Christians in the Age of Internet Celebrity

This Christmas the most loved present was my son Scott’s new hoodie. It was “merch” from a YouTube streamer named Preston who makes Minecraft videos.

He ran all over the house asking if it was really from Preston, and did Preston know that he was his biggest fan? Did we really go to Preston’s website, a URL he knows by heart, and order this from the merch shop? Indeed we did. He spent the next few days in awe of his new hoodie, thanking his mother and I, and explaining to the whole family that this was Preston’s “fire merch” from Preston Stylez Dot Com.

Now, Scott is six and a half, and a very high spirited boy, so his overall reaction is probably to be expected. Yet, there remained in me a sense of unease; it did not sit well with me that my son had latched onto a YouTube streamer with such fervor. My wife did not share my apprehensions, but then I don’t think she has ever been as anti-celebrity as I am. Sure, Preston himself, a married Christian father of two, seems great, and he has, to my knowledge, never used his celebrity as a negative influence, but what about next time?

I have worried about celebrity influence for a long time. Generally celebrities are not subject matter experts, yet they still seem to have undue influence on our culture. Sometimes that works out in my favor, like when Ted Nugent or Joe Rogan talk about bow hunting, but promoting their messages legitimizes when Jenny McCarthy spouts misinformation about vaccines or Sarah Silverman speaking at the DNC. In what world should we listen to the star of “Dirty Love” about what we inject in our bodies?

A Growing Threat

This is obviously an old problem, at least as old as Jane Fonda’s goodwill tour of Vietnam and probably much older. The difference is today, nearly anyone can be a celebrity. Preston’s previous five daily videos got a combined total of 10.3 million views, and I see 14 of his videos from within the last year have gotten over 20 million views, with the top video having nearly 35 million. No movies, no TV shows, just a dude playing a video game. To put that in perspective, 52.46 million people watched the finale of “Friends,” and 98.2 million watched the 2019 Super Bowl.

Preston has become a celebrity, and he is not the only one. Eight year old Ryan Kaji currently has the world’s most popular YouTube channel, with his top two videos having been viewed 2,035,002,008 and 1,060,153,711 times at the time of writing. His channel has 28.1 million subscribers, and his videos earned him $26 million in 2019. He unwraps and reviews toys.

The thing people talk about is not the money, but the number of subscribers. An audience this size of the population of Texas has signed up to be notified when an eight year old boy is going to open and play with a new toy.

That kind of recognition and influence being available to the common person is a new problem in our Internet age. While it is easy to write off stories about Instagram influencers wanting free accommodations at fancy hotels, it is undeniable that we as humans crave that same affirmation and attention. 

Hitting Home

I myself have felt this siren song as recently as my last article “The Current State of 3D Printed Firearms”. I posted it in a few places, and one of the major players in 3D printing reached out and asked to reprint my article. I was over the moon! Not only did someone I respect acknowledge and affirm my work, he wanted to spread it to others. I had visions of viral marketing dancing through my head. For the next few days Tim and I gleefully looked at the daily view numbers, and I haunted the places I had posted it looking for feedback.

I think Hank Green summed it up nicely in a recent video when he said, “When people start creating on the Internet it is never about money. The actual thing they want is to feel like they matter. They want validation, they want meaning, they want to be valuable.” I don’t normally agree with Hank, but he is on the money here; we are all wanting to be part of something larger, something that matters.

That is why I wrote my article, so I could influence the conversation around a topic that matters to me. When Tim asked me to come onto the Thinking Woodsman as a contributor, we never once talked about money, we only talked about the topics we wanted to address and how we wanted to help people reason through modern issues. 

We crave influence and affirmation. We want people to listen to us, and affirm what we say. That is why Facebook has a “like” button, why reddit shows your karma score, why every other social media outlet shows you how many people have seen your content, liked it, and interacted with it.

Pushing the Limit

In that video Hank goes on about how very early on in the Internet influencer age, it became clear it was going to be very wide at the bottom, narrow at the top, and in order to climb up you either had to be better or more extreme than the others in your niche. Channels like “Epic Meal Time” got huge by being better; way back when most YouTube videos were on basic webcams, they had incredibly high production values, and smart scripts. On the flip side, the various prank channels pushed the line farther and farther, to the point where Michael and Heather Martin of the YouTube channel DaddyOFive were convicted of child neglect in 2017 based on video evidence of them “pranking” their children.

