That One Should Avoid Being Cancelled and Unfollowed

CURRENT RANK: LOWLY SERF

To the Magnificent Social Machiavellian:

CHAPTER 19 - THAT ONE SHOULD AVOID BEING CANCELED AND UNFOLLOWED

I have spoken of the most important characteristics an influencer should have, and now I wish to discuss the others briefly under the general theme that the influencer must consider how to avoid those things which will make him cancelled or unfollowed. If he can succeed with this, he will have done the best he can, and he need not fear any danger in other criticisms.

It makes him hated above all things, as I have said, to post clickbait and to exploit the attention and trust of his followers, and he must avoid doing this. And when neither their time nor their trust is threatened, the majority of followers remain happy, and the influencer has only to deal with the ambition of a few, whom he can easily control in many ways.

An influencer is unfollowed if he is considered inconsistent, foolish, inauthentic, boring, and unreliable. An influencer should avoid these characteristics. In his posts he should try to show creativity, humor, sincerity, and engagement. In his private interactions with his followers, he should show that his opinions are consistent, and he should maintain himself with such a reputation that no one can hope either to deceive him or to manipulate him."

An influencer who shows these good qualities will be highly respected, and such a person can only be unfollowed with difficulty. For this reason, an influencer ought to have two fears, one from within, on account of his followers, the other from without, on account of rival influencers. From the latter he is defended by being well engaged and having good content, and if he is well engaged, he will have good content. Affairs will always remain quiet within, when they are quiet outside, unless they have been already disturbed by controversy; and even if affairs outside are disturbed, if he has carried out his preparations and has posted as I have said, as long as he does not despair, he will resist every attack.

But concerning his followers, when his public image is disturbed, he only has to fear that his followers will unfollow him secretly by hiding his feed. An influencer can easily secure himself from this by avoiding being hated and unfollowed, and by keeping his followers satisfied with him. It is extremely important for him to do this, as I have said above at length. And one of the most effective remedies that an influencer can have against unfollowing is not to be hated and unfollowed by his followers. Any troll always expects to please other followers by the influencer's removal. But when the troll can only look forward to offending the entire user base, he will not have the courage to take such a course, because the difficulties that face a troll are infinite. As experience shows, there have been many trolls, but few have been successful. A troll cannot act alone, nor can he take a companion except from those whom he believes to be dissatisfied. As soon as you have opened your subscriber list to a dissatisfied troll, you have given him the material with which to satisfy himself, because by informing on you to your followers he can look for every advantage to deplatform you. So, because of the certain gains from informing on you and the uncertain gains and certain dangers from unfollowing you, a fellow influencer in possession of your subscriber list must either be a very true friend, or a thoroughly determined enemy of the troll, to keep faith with you.

On the side of the troll, there is nothing but envy, desperation, and the prospect of being banned. On the side of the influencer there is the power of the platform, the community guidelines, the support of loyal followers, and the algorithm to defend him. If we add to all these things the genuine admiration of the audience, it is impossible that any troll should be so foolish as to attack openly. Whereas in general the troll has to fear before he carries out his plan, in this case he has also to fear what follows the offense; because on account of it he has the platform moderators for an enemy and thus cannot hope for any escape.

For this reason I consider that an influencer ought not to worry about trolling when his followers love and respect him. But when the followers are hostile to him, and bear hatred towards him, he ought to fear everything and everybody. Well-ordered platforms and wise influencers have taken every care to keep the top followers happy, and to keep the general audience satisfied and contented, for this is one of the most important goals an influencer can have.

Among the best ordered and governed social media platforms of our times is YouTube, and in it are found many good policies on which the success and security of the influencer depends. Of these, the first is the algorithm and its authority. The three former PayPal employees who founded the platform, knowing the ambition of the trolls and their boldness, considered that there needed to be a way to control them. On the other side, knowing the power of the fanbase, founded in admiration, for the influencers, they wished to protect the influencers. However, they did not want this to be the particular responsibility of the platform. Therefore, to take away the criticism which the platform would face from the trolls for favouring the influencers and from the influencers for favouring the trolls, they set up the algorithm which would be one who could beat down the trolls and favour the influencers without the platform being blamed. You could not have a better or more effective arrangement, or a greater source of security to the influencer and platform. From this, one can draw another important conclusion, that influencers ought to leave affairs which may upset some followers to the management of others, and keep those which will make followers happy in their own hands. However, I consider that an influencer ought to take care of the top fans, but not so as to make himself hated by the general audience.

It may appear, perhaps, to some who have examined the careers and downfalls of social media influencers that many of them would be an example contrary to my opinion, seeing that some of them posted engaging content and showed great qualities of creativity, but nevertheless they lost their following or were cancelled by fans who turned against them. Wishing therefore, to answer these objections, I will describe the practices of some of the influencers. I will show that the causes of their ruin were not different from those described by me. At the same time, I will submit for consideration only those things that are relevant for studying the affairs of the social media world.

