You probably don’t even realize how much what you do and say influences the people around you. One of the prominent themes in The Dimensional Alliance book series is how people influence one another for better or worse.
Oftentimes we are unaware how many lives we may impact in any given day. Of course, family members influence one another in so many ways that people outside the family often remark how much they resemble one another, not only physically, but in their sense of humor, their work ethic and other characteristics. This comes from shared experiences and memories.
But I can’t tell you how many times I have remembered a casual remark by someone I didn’t even know well or an action that affected me for good or ill so much that I couldn’t forget it. Often I don’t even know their names. This is the well I pull from as an author. Observing human nature has always been a bit of a hobby of mine. I used to enjoy just sitting in large public venue such as a mall, an airport, a concert or sporting event.
One of the things I have noticed is how the emotions or moods of a few individuals can spill over to their neighbors without conscious effort. A crowd can go from neutral to highly emotionally charged very quickly. And, have you ever noticed how a positively charged crowd can actually boost the quality of the performance of athletes or performers of any kind?
But even in the quiet of lockdown and crowd restrictions brought on by the pandemic, we see how humans affect one another via online media. And it seems to start as a trickle. One or more individuals who notice something or are upset about something or who are excited about something speak their mind about it. A friend or two sees the post and remarks on it, likes it or shares it. A couple more people see it and the pattern is repeated.
The thing about social media and any online communications is that they are nearly instant, regardless how far away any two people live from one another. The results, therefore, can be dramatic. Good news, false news, bad news, art, music, or anything humorous can find a global audience within minutes of the first post hitting the net.
Unfortunately, we don’t always consider how what we post or share might influence people we don’t even know. Often, when we share a post, for whatever reason, we don’t even check to be sure it is factual, especially if it grabs our emotions. (I personally have done this in the past.) No harm done, right? It’s only a single post.
We fail sometimes to recognize the power of multiplication. Take the number 2, for instance. If only 2 people share and that is replicated, how many times do you have to multiply 2 by itself to get to make an impact? 2 to the 20th power (2 multiplied by itself 20 times) is 10,485,762 to the 50th power is 1,125,899,906,842,624.
This is how false news spreads so rapidly and is so very hard to control. The thing is that it doesn’t just stop with sharing. Each person has their own “take” on the post and so the process repeats itself in hundreds or thousands of iterations. So the old saying “A million people can’t be wrong.” is definitely erroneous. (There are many variations on the number, but the saying has been around for over a hundred years.)
You may think your circle of influence is small, but the numbers online and the various legal issues surrounding false news, fakes and bad information on all fronts is caused by all of the rippled connecting. Your ripple and their ripple and the ripples of all of their friends and so on… It adds up more quickly than any of us usually think about.
The good news is that good news can take the same track. We get to choose what we post and share. Why not flood the inboxes and newsfeeds with good, uplifting, positive information? We can do it. Start a movement now. You are an influencer and if enough of us choose to, we can change the trend from false news and sensationalism to encouraging information that changes the mood of the huge 8 plus billion crowd we find ourselves in each and every day.