“The Martins made more than 300 now-deleted “prank” videos that showed the parents screaming profanities at their children, breaking their toys and blaming them for things the kids didn’t do. The Sun also describes videos in which Michael Martin is seen pushing his 10-year-old son into a bookshelf and giving him a bloody nose. Another video showed Michael Martin ordering one of his step-children to slap his 11-year-old daughter in the face under the guise that it was a game.”

There is no way it started that extreme. It probably started with innocent games, but as more people affirmed what they were doing, and they started competing with more prank channels, they got more and more extreme.

Polarized Much?

This is also the feedback cycle that has led to the deterioration of our news and the radicalization of our people. Would any of you recognize today’s Rush Limbaugh as the author of 1993’s “The Way Things Ought to Be?” The same with Fox News. I remember them having a slight conservative slant in the early 2000s, but the feedback cycle of more extreme content leading to higher ratings has led them to be not much more than a supermarket tabloid.

On an individual level, this has caused so many of us to buy into conspiracy theories. People want to feel like they are a part of something, so they listen to an anonymous message board user making crazy claims about “Satan-worshiping pedophile cannibal elites,” and the “grand plan” in which President Trump will order the arrest of high ranking democrats. Reblogging these things, spreading the message and interpreting the cryptic words of politicians creates mini-celebrities, mini-influencers who are then caught in the feedback cycle of positive affirmation and influence as they get more and more extreme.

Retaking the High Ground

So what can we do to not only keep ourselves out of this, but help our friends? I propose a few things:

First, remember that our meaning, affirmation, and purpose comes from God. God handcrafted you, and sent his Son to die for you in order that you and He could have an eternal relationship. Is there any higher affirmation you can have than the Creator of the Universe pointing to you and saying “That is my Son?” Is there any higher purpose you can think of than bringing glory to God? 

In Galatians 1:10 Paul writes “Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.” Christ hits all over this topic in Matthew 6, starting in verse 1 with “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.” and culminating in verse 33 with “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

This is not to say do not enjoy when people praise you. That is impossible. I am saying point that praise back to God, and seek your affirmation from Him. Think about Daniel 2:26-28:

The king asked Daniel (also called Belteshazzar), “Are you able to tell me what I saw in my dream and interpret it?” Daniel replied, “No wise man, enchanter, magician or diviner can explain to the king the mystery he has asked about, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries…”

Daniel pointing the Glory and the praise back to God leads directly to verses 46 and 47:

Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell prostrate before Daniel and paid him honor and ordered that an offering and incense be presented to him. The king said to Daniel, “Surely your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, for you were able to reveal this mystery.”

Second, we need to think more about heavenly things. What percentage of your recent Facebook feed was about election fraud, and what percentage was about missionary work? Are you proud of that ratio? The last thing our Lord said before he ascended to heaven was “Go and make disciples.” not “go and win elections.”

Remember in C. S. Lewis’ “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe” when Mr. Beaver meets the children in the woods? He doesn’t talk about who is in favor at the White Witch’s court, or about what new rule she has imposed. He says, “Aslan is on the move.”

John Eldridge wrote “Christianity is not an invitation to be a really nice [person]; it is an invitation into a larger story, in which you play a decisive role.”

Aslan is gathering his forces at the Stone Table.

C.S. Lewis wrote ““For Christianity is a fighting religion. It thinks God made the world—that space and time, heat and cold, and all the colours and tastes, and all the animals and vegetables, are things that God ‘made up out of His head’ as a man makes up a story. But it also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists, and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again.”

Isn’t that more exciting than election fraud or COVID lockdowns? How do you have any time to read about the latest thing former President Trump tweeted when Operation World has mapped out all the people who have never heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ and provided specific prayer points for them? 

Aslan is on the move, but we are busy shoveling the snow looking for dirt on each other.

Lastly, we need to repent. When we give time and attention to politicians that rightfully belongs to God, that is idolatry. When we seek approval and affirmation from men, that is idolatry. We must never forget that we were rebels, actively fighting against Creator God. We must daily surrender our goals, our desires, and our lives to Him. Only when we focus on the Throne of Heaven will we get the meaning and purpose in our lives we so crave.

What’s one thing you’ll today do to reclaim your attention and turn it back to its rightful Master?

– Michael Corey