Professional sports and many Hollywood filmmakers used to uphold their elite ‘stars’ as role models….but not much anymore. These days it is more about being influencers than role models.
Influencers are all about putting commercialism first and ethics second, or in too many cases, simply for the most part possibly forgetting ethics altogether. Excluding gangsters and those following ‘sleazy’, questionable underworld cultures, acceptable and normal role models generally are idolized and looked up to by the public, especially kids, as charitable model citizens with wholesome family values. Granted, there are few, if any, true saints walking the planet these days and no one expects a role model to be a saint but, today, the public does still expect their culture’s role models to exhibit way more positive, uplifting and/or charitable characteristics than negative, morally questionable and/or selfish characteristics.
Influencers, for the most part, are addicted to and care more about attracting large numbers of followers to their social media platforms, then enticing their followers to espouse or spread the ideas promoted by the influencer, as well as use the products and services the influencers use. In the influencer’s world it is all about selling something…some ideas, some way of life, social/political views and so on that is being peddled to their followers. Influencers, today, are like the ‘hucksters’ that used to sell questionable ‘snake-oil’ medical remedies door to door back in the old days.
Bottom line? Too often being an influencer may be more about taking the almighty dollar from your pocket and putting it into the influencer’s pocket, unlike a role model’s primary goal. An influencer’s primary goal may too often not be in really helping their followers in some constructive, helpful, life-altering ways because the actions and words of the influencer are most always centered round what is going on in the influencer’s life rather than centered round what is good for their followers.
So, these days, like influencers, the way the mainstream news media has also ‘sold out’ to commercialism promoting influencers’ behavior as acceptable and normal, by contrast, promoting too few true role models in the media’s news coverage these days may be confusing the public, equating today’s sophisticated influencers and traditional, true role models as one and the same.
SUPPLEMENTAL SOURCE: JASON WHITLOCK, SPORTS TALK SHOW HOST INTERVIEW JANUARY 16, 2020