Networks: Classic Readings and New Directions in Egocentric Analysis 51 (2021): 73–86. The concept of complex contagion, and the roles that influencers and networks play in helping ideas go viral, is explored by Centola in depth throughout his book Change: How to Make Big Things Happen (New York: Little, Brown Spark, 2021).
22 Ibid.
23 Megan Hoins, “What ‘The Discourse’ Has to Do with Internet Discomfort,” Medium, April 26, 2018, https://medium.com/@meganhoins/what-the-discourse-has-to-do-with-internet-discomfort-6a554408966b; Sakshi, “Discourse (Slang),” Know Your Meme, August 30, 2023, https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/discourse-slang. “The Discourse” has an academic definition, which internet culture appropriated largely mockingly; rather than referring to important and serious issues, it is most often applied to rather esoteric nonsense that breaks out of its main community and is viewed with some bemusement by those outside the argument. “The Discourse” in its meme sense was popularized on tumblr in 2015 and was originally deployed when a fight broke out between a few people on the internet, often over an obscure niche issue, and an observer noted the argument and its somewhat ridiculous valence.
24 Allison P. Davis, “A Vibe Shift Is Coming,” The Cut, February 16, 2022, https://www.thecut.com/2022/02/a-vibe-shift-is-coming.html.
25 Ryan Holiday, “Trading Up the Chain: Mainstream Media Takes Cues from Blogosphere,” Observer, April 4, 2014, https://observer.com/2014/04/mainstream-media-takes-cues-from-blogosphere.
26 Seth Rich was murdered in July 2016. Nearly a year later, in April 2017, Jack Posobiec began tweeting conspiracy theories about Seth Rich as the party responsible for the Democratic National Convention leak (arguing that this absolved Russia). In May 2017, Posobiec temporarily gained White House press credentials from his job at Rebel Media. He used one of the press conferences to ask Trump about Seth Rich, but the question was ignored (James LaPorta, “Jack Posobiec, Pizzagate and Seth Rich Conspiracy Theorist, Has Top Secret Security Clearance,” Daily Beast, updated August 17, 2017, https://www.thedailybeast.com/jack-posobiec-pizzagate-and-seth-rich-conspiracy-theorist-has-top-secret-security-clearance). On May 16, 2017, Fox News published a story about investigating Rich’s murder and connecting it (without evidence) to Wikileaks. After this, Hannity pushed the story (THR Staff, “Sean Hannity Backs Off Seth Rich Story ‘For Now’ Out of Respect for His Family,” Hollywood Reporter, May 23, 2017, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/sean-hannity-backs-seth-rich-story-respect-family-999155). A week later, Fox News retracted the story (“The Origins of the Seth Rich Conspiracy Theory,” NPR, July 11, 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/07/11/740608323/the-origins-of-the-seth-rich-conspiracy-theory). An in-depth case study of the Seth Rich story and Fox’s coverage can also be found in Brian Stelter’s book Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth (New York: One Signal Publishers), 2020.
27 Most of the work in academic literature and the field of brand marketing alike primarily differentiates influencers by tiers according to their reach. Guides written by agencies that help companies develop an influencer marketing strategy additionally differentiate by the influencer’s topical niche. This gap is interesting because brand marketing strategists precisely and extensively define brand personalities (for example, in terms of one of the twelve personality archetypes of Carl Jung: “The Everyman,” “The Sage,” “The Jester,” “The Rebel”). Similar assessments of influencers (many of whom are brands) do not appear to exist at the moment, though one study attempted a taxonomy based on keywords within LinkedIn profiles: visionary, strategist, mentor, tutor, teacher, and so forth. “Brand Archetypes,” OVO, n.d., https://brandsbyovo.com/expertise/brand-archetypes; James Barry and John T. Gironda, “Operationalizing Thought Leadership for Online B2B Marketing,” Industrial Marketing Management 81 (August 1, 2019): 138–159, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2017.11.005.