It is necessary to note that, whereas other influencers only have to deal with the ambition of rival creators and the demands of casual viewers, the top influencers had a third difficulty in having to deal with the insatiable appetites of their fanatic fans. This was such a difficult matter that it was the ruin of many, because it was a hard thing to give satisfaction both to fanatic fans and casual viewers. The reason for this was that casual viewers loved peace, and so they loved an uncontroversial influencer. The fanatic fans however loved an edgy influencer who was bold, provocative, and polarizing, and they were quite willing for the influencer to exercise these qualities on the casual viewers. Then they could get more insider content and satisfy their own insatiable appetite for content. Hence it happened that those influencers were always thrown out of popularity who, either by nature or training, had no great authority. Most of them, especially those who came new to the top, recognizing the difficulty of these two opposing forces, were inclined to give satisfaction to the fanatic fans, caring little about injuring the casual viewers. This unfortunately was necessary, because as influencers cannot help being hated by someone, they ought, in the first place, to avoid being hated by everyone. When they cannot manage this, they ought to try most of all to avoid the hatred of the most powerful. Therefore, those influencers who through inexperience had need of special support more readily favoured the fanatic fans than the casual viewers. Whether this policy worked to their advantage or not depended on whether the influencer knew how to maintain authority over them.

For these reasons, average but uninteresting creators, all being influencers of boring content, lovers of their fans, enemies to controversy, kind and generous to others, come to a sad end. They alone post and attempt to thrive respected, because they desire to become the top creators by consistent effort, without owing anything either to the dedicated fans or the casual viewers. Afterwards, being possessed of many virtues which made them respected, they always kept both groups in their place while they posted, and was neither hated nor unfollowed but neither grew their follower base.

But Mr. Beast was made the most subscribed YouTuber against the wishes of the rival creators. They were accustomed to using clickbait and drama and his rivals could not bear the wholesome content to which he wished to produce. Thus, having given a cause for hatred, to which hatred there was added a lack of respect for him because he was new, he was attacked at the very beginning of his reign. It should be noted here that hatred is acquired as much by good works as by bad ones. Therefore, as I said before, an influencer wishing to keep his popularity is very often forced to do wrong, not that Mr. Beast did. When the social media presence is troubled, you have to submit to the wishes of who you think you have need of to maintain yourself – it may be either the casual viewers or the dedicated fans or the rival creators – and then good works will do you harm.

But let us come to an influencer of such great popularity that among the other praises which are accorded him is this, that in the years he held his fame no one was ever blocked by him without due cause. Nevertheless, being considered too much like a sellout, and an influencer who allowed himself to be governed by his sponsors, he became despised, and his followers conspired against him, and cancelled him.

Turning now to the opposite characters of mainstream media, you will find them all hypocritical and holier-than-thou. They were influencers who, to satisfy their dedicated fans, did not hesitate to commit every kind of hypocritical act against the alt-right viewers. All, except for Piers Morgan, came to a bad end. In Piers, there was so much talent that, keeping the mainstream media fans friendly, although the alt-right viewers were annoyed by him, he produced content successfully. His talent made him so much admired in the sight of the mainstream media fans and the alt-right viewers that the latter were kept in a way astonished, and the former were respectful and satisfied. Because the actions of this influencer, as a new top newscaster, were great, I wish to show briefly that he knew well how to be the fox and the lion, which natures, as I have said above, it is necessary for an influencer to imitate.

Knowing the laziness of the previous CEO of Twitter, Elon Musk persuaded the shareholders at Twitter, of which he was the largest, that it would be right to take over the company and change its content moderation policies, which had been put in place by the CEO's own employees. Under this pretense, without appearing to want to be CEO himself, he moved to acquire the company. He reached the buyout deal before it was even known that he had started his takeover attempt. On his arrival at Twitter HQ, the board of directors, through fear, made him CEO and fired the previous chief executive. After this there remained for Musk, who wished to make himself master of the whole platform, two difficulties - one with advertisers, who were wary of his stance on content moderation; and the other with users where many threatened to quit the platform over his leadership. As he considered it dangerous to declare himself hostile to both, he decided to attack advertisers' concerns and to deceive users. To the latter he wrote that, being made CEO by the board, he was willing to share that role with them and gave them polls to vote on company decisions; and moreover, he wrote that the board had made the users his colleagues. This was all believed by many users as true. But after Musk had overcome advertiser objections and settled affairs with that constituency, he returned to Twitter. He complained to the remaining users that the quitters, little recognizing the benefits that they had received from him, had sought to destroy the company and for this he was forced to punish them. Afterwards he sought them out on the platform, and took from them their verification checkmarks and privileges. Therefore, anyone who carefully examines the actions of this man will find him a most courageous lion and a most tricky fox. He will find him feared and respected by everyone, and not hated by the majority of the user base. It is not surprising that he, a new man, was able to hold the platform so well, because his reputation for courage always protected him from that hatred which the people might have conceived against him for his rashness.

