Connor Geroux Writing

Tag: christianity

  • Shut Up and Say Something

    Everyone wants to be an influencer. 

    It’s a fact of life at this point. Morning Consult reports that in 2023, 57% of Gen Z polled stated they have an interest in social media influencing as a career. And who wouldn’t? Look at the lifestyle. Travel as a must, and you’re your own boss? Not to mention that if you’re really lucky, you can do most of it in pajamas. Who wouldn’t want that life?

    But more than that, there’s a deeper hunger in there, deeper than all of those mainly vapid (though exciting) reasons; everyone wants to be seen.

    It’s hunter-gatherer motivation, right? Humans don’t do well alone. Give a human a couple of days in isolation and their brain begins to scramble. In many old cultures, to be exiled was worse than being dead, for even in death there is a chance of people caring about you. Our brains are programmed to crave acceptance because tribal acceptance is how we evolved to survive. 

    So imagine this: a career where all of your basic needs are met and then some, where you can provide for people that you deeply care about, and for the duration of that job, your success in the field is direct confirmation that people accept who you are and what you stand for. 

    That’s the life of an influencer, at least how it’s advertised. 

    Sheesh. When you put it like that, I’d want to be an influencer too. 

    And though this term “influencer” is a relatively new one, at least in the way it’s used today, this group has existed for as long as society has. Politicians, poets, playwrights, and prophets alike have all gained some level of influence in their time. But with the smartphone’s camera and the swarming of different social feeds, the barrier to entry in this once very exclusive group has truly never been lower. What used to require a team of twenty people can now be done by a team of ten fingers. 

    And with the impending tsunami of Generative AI, that barrier continues to get lower. Now you don’t have to even be the one with the ideas.

    Now it can look something like this:

    “I am in the ______ industry selling _______. You are a top social media marketing strategist in that same industry. Generate 20 captivating topics for Instagram Reels within that topic, along with a script for each. Keep the script 250 words or less. Use a cheerful, friendly tone.” 

    Put those scripts into a text-to-speech voice mod, add some stock footage over it, play some lo-fi in the background, and you’ve made a technically perfect batch of Instagram Reels. 

    This is the modern reality of the life of an influencer. And before I go into a greater point that will generally go against this way of doing things, let me talk about why this can be a good thing. 

    The good news is this: Anyone can be an influencer. 

    The age of the gatekeeper in pop culture has long been over. Because record labels and agents and publishers are more suggestions than requirements now, anyone that wants to say something has the ability to say it, and previous factors that would prevent them from not being heard have begun to dissolve. Am I saying that those limiting factors have entirely disappeared? Absolutely not. But in this new way of doing things, if you have a voice, more likely than not, someone will hear it.

    There has never been more of a space for diverse voices than now. Hard stop. That diversity is a good thing. Hard stop.

    The good news is this: Anyone can be an influencer.

    The bad news? Anyone can be an influencer. 

    Social media is a constant flood. And while there has been endless talk of the negative actors on social media, we hardly talk about how neutral most things are. Inane posts of sports takes or Get Ready With Me routines or Stranger Things discourse. The entirety of social media is designed not simply to enrage you, but to dull your senses. Because a dulled mind is more likely to keep scrolling, even more so than an upset one. 

    And while many big companies have a hand in contributing to that system, some even being the ones who designed it in the first place, it’s our ability to contribute to it that makes these algorithms churn in the first place. 

    And I don’t blame people for going this route! Heck, I’ve gone that route myself. There are plenty of old YouTube channels that I own that I care not to think about (13 year old Connor has a video online of him eating cereal and doing nothing else. It has 100 views). Our brains crave it, our algorithms reward it, and when you’re successful at it, the money speaks for itself. 

    Influencing is not in it of itself an evil thing, or even an inherently wrong thing. My issue is and always will be whether you have something to say. 

    Too often I come across people desperate to be influencers, with no real conviction as to what they want to influence. They like the idea of being an influencer rather than the actual reality. They want to look nice for a camera, but don’t have anything to say to it. 

    This is most people online, and with the advent of AI, that group has only increased in volume. People’s entire livelihoods are now determined by if their editing software can cut up Family Guy clips rather than if they actually have something to say. Put a text to speech description of the movie, and suddenly it’s okay to post. 

    This is the modern reality of the influencer economy. It’s a lot of stuff. Not good, not bad, just stuff. And when that stuff becomes the flood it is not, it takes up space from the diverse voices still here.  

    So what now? What do we do about this? Do we throw away the influencer economy and start over? No, that’s not what I’m saying. Primarily because that puts me out of a job to start. 