28 “Special Episode: Calibrating the Gurometer,” Decoding the Gurus, January 9, 2021, https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/calibrating-the-gurometer. Scholars Christopher Kavanagh (a cognitive anthropologist and social psychologist) and Matthew Browne (a psychology professor) host a podcast called Decoding the Gurus, which broached the idea of a “Gurometer” that defined ten key characteristics of modern secular gurus, among them antiestablishment inclinations.
29 Helen Lewis’s podcast The New Gurus goes deeply into the motivations and value propositions that gurus offer their audiences in several different topical categories. Simplification and an easy guide for how to live is common among them. The New Gurus Apple Podcasts, April 17, 2023, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-new-gurus/id1659385785.
30 “The Virus, the Vaccine, and the Dark Side of Wellness,” Harper’s Bazaar, March 16, 2021, https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a35823360/covid-19-vaccine-qanon-wellness-influencers; E. J. Dickson, “Wellness Influencers Are Calling Out QAnon Conspiracy Theorists for Spreading Lies,” Rolling Stone, September 15, 2020, https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/qanon-wellness-influencers-seane-corn-yoga-1059856.
31 Kaitlyn Tiffany, “The Women Making Conspiracy Theories Beautiful,” The Atlantic, August 18, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/08/how-instagram-aesthetics-repackage-qanon/615364.
32 Derek Beres, Julian Walker, and Matthew Remski, Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat (New York: Public Affairs, 2023), chap. 1.
33 Charlotte Ward and David Voas, “The Emergence of Conspirituality,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 26, no. 1 (January 1, 2011): 103–121, https://doi.org/10.1080/13537903.2011.539846.
34 Martin Riedl, Josephine Lukito, and Samuel Woolley, “Political Influencers on Social Media: An Introduction,” Social Media and Society 9, no. 2 (June 7, 2023): 205630512311779, https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051231177938.
35 For an interesting profile of Chris Rufo that examines his avowed leveraging of propaganda tactics (such as deliberately setting out to redefine the term critical race theory) in service to accomplishing his goals, see Benjamin Wallace-Wells, “How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict over Critical Race Theory,” New Yorker, June 18, 2021, https://www.newyorker.com/news /annals-of-inquiry/how-a-conservative-activist-invented-the-conflict-over-critical-race-theory.
36 Philipp Margolin, “Distort, Discredit, Dismiss: The Manipulation Playbook of Anti-science Actors, Part 2,” The Protagonist Future?, May 15, 2023, https://protagonistfuture.substack.com/p/distort-discredit-dismiss.
37 Robert Tracinski, “The Populist Right Isn’t Interested in Elite Accountability,” The UnPopulist, November 18, 2022, https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/the-populist-right-isnt-interested.
38 Adam, “Twitter’s Main Character,” Know Your Meme, July 13, 2023, https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/twitters-main-character; Maple Cocaine (@maplecocaine), “Each day on twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it,” Twitter, January 2, 2019, https://twitter.com/maplecocaine/status/1080665226410889217.
39 Reeves Wiedeman, “PissPigGranddad, the Punk-Rock Florist Who Fought ISIS in Syria, Is Coming Home,” Intelligencer, April 3, 2017, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/04/brace-belden-pisspiggranddad-syria-isis.html.
40 Sam Jaffe Goldstein, “Jeffrey Epstein Is a Feature of Our System: A Conversation with Liz Franczak and Brace Belden, Hosts of ‘Trueanon,’” Los Angeles Review of Books, January 30, 2020, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/jeffrey-epstein-is-a-feature-of-our-system-a-conversation-with-liz-franczak-and-brace-belden-hosts-of-trueanon.
41 These two topics, in quick succession, dominated The Discourse in one week of June 2023.
42 Helen Lewis, “Extremophiles, the Internet’s Favorite Personality Type,” The Atlantic, January 31, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/internet-youtube-podcast-guru-influencers-andrew-tate/672867.
43 David A. Graham, “The Unlabelling of an ‘Anti-Muslim Extremist,’” The Atlantic, June 18, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/maajid-nawaz-v-splc/562646.
44 Vanessa Thorpe, “LBC’s Maajid Nawaz’s Fascination with Conspiracies Raises Alarm,” The Guardian, January 31, 2021,