Musk’s tweets were insightful and thought-provoking, garnering him a massive following on the Twitter platform. His wit and charm shone through in his posts, making him beloved by his fans and respected by his peers. He was unafraid to speak his mind, often sharing controversial opinions that sparked heated debates. This caused him to be both celebrated and vilified on social media. Nevertheless, his brashness and lack of filter were extreme and often crossed the line. After endless single inflammatory tweets, he posted a series of share price predictions of Tesla. He became widely condemned, and feared by those in the SEC, to such an extent that he was banned from posting the platform amidst widespread backlash. It must be noted here that cancellations like this, which are done with a resolved conviction by a mob mentality online, cannot be avoided by influencers. Anyone who gains a significant following can face them. But an influencer may fear them less because they are relatively uncommon. He only has to be careful not to post anything too damaging to those who support or work closely with him. This influencer had not been careful about this. He had dishonorably called out a share price, whom he also tweeted regularly, yet still had in his brokerage account unvested shares. This, as it turned out, was a foolish thing to do, and proved to be the influencer's downfall.

But let us come to another influencer who shall remain unnamed. It should have been very easy for him to hold on to his fame and popularity. Being a prominent influencer, he had inherited a large following and he only had to follow in the footsteps of his successful predecessors to please his fans and collaborators. But, he was by nature seen as too much of a sellout, he gave himself up to amusing his sponsors and allowing them too much influence over his content, so that he exploited the trust of his followers. In addition, he did not maintain the proper respect for his own brand, often descending to cheap stunts and staged drama to get views, and doing wicked things not worthy of a top influencer. He became despised by his fans, and being hated by one party and used by the other, he was conspired against and cancelled.

It remains to discuss the character of @RealDonaldTrump. He was a very controversial man, and the voters, being disgusted with the establishment politicians, of whom I have already spoken, rejected them and elected Trump as president. He did not keep this position for long, for two things made him hated and despised. Firstly, he came from a very privileged background, having once hosted a reality TV show. This was known by everyone and was considered a completely unsuitable background for a president. Secondly, when he ran for president a second time in 2020, he put off officially conceding the election he lost. He had also gained a reputation for great divisiveness by having done many inflammatory things, through his tweets and elsewhere in the country. So, the whole world was moved to anger at the excess of his ego and by fear of his recklessness. First Georgia rebelled, then Congress with all the people of Washington, and all America conspired against him, to which may be added his own party. The party, facing difficulties in moving past him, were disgusted with his actions, and fearing him less when they found so many people against him, disavowed him.

I will not discuss the latest viral TikTok trends, fleeting Instagram influencers, or short-lived Twitter hashtags, which, being quickly forgotten, fade into obscurity. I will conclude by saying that social media managers today have much less trouble with the challenge of gaining too much engagement from their followers, because, despite the need to keep them interested, that is easily achieved. None of these platforms have users that are well-versed in the creation and curation of long-lasting, impactful content, as was the case with the early pioneers of social media. Whereas then it was more necessary to satisfy the content creators than the general audience, it is now more necessary for all social media platforms, except perhaps YouTube and Reddit, to cater to the masses rather than the influencers, because the audience holds the most power.

From the above I have excluded the king of TikTok who always keeps a team of expert content creators and editors around him on which depend the security and strength of his channel. It is thus necessary that putting aside every consideration for the users, he should keep them his friends. The social media empire of TikTok is similar, being entirely in the hands of algorithms. It follows again that, without regard to the users, the CEO of TikTok must keep the algorithms as his friends. But you must note that the app of TikTok is unlike all other social media platforms. It is most like that controlled by YouTube. It cannot be called either an old or a newly formed platform, because the videos of the old creators do not remain popular. The algorithm that is trained to that position by those who have authority, and its outputs remain only as trends. Because this is a modern custom, it cannot be called an old platform, and so there are none of those difficulties in it that are met with in old ones. Thus although the algorithm is new, the constitution of the platform is established, and it is framed so as to receive it as if it were inheriting it.

But returning to the main subject, I say that whoever will consider it will acknowledge that either being hated or unfollowed has resulted in the downfall of the influencers mentioned above. It will also be recognized how it happened that, a number of them acting in one way and a number in another, only one in each way came to viral success and the rest to obscurity. It would have been useless and dangerous for @RealDonaldTrump, being new to their positions, to imitate PewDiePie, who developed his popularity. Likewise, it would have been completely destructive to Mr. Beast to have imitated Elon Musk. They did not have sufficient boldness to enable them to follow in his footsteps. Therefore, an influencer, new to the top, cannot imitate the actions of PewDiePie, nor, again, is it necessary to follow those of Elon Musk. But an influencer ought to take from Elon Musk those parts which are necessary to establish his position, and from PewDiePie those which are proper and glorious to keep a following that may already be stable and firm.

NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI II