Mark, am I representing you correctly?
Tom's been posting on both his Tumblrs about "opinion leaders," his questions seeming to be: to what extent are there such creatures; do those outfits who claim to have the special ability to identify opinion leaders actually know what they're doing; and where these creatures have apparently been identified, is there any special value in trying to influence them in particular (influencing the influential, as it were)? I've been posting on the comment threads, and Dave chimed in on his own Tumblr.
I may or may not swoop into the subject from my own angle, but first I have a question for dubdobdee:
Tom entitles one of his posts "Now I know why Mark S hated the word so much." I replied with this:
Except "influence" as you've been using it here and in Blackbeard is exactly how Mark thinks it should be used, to reference actual power in the world. What Mark was objecting to was the unearned authority of "The [New Band] cite a range of influences from the Velvet Underground to the Fall," or "[Supposedly Valuable Rock Critic] has influenced everybody from Chuck Eddy to Tom Ewing." So what you guys are (and Mark is) trying to understand is who has power and what actual influence/resistance it engenders etc., whereas what Mark is objecting to is the attempt to borrow power by invocation and proxy.
So Mark, is this a good representation of your ideas?
(I'm referring back to a convo that occurred in many places including here and here.)
Of course, the syndrome that Tom is criticizing goes "We can give you access to power by giving you access to opinion leaders" as if the mechanism of influence needed no explaining beyond this.
Other posts in Tom's series:
http://blackbeardblog.tumblr.com/post/85530795/mmmm-nodes
http://tomewing.tumblr.com/post/85722965/finding-the-first-mouth
http://blackbeardblog.tumblr.com/post/85248557/conversation-is-nomadic
I'm considering "Conversation is nomadic" to be relevant to the discussion of opinion leaders because certain nomads carry other people with them on their journeys - e.g. the fellow whose blog I'm linking to.
I may or may not swoop into the subject from my own angle, but first I have a question for dubdobdee:
Tom entitles one of his posts "Now I know why Mark S hated the word so much." I replied with this:
Except "influence" as you've been using it here and in Blackbeard is exactly how Mark thinks it should be used, to reference actual power in the world. What Mark was objecting to was the unearned authority of "The [New Band] cite a range of influences from the Velvet Underground to the Fall," or "[Supposedly Valuable Rock Critic] has influenced everybody from Chuck Eddy to Tom Ewing." So what you guys are (and Mark is) trying to understand is who has power and what actual influence/resistance it engenders etc., whereas what Mark is objecting to is the attempt to borrow power by invocation and proxy.
So Mark, is this a good representation of your ideas?
(I'm referring back to a convo that occurred in many places including here and here.)
Of course, the syndrome that Tom is criticizing goes "We can give you access to power by giving you access to opinion leaders" as if the mechanism of influence needed no explaining beyond this.
Other posts in Tom's series:
http://blackbeardblog.tumblr.com/post/85530795/mmmm-nodes
http://tomewing.tumblr.com/post/85722965/finding-the-first-mouth
http://blackbeardblog.tumblr.com/post/85248557/conversation-is-nomadic
I'm considering "Conversation is nomadic" to be relevant to the discussion of opinion leaders because certain nomads carry other people with them on their journeys - e.g. the fellow whose blog I'm linking to.