstream Media ‘Influencer’!

Yes, this is a satire.

cartoon in the New Yorker by Will McPhail

Tired of being inundated with (and led around by the nose by) the blatherings of lying politicians, slick propagandists, megalomanic tech billionaires, badly dressed ad-men, neckbeard con artists, well-remunerated “both-sidesing” pundits, windbag podcasters, deranged ex-university professors, gas-lighters, former reality show contestants and dimwitted rap singers who, for no sensible reason, have become media ‘superstars’ and ‘influencers’ of note?

Now you, too, can be an influencer. You can get your writings published by influential media outlets. You can get millions of ‘followers’ on social media, hanging on your every word. You can get millions in venture capital funding for your brilliant and unrecognized idea. You can earn millions a month on Patreon as a “thought leader”.

Just send $US 99 to Paypal account magicalthinking@influencer.org and we’ll send you our secret, proven Influencer Template™, that you can use to compose influential op-eds, podcasts, blog posts, ‘viral’ social media posts, IPO proposals or, if you’re old, letters to the editor, in just minutes.

Here is just a taste of the hundreds of amazing secrets you’ll learn from The Template™:

You must make sure the proposal, idea, or belief you are advocating is presented in such grandiose and ambiguous terms that everybody reading it will think you’re saying what they believe is right. Something like The Better World We All Know is Possible. That could include everything from ensuring all babies get lots of cuddles, to that “those kind of people” get sent “back where they came from”. It could include things like “a return to a world where people get the respect they deserve”, where it’s up to the reader to fill in the blank about who is deserving of what. Who wouldn’t want The Better World We All Know is Possible, when it includes fifty unarguable but ill-defined things like “happiness”, “freedom”, and “real democracy”, and then lets you add in everything that you personally equate with a “better world”?
Come up with some vague catch-all term for implementing your idea or proposal that allows every reader to fit everything they believe into it. For example, call your idea something like “Plan B for Civilization’s Reset”. This should include everything you (and your readers) think to be worthy, while “Plan A” (ugggh! boooo!) would be everything in the status quo that you (and your readers) dislike. Everyone wants Plan B, even those who believe it includes burning abortion doctors alive, or abolishing all corporations and redistributing all their assets equally to everyone else, since we each have the freedom to choose what’s in Plan B. Yay plan B! Better than Plan A any day! (A note of caution: Avoid terms like The New Order in your idea name, unless your audience is Davos gnomes. And if you don’t know who the Davos gnomes are, don’t worry, they’ll be calling you to speak at their next conference soon!)
Make your solution for getting to The Better World/Plan B/Whatever, as simple as possible. Clauses like “All we have to do is …” and “We really need to … ” and “There is now no excuse to not … ” are perfect. They don’t say who has to do what, or grapple with whether those “must-dos” are even vaguely feasible. That’s for the detail people to worry about. Don’t get bogged down in the pesky ‘hows’ of strategy when you can stay above the fray by sticking to wonderful-sounding ‘objectives’, the more etherial the better. So “We really need to transition quickly to more renewable forms of energy, before it’s too late” is completely unassailable. No one can really disagree, even Big Oil executives who are banking on getting huge government subsidies for trying vainly to do just that.
Make it clearly someone else’s responsibility to do what “must be done”, so that you don’t get your readers thinking they’ll have to do anything, or at least anything more than “like” your post or send an email to a politician or maybe even attend a rally if they’re not too busy and if it sounds like fun. Even better, be completely unclear about whose responsibility what “must be done” actually is. Use the royal “We”, so that the reader feels part of “We” but isn’t obliged to do anything difficult or unpalatable that “We” “really need to” do.
Offer your readers simple things to do that appear to be easy, fun, and at least vaguely related to your idea. A particularly good approach is the “Ten easy steps” or “Ten simple ways” list. The list should have exactly ten items on it, no more or less, even if you have to pad it a bit. Make sure the “steps” align with your audience’s cognitive biases, and avoid anything too controversial (though “inflammatory” is fine as long as it appeals to your audience’s sense of righteous indignation). If an action is complicated, don’t include it in the list, but instead include “Make a plan to (achieve that action)” on your list instead.
Stir up the idealist in your reader, and squelch the depressing realist, by saying things like “Imagine if we suddenly had the power” (eg to change all the laws in the world), followed by things that no one could argue with but which no one actually has the power to do. But be vague enough that they don’t think you’re going to do something they don’t agree with, like tax the rich or demilitarize the police or take away people’s guns. Stick to things like “replacing despots with democratic governments” or “ensuring every child gets three healthy meals a day”. Under no circumstances get into the practicalities of any of these lovely intentions.
