Indulge me for a moment and think of a time not so distant in our past before radio and television.  In fact, take things back a bit further to a little over five hundred years ago or just after the printing press but before the start of publishing en masse.  World population was estimated somewhere around a respectable 550 to 600 million, urban living was a well-established reality and depending on your own definition; some parts of the known world were more civilized than other parts are considered to be now.  The reason for thinking in terms of this period of history is to set the stage upon which all peoples might have identified leaders or otherwise gave of themselves an admiration towards others.  Enough of an admiration that the opinions offered and conduct displayed by the admired were influential enough to be up taken by the admirers.

I wish to immediately discount leaders and influencers who did so by the sword and pulpit.  These types of influencers were most often thrust onto a population and obedience to their doctrine was rarely by choice.  There are exceptions to be certain but, in this period, word of mouth was the only real form of news network to bring information to the general populations of the time.  Post existed but didn’t much matter if you could not read or didn’t have the means to access it.  For the most part people understood they had a ruler and a religion (sometimes they were the same thing).  Some parts of the world had tax systems to be obeyed, laws and justice systems (again often closely tied to religion) and even education systems were one fortunate enough.

So how would people influential enough to make the general population stand and take notice get noticed?  The truth is, it just didn’t matter.  People in general had little need for concerns beyond that of immediate family and the more purely instinctual wills of survival.  As an organism, humans do tend to seek improvement; a better life for our offspring than we had for ourselves.  By way of shaping our environment to ourselves, we are less about evolving and more about adapting environment to our use.

Take note that during this era of our history, no one had a camera, newspapers did not exist so ideas (much less images) were not available, books that existed were very rare and it was common for your local church to not even have a bible at hand.  By contrast, a person today can hold more text and imagery in the palm of their hand than just about everyone five hundred years ago saw in a lifetime.  That actually holds true through 1991 and the launch of the internet.

Media and its’ evolution have afforded human kind the ability to gain information faster and more prolifically than ever before.  We receive daily updates on local, national and international events but more importantly; we are entertained.  Music, literature, talk, storytelling, access to art both historic and modern, sports played and watched all serve to occupy time that was once focused almost singularly on survival.  Not only do we access these things regularly but we have created industries and patronages to support them outright.  Even genius such as Mozart required royal patronage to survive yet, today musicians self-publish and offer their craft online without even the need to produce any form of physical media.

Not only are we entertained but, for some reason we hold the entertainers in esteem.  It was fifty years or so from the first movie to the first Academy Awards and less than twenty years between the first television broadcast and first Emmy.  In today’s entertainment world, the business of awarding entertainment is itself entertainment.  Daily sudo-news programming exists to ensure an interested public has access to the latest celebrity information.  So powerful is today’s attraction to our icons that the red carpet show prior to the actual Academy Awards takes up nearly equal televised air time to the awards themselves.

Entire fashion lines live or die by reviews of who wore what well.  The power of celebrity is now used to sell everything; and I do mean everything.  Our political leaders, governments and religious leaders, business leaders and a host of others have all learned to adapt to the power of media.  Serious mistakes have been made on the way however.  Richard Nixon grossly underestimated how his debate appearance would be judged more for his perspiration than his platform, news coverage of the Vietnam War occurred faster than any government could spin political favour in support of the war and lying “on the record” became a sure way to end any career that involved media attention.  But where does the power of celebrity actually originate?

We give it freely and almost without thought.  Even the used car salesman we see on local TV ads gets afforded an extra glance when we see them in everyday life at a grocery store or shopping mall.  Celebrity now exists for those who do nothing but claim the status.  Today it might be Kardashians, yesterday it was Gabors.  Reality TV has afforded celebrity status to anyone willing to expose themselves to the world in meaningless competition for the sake of our entertainment; and we give it to them.  We have even established a classification system to aid in differentiating celebrity royalty from riff raff; otherwise known as the lists.  “A” listers are the royalty classification reserved for the James Deans and Marilyn Monroes and even I don’t understand the breakdown beyond that.