    My greater encouragement is this: we need to be aware of the value of our voice. 

    In our quest for acceptance and the modern influencer economy looming over us it can be difficult to remember that you are an individual. It can be so easy to fit into the standard of what everyone else is talking about; to fit into trends, to let programs figure it out. And yes, the ones who do this can find some success. 

    But anyone who is in the influencer space will tell you that most of the time, the ones who truly succeed are the ones with voices strong enough to be heard through the flood.

    IShowSpeed made videos at 16 yelling at video games. Now he educates people on the world by traveling it. But through all of his content is himself. It’s his personality, his own unique voice that makes people drawn to what he does. 

    Thomas Sanders made Vines about Disney and musicals. Now he runs a channel dedicated to positivity and lifting up marginalized voices. And people follow him because he himself is distinct. His artistic voice is everywhere in his content. And people want to listen to what he has to say. 

    The good news is this: Anyone can be an influencer. 

    The bad news is this: Anyone can be an influencer. 

    The best news is this: Anyone can be an influencer. 

    So what do we do?

    If you are thinking that diving into the influencer space is something you want, consider first why it is that you want to do it. I truly believe that you don’t need to get into the content business if you don’t feel you have something to say with it, despite what gurus online may say. If you don’t need to do it, then don’t. 

    But if there is something in you that you need to share. If there’s nothing else you can do. If you’re willing to jump into the shark tank of stuff, slop, and senseless hate because you can’t help but share your voice. 

    Then your answer is simple. Shut up, and say something.

  • On Heaven

    Millions of years ago, there was no such thing as a “Grand Canyon.”

    The story goes like this: the plates underneath the Earth collided and lifted a chunk of the ground, creating a massive plateau. This allowed the Colorado River, a rather small river at the time, to brush up against this chunk of dirt and begin breaking apart the rocks, cutting a massive dent into this even larger body. The river does this enough, and that once strong standing rock is now broken apart, eroded after constant pressure from an outside force. It is a scar embedded deep into the Earth. 

    The rock didn’t ask to be this way, but now it has become an entirely new thing, and that canyon brings roughly 5 million visitors every year. As I grew up in Arizona, every science class had a lesson on the canyon, and the effect that erosion had on it. 

    This is the lesson: if enough time passes, anything can break. 

    I grew up with the thought of Heaven shoved into my head. I had not lived a full year before I was told about a time where I no longer would – that there was this “other place” that we were to arrive at, one much better than the one we live in now. 

    I did not find this odd or concerning; it was simply reality. Obviously, this life is evil. There’s storms and war and other gangling beasts that tear us apart with no hope of putting us together again. 

    And so, before I was able to take a step in the world I found myself in, I was taught to resent it. I was taught to look at the wounds this world has and see only the scars: unchanging, permanent, not worth the time to fully heal. 

    And it’s not like we can close up the Grand Canyon. 

    Heaven is a beautiful place. Heaven will have a long dining table, and friends and family will eat from it all the foods of the world. Heaven will be a rock concert with a room just outside to decompress every once in a while. Heaven will be the words unspoken finally given sound. 

    There is nothing wrong with loving Heaven. It would be illogical not to. 

    But where does that leave us here?

    The story goes like this: we are born with visions of heaven thrust on us. We are told of the evils of the world before we have a chance to see them. And when the waves of the world push at us, the love we have for this life begins eroding, until eventually, we are left with scars on our own hearts. 

    And it’s not like we can close up the Grand Canyon. 

    So what do we do? We cling onto Heaven. We cling onto that long table and banging music. We hold those words we should be saying in our lungs, waiting to say them for some other time. And after the scar tissue has finished developing, we refuse to let ourselves be broken again. 

    We do not engage with our world. We simply wait for rapture. And in doing so we neglect to accept every instance in which we could make our Heaven here. 

    Another lesson from the Grand Canyon: change is beautiful, and our world is full of it. 

    Millions flock to the Grand Canyon every year. A massive gash in the middle of the Earth attracts families, and their families, and their families. Inside the Canyon is a system of plants and animals who have lived in there for generation after generation. This imperfection, this deep scar, is regarded as one of the most beautiful things our world has created. 

    And our hearts are full of scars. We have been cut and sliced and broken by the creeping beasts of the world. And we will continue to search for every imperfection, every blot, and every heartbreak. 

    In this we have a choice: do we wait for Heaven to come another day, or do we search for beauty here?

    And there is nothing wrong with loving Heaven. It would be illogical not to. But if our hearts are to be scars anyway, we must find it in ourselves to tend to each other. In this way, we can find a slice of Heaven here.