Youtubers: Who were the influencers of our ancestors?
Who were the influencers of our ancestors? How could they influence the life, the way of thinking or the behavior of our ancestors?
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While we are freshly confined because of the COVID19, on March 24, 2020 Norman, Cyprien and 80 other YouTubers call us to respect confinement. If they decided to form a single voice to ask us to respect this confinement, it is because they have a certain aura, an influence.
The marketing definition of an influencer is as follows: a person who uses a digital media to disseminate his opinions with Internet users and who is able to influence them until they modify their way of consuming.
If we leave the purely mercantile context of the influence of the 21st century, it is interesting to understand that these youtubers are authoritative in their field and that they have a power of influence on their target. We find the greatest opinion leaders of our current society on our social networks (there are several tens of thousands), but who were the influencers of our ancestors? How could they influence the life, the way of thinking or the behavior of our ancestors?
Influencers known to all
Imagine that there is a ranking of the greatest opinion leaders of all time.
Students from the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) unveiled in 2015 a cultural classification system (based on many data) in order to establish the list of the most influential personalities. Influence leaders who have had an impact on the society in which they have evolved, good as bad.
It is possible to classify these personalities by categories:
Religion, first, with Jesus Christ and his apostles, Muhammad, Moïse, Martin Luther and Buddha in true spiritual leaders, they are best classified in this list. Their precepts still influence the lives of more than 6 billion believers on earth today.
Politics, monarchy or democracy, whatever. Men and women at the head of a country largely influence the way of life of their fellow citizens. We find for example, Julius Caesar, dictator for life; Louis XIV; Napoleon Bonaparte, at the origin of a sustainable reform of the French company and the Civil Code Adolf Hitler, still considered today as a symbol of absolute evil. The Queen of England will also influence her people by supporting the importance of medicine.
The authors, qu’ils soient écrivains, philosophes, scientifiques ou économistes, tous ont influencé par leurs écrits la vie de milliards de personnes. Isaac Newton se hisse en haut du classement pour avoir fondé la mécanique classique et pour avoir théorisé la gravitation universelle. Bien plus tôt, Confucius était considéré comme le premier « éducateur » de la Chine, civilisation qu’il marque encore aujourd’hui. On peut également citer Darwin et son ouvrage « De l’origine des espèces » ou Karl Marx et sa critique du capitalisme.
Many other people influenced our ancestors, they were military, explorers, or much later, sports, actors or musicians ...
Influencers in the villages of our ancestors
But how could our ancestors be influenced if they couldn't read? Or if they did not have access to media?
We finally find the same kind of categorization of opinion leaders in the small villages of our ancestors.
Well yes, for a long time, the priests had a real influence on our ancestors. As long as they could not read, the preaching given to mass allowed the religious to influence the population by their ideas. The literacy campaign and the influence of teachers will be harmful to the Church which sees our ancestors emerging from ignorance and capable of criticizing, of thinking by themselves.
Then, mayors, bosses or doctors, better placed in the hierarchy of social classes, sometimes richer and more educated than peasants, could exercise their power of influence and decision more easily.
To conclude, the influencers of our ancestors had no secrets. They only managed to create interactions, communities to whom they successfully shared their power by building their own representation of the world ...