What does this all mean insofar as linking celebrity with influence?  Simply put, it is all a matter of the perception of trust.  When we are willing to trust a celebrity’s choice of automobile to influence our choice, then we have given a degree of trust, deserved or not that can be exploited.  To say that what we do is let others do our thinking for us is much harsher but not entirely untrue.  When we allow ourselves to accept influences to our decision-making processes without questioning the sources, then we aren’t truly thinking for ourselves.  This isn’t to say we are not thinking but rather that certain decisions are less about reasoning and more about patterned behavior.  When we fail to recognize the subtlety of suggestions intended to make us form decisions without stopping to reason, we are giving away a degree of control that is perhaps the most important and least understood part of what we are as a species today.

Patterned behavior decisions could be best described as unconscious decisions and we need this form of behavior to get through the day.  We don’t waste time thinking about what green means when the traffic light changes.  We are doubtful to retain conscious memory of locking the door or turning off the coffee before we left the house and yet we are confident these tasks were completed.  We don’t ask “What’s that sound?” when a phone rings and some of us will step into the street without looking to see if the little walking man symbol is lit but rather because those around us have started crossing the street.  In a very real way, we unconsciously make potential life and death decisions without reasoning.

Name a brand of major appliance.

It doesn’t concern me what brand you picked but it matters a great deal why you picked it.  Do you know?  Have you actually researched this brand?  Do you truly know who makes it (you might be surprised)?  Often, we form opinions the same way we go on green; without reasoning.  Somewhere we heard or saw an ad, conversation or review.  We may have simply accepted the brand our parents had.  Perhaps Brand X is on a storefront sign on our way to work, or they sponsor our favorite hockey team.  I would submit to the reader that these forms of indirect or subtle influence are far from harmless and that knowledge of it is the first step to defense against it; but that is an exercise for another day.  What I wish to focus on and caution against is the trust relationship required to influence our subconscious decision making.

One benefit media’s evolution has had is the nearly immediate trial and execution of the violators of our trust.  The sexual abuse scandals of 2017 ended careers, bankrupted companies, destroyed politicians and added to the conversation I wish to encourage.  Though I personally dislike celebrity endorsements without the celebrity being required to have personal knowledge of the product; I have a particular disdain for celebrity endorsements or dis-approvals intended to influence our political, religious or societal opinions.  I greatly appreciate music, theater, motion pictures, art, opera and other forms of entertainment I have far freer access to than my parents did.  I do not however believe the actor to be a doctor in real life any more than I would hire a drummer to tune up my car.

Hubris is something politicians and celebrities risk developing when left unchecked.  So rampant is celebrity hubris that some feel obligated use social and mainstream media to deliberately provided fans and followers with an opinion they feel to be correct; even when they are wholly unqualified to offer opinions on the subject matter at hand.  When an “A” list actor wears a shirt with the face of a presidential candidate on it; is this truly any different from the alleged Russian election influence in the US?  How do you feel, when you stop to reflect, about a celebrity’s hijacking use of an unrelated event forum to deliver such an opinion?  When any celebrity knowingly attempts to influence people to their way of thinking; do they not have a responsibility to provide a factual educated opinion?  Equally are we not obligated to question such endorsements and dis-approvals and form our own educated opinions?  I am intrigued that society gets upset when companies operating behind the scenes are caught mining social media data to formulate political platforms and responses for parties or candidates but, we don’t object to those doing essentially the same thing in plain sight.

Celebrities will only continue to influence us as long as we allow it.  With respect to politics; politicians themselves are unlikely to stop celebrity influence for the simple reason that it occupies such a large portion of media content; the real issues we should be focused on are detracted from for the sake of the ratings of any particular news outlet covering the politics.  So long as we trust our sports stars can improve our game; we will buy the shoes, clothes and equipment.  Image a world where such meaningless frivolity was abandoned in favour of medical research, peace initiatives or agricultural improvements to feed the world.

I apologize if I have in any way offered an opinion on any issue; my intent is to have you, the reader, begin questioning your own decision-making process and what you allow to influence you.  That is the only influence I wish to make.