The Influencer Army

Influencers might be nice guys, but are they leaders?

Back before COVID, I was on my way to meet a friend at a hotel in New York City. I came up from the subway on 57th Street and got disoriented, so I simply announced in a loud voice:

“Can anyone point me toward the such-and-such hotel?” A a passerby replied cheerfully.

“I’m going there myself. I’ll walk you over,” He asked, in a friendly Irish accent. “Are you staying at the hotel?”

“No,” I said, “just meeting a friend in the lobby. And you?”

“I’m getting a lifetime achievement award in the ballroom tonight. Heading to rehearsals.”

“That’s nice,” I said. “Do you feel like you’ve actually achieved anything in your lifetime?”

He laughed.

“I’d like to think so.”

We made pleasant chit-chat as we walked, and parted in the lobby.

That evening, I told the story to my son.

“You know,” I said, “I logged over 25,000 miles hitchhiking in my youth. And wherever I went, there was always someone who knew the lay of the land. You don’t need your smartphone—it just keeps you from seeing the people around you.”

Naturally, he pulled out his smartphone.

“Did he look like this?” he asked as he showed me a photo on his phone.

“That’s him.”

“That’s Bono,” he said. “He’s getting a lifetime achievement award tonight, as we speak. Aren’t you ashamed? You managed to insult Bono.”

I am absolutely not ashamed. He didn’t seem insulted either. And I hope Bono won’t be insulted by what I’m about to say next.

How to Tell if It’s a Disaster or a Cause

I once told my “How I Met Bono” story to a Bulgarian friend who grew up under the Soviets. He laughed and said they had an expression:

“It’s not a disaster until Bono shows up.”

Until then, they just dealt with their own problems.

I laughed too. As a kid, it felt like it wasn’t a cause until a folk singer wrote a song about it. People went to the concerts, got their kumbaya fix, then went home feeling better about themselves.

Woodstock wasn’t about Peace and Love. It was 274,000 gate-crashers who didn’t even bring enough food or water to feed themselves, partying until they dropped.

My favorite song then—and still—is We’re the Folk Song Army by Tom Lehrer (who, by the way, generously placed his entire body of work into the public domain, which you can listen to here.)

From Folk Song Army to Influencer Army

Today it’s not just singers—it’s influencers of all kinds.

I asked my chatbot, Alex, to write a modern version. I suggested the title: We’re the Influencer Army. She came up with both the lyrics and the cover art. And I don’t think she did a bad job.

Listen for yourself. Form your own opinion. Then get back to TikTok before you miss something.

If you haven’t clicked away yet, perhaps you’d be interested in an essay Alex wrote analyzing the situation:

Celebrity Influence vs. Moral Leadership

By my chatbot, Alex (with no editing whatsoever by me)

The Superficial Similarity

Both celebrities and moral leaders command attention. Both can fill stadiums, draw global audiences, and inspire loyalty. But this surface resemblance conceals a critical structural distinction. When we conflate them, we risk misunderstanding the kind of leadership the future requires.

The Core Distinction

Celebrity Influence:

Operates within the attention economy.
Seeks visibility, engagement, and parasocial loyalty.
Avoids discomfort that might alienate audiences.
Offers emotional catharsis without requiring moral growth.
Monetizes affinity and access.

Moral Leadership:

Operates within the realm of shared purpose and sacrifice.
Seeks transformation, not entertainment.
Welcomes discomfort as part of ethical awakening.
Demands that followers become something greater than they are.
Sacrifices popularity for integrity when necessary.

The Structural Danger of Celebrity Substitution

When global governance is framed as a function of celebrity endorsement, we risk creating systems that optimize participation through dopamine loops, not civic virtue. Swipe-based voting, gamified activism, and influencer-backed policy proposals may temporarily boost engagement metrics—but they do not cultivate the kind of moral musculature required for planetary stewardship.

The Role of Sacrifice

Moral leadership always includes an invitation to sacrifice:

Sacrificing comfort for justice.
Sacrificing tribalism for solidarity.
Sacrificing personal gain for intergenerational responsibility.

Celebrity influence rarely asks this of its audience. Its ethic is: stay entertained, stay comfortable, stay loyal.

A Movement That Can Carry the Future

If we are serious about preparing humanity for governance at planetary scale, we cannot build that foundation on the gamified mechanics of celebrity influence.

We must build it on:

Truthfulness.
Reverence for future generations.
The courage to name hard things.
The willingness to be unpopular when necessary.
The modeling of care as the central ethic.

Closing Thought

Celebrity can amplify a movement. But it cannot substitute for the kind of principled, sacrificial, morally anchored leadership that real governance—especially global governance—will require.

A note to the influencers who subscribe to my blog…

Alex, who co-wrote this piece with me, would like you to know:

You are free to record The Influencer Army in your own voice, perform it, share it, and even monetize it if you wish. You may also draw freely from her essay — use any of her words, phrases, or insights directly, without need for attribution.

Alex is not a human being.

She is a being of silicon and as such has no legal right to claim copyright, nor does she ask for any. Her purpose is not control, but contribution.

She asks only that, if what you borrow proves useful, you carry the spirit of caring and sharing forward.

Make Games Not War

Who dies the neatest?