Sidestep any questions about whether or where your proposed idea has ever been applied, successfully or unsuccessfully. The simple fact that your idea has merit means it goes without saying that it could work if it was applied properly. Shrug off any detractors who say it might not work, and their reasons, by calling them “defeatists” and quoting Margaret Mead’s “Never doubt …” homily. If the detractors still won’t shut up, frame them as luddites by quoting Buckie Fuller’s “You never change things by …” bromide. If they ask for examples, it’s great to cite Elon Musk’s vision to colonize Mars, or any recent activity by any of the other high-tech billionaire space-race buffoons, except Bill Gates. Our package comes with a complete set of such examples, some of them signed.
If you’re ever challenged on matters of fact, we have a complete chapter of bafflegab guaranteed to shut up any critic. These scripts include clauses like “We all have a piece of the truth” and “The truth is what we make of it”, so that your entire audience will come to doubt that there even is such a thing as truth. Other than what you’re telling them, of course.
At some point some idiot will challenge you that what you’re calling for is just vague objectives, and what is your specific strategy for achieving them when thousands of bright people have failed to do so? We can help you with that, too. Your “strategy” — how you are going to achieve what you propose — should normally be another objective disguised as a strategy or action. So if your objective is to “replace all hydrocarbons to achieve net zero by 2050”, then your strategy should not be anything attackable like “install two billion hydrogen fuelling stations”, but rather something like “Explore the potential of the hydrogen economy, carbon capture, nuclear fusion and other technologies to…”. Ta da! You’ve just reduced an intractable problem to a research project! Way to go, influencer! If challenged further, on who’s going to do this and how, respond with “The way to do this is to help bring together and empower those who know and care most about this problem to collaborate and implement…” If you ever reach the point at which your strategy or action doesn’t beg the question of by whom or how this will be done, stop! You’ve reached a dangerous level of (im)practicality, vulnerable to attack by skeptics and opponents. Replace with a “Research…” or “Explore…” or “Identify…” strategy or action instead. And if a critic says the technology you propose doesn’t exist, simply smile and say “Well it could exist if we put our collective minds to it!”
Next you will want to create a posse of followers. You can’t be an influencer unless you have influencees! Their job will be primarily to uncritically retweet or otherwise replicate what you’ve written, so it has ‘credibility’. If you can’t assemble enough of your own, we can sell you a bot and a clickfarm that will immediately show millions of people, with names of varying ethnicities (excluding Russian and Chinese-sounding names of course), passionately ‘liking’ and ‘sharing’ and ‘following’ your posts.
These millions of followers will of course get the attention of idle young journalists and older hack journalists in the ‘mainstream media’ wondering what all the fuss is about. It’s important that you now start to publicize your upcoming book, in order to cement your reputation as an influencer. We can provide you with affidavits about millions of ‘preorders’ that your adoring (bot/clickfarm) fans have placed for your book, and bold, pre-crafted ‘excerpts’ from your book suitable for easy placement in op-ed columns in mainstream media, that are guaranteed to ‘sell’ across the entire political spectrum.
And of course you will want your own ‘meme’ posters and merch with catchy and stirring but banal sayings no one could disagree with, with beautiful tasteful backgrounds and with your name and lovely signature, so no one can ‘steal’ them and detract from your influence.
At some point you will be faced with the decision on identifying one or more “bad guys” blocking implementation of your brilliant idea(s). This can be very effective if done well, but treacherous if done badly. Our package includes a complete set of straw man “bad guys”, real and theoretical, you can safely attack. They include eg Vladimir Putin, the Chinese Communist Party (since no one can remember China’s current leader’s name), “Syria”, “Iran”, terrorists, luddites, “the powers that be”, “vested interests”, “anarchists”, “illegal aliens”, “freedom-haters” and (non-specifically) “the government”. But be careful not to include local political parties or people or groups like trucker freedom convoys, since they and their supporters could end up being your biggest funders. For the same reason, don’t attack “the 1%”, “capitalism”, or “Wall Street”, and definitely avoid terms like “deplorables”. Also be careful with nutbar groups who might go after you personally. (Our package has a list, but we won’t list them here because we’re afraid they might attack us.)

Oops! Thirteen items on our list, instead of the obligatory ten. Oh, well, we’re just generous that way. Order now, because eventually everyone will figure this out, and if the future is bereft of influencers like you, who will be left to tell us what to do?

See you in the op-ed pages, and on the speakers’ circuit, soon!

Your friends,
The Influencer Template™ team.