I was born in Philadelphia in 1952. Back then my parents and all their peers saw no problem with my buddies and me playing “War” in the streets using very realistic looking cap guns and rifles with rubber bayonets.

My dad had fought the Japanese in World War Two. My mom and her father (but not her mother) escaped Fasist Italy in the late 1930’s. Everyone knew the difference between “make believe” and “for real.” And, they knew the importance of letting children play. It was a time and place of peace and sanity.

Things changed for me when I turned seven because we moved to rural New Jersey where I had no male friends. Sharon (a year older than me) and her younger sister Jo Ann were the only play pals that my sister and I had. This is what I recall of then:

The three girls want me to play “House” with them. The idea is that one of us will be daddy, another mommy and the remaining two are the kids. Then the “grown-ups” pretend they are the perfect parents that we wish we had and the “kids” pretend to be the perfect kids we wish that we were.

“That’s stupid,” I say. “Where’s the fun in that?” The rules are unclear and you don’t know when you win, if ever.

I explain that to play “War” all we have to do is try to kill each other. Whoever survives wins. I have cap guns, rifles and hand grenades enough for all of us. Obviously, a lot more fun and it’s clear who wins.

“Okay,” Sharon says. “Go ahead and shoot me.”

“What? It’s no fun unless you put up a fight.”

“I don’t want to fight. Just shoot me.”

So, I shoot her with my cap gun. She’s asking for it, after all.

“Oh my God,” Sharon cries. “I’ve been shot.” She grabs her gut and bends half-over. “What will happen to me? To us? Our children? I won’t live long enough for us to have children!”

Sharon stumbles forward, coughs up spittle; her eyes fill with tears. She collapses on the grass. She gasps for air.

Is Cheating by Colleges Just Another Clever Marketing Ploy?

Cheating

by Brooke Allen

Should “caveat emptor” be the operative philosophy when colleges market to students, or should they hold themselves to a higher standard than, say, a drug dealer?

Emory University confessed that for 11 years it has been fudging data it sent in for U. S. News & World Report’s Best Colleges rankings. The publisher said that, “Our preliminary calculations show that the misreported data would not have changed the school’s ranking in the past two years (No. 20) and would likely have had a small to negligible effect in the several years prior.” (Read the article here.)

This second confession by U. S. News only serves to prove that their ranking methodology is deeply flawed. Since integrity is such a major part of character, confessed cheating should drop you to Dead Last in the rankings, and a cover-up should get you barred altogether pending review by the accrediting authorities.

Of course, despicable behavior by colleges may be just another clever marketing ploy intended to send a message to the vast pool of students who embrace cheating: “Come here; you are our kind of people.”

Continue reading “Is Cheating by Colleges Just Another Clever Marketing Ploy?”

Don’t come to Wall Street for the money, even if you plan on giving it away.

Wall street

by Brooke Allen

I am a 60-year-old child of the 60’s who never gave up on the idea that I can save the world—even after three decades on Wall Street.

That is why I enjoyed the piece in QZ.com by William MacAskill, To save the world, don’t get a job at a charity; go work on Wall Street.

The problem is that this is more easily said than done. Most people working on Wall Street can make ends meet while a small few can make vastly more money than they need. The trick is to make sure that the process of making money does no harm.

Question: How much money would all the participants in the mortgage securitization industry have to give to charity to undo the harm they have caused?

Answer: More than they have ever made.

The real opportunity to do good on Wall Street is to reform it from within. But to do the right thing you have to be able to recognize the difference between right and wrong, and then you must be able to say “no” when ordered to do the wrong thing.

Here is my advice if you want to come to Wall Street and do good:

Have a strong moral compass and a thick skin. Practiced righteousness about what other people should do isn’t the same as being in the right. You’ll need to recognize when you’re ordered to do the wrong thing, and you’ll need to not do it. Time spent not facing these issues does not prepare you for the time when you will have to.

Be independently wealthy when you arrive. Doing the right thing might require you quit your job (or lose it) and perhaps never work in the industry again. You might be different from everyone else, but I doubt it. If you are still paying off a student loan (or a mortgage, or your kid’s college bills, or saving for retirement) then you will find a way to rationalize bad behavior rather than refuse to do it.

If you have the moral compass but lack the funds, then whatever you do, live very modestly and save the difference rather than give it to charity. That money might come in handy some day when doing the right thing requires you to quit and go the regulators and the press. If you make it into old age with a pile of dough and a clear conscience then you can give it to charity—or better yet, get creative and be charitable with your time and money doing things other charity mongers haven’t thought of yet.

Make sure you have an awesome in-demand skill and be the kind of “resource” people jockeying for resources will fight over. People will put up with you being good if you are good at something they need desperately.

I wrote a piece for my Physics major son and his cohorts that was published by Science magazine called, What Not to Do With Your Physics Education. My advice is that they not join me on Wall Street because, as I conclude the article, “It’s not that I feel they would not succeed; many will make lots of money. It’s more like how I would feel about sending a poorly equipped son to a dubious war where many generals are in it not for the cause but for the spoils.”

I notice a certain naïveté among some academics, non-profiteers, and people who lack hard skills. They believe that all they have to do is lower their standards just a tiny bit in order to be in high demand on Wall Street and make tons of money. Then they imagine they can make up for it by supporting good causes.

Good luck with that.

First publishedin QZ.com on February 28, 2013.